President John Dramani Mahama has approved the appointment of chief directors for all ministries in the country.
The appointments are aimed at having full complement of chief directors to curb the practice where ministries have acting chief directors who often give the “excuse of not having the necessary clout to demand performance from civil servants”.
The initiative, therefore, will empower the appointees to have the leadership clout to demand greater performance from civil servants.
“I wish to state that with these appointments, chief directors who perform well will be recognised and rewarded, while those with poor output will be reprimanded,” the acting Head of the Civil Service, Nana Agyekum Dwamena, announced.
2013 Performance evaluation submitted
Receiving the Evaluation Report of the 2013 Chief Directors Performance Agreement in Accra yesterday, Mr Dwamena stated that “the appointments will provide the necessary elixir for improved performance within the ministries and excuses to demand performance will no longer be accepted”.
The report, which, among others, studied performance agreements and other supporting documents submitted by chief directors, is purposed to strengthen the performance management culture in the civil service and assess the level and quality of work done by chief directors for the period of January to December 2013.
It would also stimulate healthy peer competition among chief directors and sector ministries, as well as increase transparency and accountability in the delivery of public services.
The report, carried out and submitted by a three-member evaluation team led by Dr Robert Dodoo, Chairman of the Civil Service Council, was funded by the French government.
Civil service plagued by leadership lapses
Mr Dwamena said one of the major challenges that had affected civil service leadership was the number of acting chief directors managing the affairs of the various ministries.
To address the challenge, he said one of the key organisational development interventions that had been undertaken in the civil service over the years had been a ministerial realignment exercise in the “wake of decoupling local government from the civil service”.
The aim of the exercise was to assist ministries and the headquarters of the decentralised departments to reallocate and reassign their decentralised functions, relationships, communication responsibilities, staff, logistic assets and budget to the national, regional and district levels of administration, he said.
Nana Dwamena added that an action plan and guidelines for the conduct of the assessment had been developed and distributed to the ministries, departments and agencies to assist them in the conduct of the assignment.
“We will continue to aggressively support all ongoing reforms to ensure that the civil service regains its status as the best in Africa,” he assured.
Support chief directors to perform
Giving a brief overview of the report, Dr Dodoo said during the exercise, the team identified a number of lapses, some of which were neither the fault nor within the mandate of the chief directors.
“The time the Performance Agreement was concluded in October 2013 was not realistic enough and there was the late release of funds for the chief directors to run the ministries.”
“Some of them used their ingenuity and initiative to generate resources from elsewhere, while others folded their arms,” he stated.
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