CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
There is increasing demand on government and its agencies to imbibe governance and leadership principles that will enable it function and deliver services more efficiently. This is a global phenomenon. Although the advanced economies are progressively pursuing programmes and implementing transformational strategies aimed at making their institutions more responsive and function at optimal level of efficiency, the developing economies are still at the lows of such efforts. According to McPherson and Ebrig (2005). “Every successful corporate transformation is built upon a solid foundation of effective governance. The private sector has spent years working to develop better models for governing corporate investments and other critical decisions, as well as for monitoring the results of those decisions”. They noted that companies that have gotten governance right have an edge over competitors in reaching and sustaining high performance.
McNamara (1997 – 2008) posits that the private sector efficiency was achieved on the strength of the implementation of strategic performance management systems. He defined strategic performance management as “the systematic process by which an agency involves its employees, as individuals and members of a group, in improving organizational effectiveness in the accomplishment of agency mission and goals.” This system, he contends is largely lacking in the pubic sector.
Following that strong lead from the private sector, government agencies are also seeking to create more effective governance models that can increase their chances for successful transformational efforts in strategy, sourcing, information technology, workforce performance, finance and many other areas. McPherson and Ehrig notes that such governance model cannot simply be lifted from the corporate arena and applied to the public sector without modification “Unique cultural and structural charactenstics of government organizations must be accounted for if governance models are to be successfully applied”
The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FiRS), National Agency for Food, Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC), and the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) are three institutions that successfully implemented transformational programme with very visible result in terms of operational efficiency The organizations have fully adopted the private sector operational model with highly improved service offerings This research work will therefore focus on the transformation strategy and current operational module to provide a guide for its replication in other government institutions
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Private sector operational efficiency is a gulf away from the gross inefficiency of the public sector institutions and agencies. Service delivery in the public sector is at sub- optimal levels. And the reason is that governance culture in those agencies does not emphasize efficiency in its processes and procedures as, could be achi&ved through the implementation of strategic performance management. Their major challenge is lack of ability to implement clear performance measurements that makes it possible to execute ‘corporate strategy successfully. Problems often associated with strategic inefficiency in the public sector organizations includes:
Failure to determine and clearly set out of objectives to be achieved
Non-identification of alternative ways of achieving the objectives.
Non-evaluation of alternatives in terms of its objective-achieving ability
Initiatives for cost-cutting often do not come with concrete delivery plans
And most importantly bureaucratic bottlenecks and inappropriate allocation of resources also hindered efficient public sector performance.
These issues highlighted above threw up the interest to carry out this study to examine how the application of strategic performance management could transform public sector organizations into productive and efficient institutions.
1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
FIRS a few years ago launched a strategic transformation programme to restructure and strengthen its processes and procedures. The objective was to set the platform for greater eefficiency in tax administration and operating process uncommon in the public sector. The outcome of this effort is a significant turnaround in its operations with impressive results. The study therefore aims at establishing the following: