Who is the Best Public Sector Leader for 20111- Number 1

Though we at IMANI revel in criticism and wholeheartedly believe that thoughtful, careful, analytical and comprehensive critiques of government policy are the most effective approach to contributing to the growth of governance through the sharpening of institutions of state and the improvement of decision-making, we nevertheless started an experiment last year to use “measured praise” as one of the tools available to us to encourage good behavior on the part of public sector leadership. Our number one public sector leader spot for 2011 is shared.

Ms. Doreen Owusu Fianko & Air Cmdr Kwame Mamphey
Managing–Director, Ghana Airport Company Limited (GACL) &Director-General, Ghana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA)

Yes, like the rest of the travelling public we know our major airports and the airline services available to Ghanaians could be much improved, but one has to appreciate where we have come from. It is also important to point out an easy misconception: GCAA is not responsible for every single element of the Airport experience of travelers. The GCAA and the Ghana Airports Company Limited, the GACL, together work to ensure smooth operations of airport activity. The GACL was decoupled from the GCAA and since 2007 both entities have worked seamlessly together.

If you are still uncomfortable about the security arrangements at the airport or corruption on the part of some officers, bear in mind that several independent security agencies, such as the National Security Secretariat, Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB), operate at the airport but do not report to the GCAA or the GACL in the ordinary course of things.

With that in mind, now consider those things that ARE indeed within the authority of the Managing Director of the GACL and the Director General of the GCAA. Consider for instance the steady improvement in safety record management, including air-worthy certification management; streamlining of systems workflow (measurable through aggregating “on-time departure” counts); and critical systems uptime (i.e. how often backup electrical power fails, whether there are persistent air-conditioning failures, and how quick operators recover from system-level IT crashes etc.)

In terms of contractor and/or third-party performance management, we take note of two major ongoing weaknesses: the unresolved perception within the industry that advertising contracts are being unduly interfered with and the completely unacceptable attempt to create a cartel for ground transportation, thus preventing legally registered taxi drivers in the Greater Accra area from operating within the airport, with no other purpose other than to enable this cartel to extort ridiculous fees from passengers and other users of the airport. We hope these issues will be addressed with speed.

Still, Mrs. Doreen Owusu Fianko and Air Commodore Kwame Mamphey have both excelled in managing a complex renovation exercise during which capacity utilization had to be maintained and actually expanded throughout the transformation cycle, still ongoing. For this technical and managerial feat alone, they would have been strong contenders. Having performed reasonably well in the other areas of examination, we had little difficulty deciding unanimously to name them our Public Sector Hero and Heroine of the Year.

We deliberately don't publish a Worst 5 Public Leaders or Institutions List. We feel we do enough though our general activities to criticize the public sector and in our own small way to contribute to deterrence of egregious misconduct.

Still, if we were to go down that route, just for the sake of emphasis, to “rub it in” as they say, we would have chosen the following five organizations as the ones that least inspired us in 2011.

Ghana Education Service – Despite its reputation for managerial weaknesses in transparency, accountability, governance, employee oversight, and planning, the organisation's disastrous handling of the computerized school selection and placement fiasco shocked even jaded observers of this institution in need of total overhaul at the administrative level.

National Lottery Authority - for killing off the private lottery industry in Ghana, thereby reducing total jobs in the sector and depressing innovation, and creating undue panic in the advertising market by confusing its mandate with the Gaming Commission of Ghana.

The Fair Wages & Salary Commission – It may sound unfair, given how much work the valiant employees of this organization have done in the past few years to achieve the impossible task of harmonizing labour relations in this country through scorecards and what some have cynically called: “snake and ladders”.

The truth though is that much of that work has been scuttled by ineffective management of the stakeholder relations part of things, to disastrous effect. We also worry that the Commission's bosses are refusing to tell government the biggest truth of all: there is nothing within the so-called “single spine” framework that can manufacture harmony on the labour front.

The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions – the so-called “prosecutions division” of the Ministry of Justice seems to be tethering on the brink. If you try to count the number of times high-profile cases (politically related prosecutions are just a tip of the iceberg) have been bungled or severely delayed because state attorneys failed to turn up, you would give up less than half-way in frustration. Not surprisingly the situation is even worse with low-profile cases. This bureaucracy is a significant part of the justice delivery problem in this country.

National Youth Council – A highly publicized launch of a new National Youth Policy and its rather public and humiliating dismissal of a supposedly underperforming chief executive were both supposed to herald a new era of progress in defining a winning blueprint for youth development in Ghana. Alas, very little is on ground to show.

Published by IMANI Center for Policy & Education