I work for a private company that is a major contractor for the government.
A few of my observations:
- The Government always expects more. If the government pays you R10, they expect goods and services back to the value of R100.
- Extremely slow in making decisions that may impact a business in a big way.
- Everyone in Government have their own agendas. It's a constant political tug of war.
- Government departments not cooperating.
- Getting correct information quickly is impossible.
- Their procedures are not customer centric and in many cases they achieve the opposite of what they planned (i.e. procedures implemented that actually hamper progress).
I doubt I will ever work for another company that does work for the public sector again.
I trade my labour in the corporate market, never worked for Government or dealt directly with them but from the Management Consultants I speak to regarding business process and effectiveness, they are still far behind.
I agree with all your points, except the first one, I thought it was the other way around, they overpay suppliers but take forever to do it.
I've seen they are starting to employ Performance Management Consultants (HR) and are making the use of Private Consulting firms. IMO they need to get the business process,people and technology right first (Management Consultants), then get the Balance Scorecards out then feed into the rest of the HR processes, from job profiling right through to A+R's and develop a consistent true line of site.
After that they can focus on interdepartment synergy. IMO things are still random now, I mean how they are going about it.
The other problem is that as long as we still pay taxes and their other parastatals make profit, they won't really get close to the same efficiency level.
They have no competition(well only at election time) and their income is pretty much guaranteed so they'll never be like the private sector.
I guess that's why you need opposition parties.
Would I work for Goverment, hmmmm, haai, I don't know hey, think it's a personal one:erm: Don't know if I 'm at a level in my career where I can make that move and not have it work against me if I wanna go back into the private sector, so until then, I guess it's a no.
