Policy capacity building in the Ethiopian civil service

Abstract

The Ethiopian government believes the mission of its civil service is to introduce to the country a better economic and democratic system. In achieving this, the government has recognised policy capacity setbacks in its civil service and embarked on a comprehensive Civil Service Reform Programme (CSRP) to address the issue with a national capacity building strategy. The human resource administration aspect of the reform programme however lacks a closer and direct integration with civil service education and training programmes. Being aware of this, the government opened Departments of Public Administration in some universities and restructured training institutions in the country. Nevertheless, the level of policy competence, skill and attitude of civil service personnel leaves much to be desired as far as ensuring effective and efficient policy development and delivery is concerned, which otherwise could have been changed through proper public policy education and training. This research topic was selected after the Ministry of Civil Service had identified this problem in 2011. Public policy education and training in public administration entail improvement of employee policy performances in the civil service system. Public policy education and training in a civil service system imply obtaining new policy knowledge, policy abilities and policy skills, and, introducing public servants to and involving them in important public policy decisions. Nevertheless, public institutions frequently fail to achieve their programme objectives due to a lack of personnel trained and qualified in public policy, which is often at the root of public policy failures. This can contribute to the notion of public policy education and training receiving a wider acceptance in the civil service. It is generally accepted that universities and other training institutions provide public administration education to incumbent civil servants and students who will become the future work force in the civil service. It is the duty of such institutions to provide scientifically inspired career education and training to students of the future and incumbent civil servants. The institutions undertake to provide policy knowledge, policy attitude as well as policy skills to students in order for them to perform their role effectively in the public policy process. A student studying for a public policy career should be able to gain policy knowledge about the field of study and obtain the necessary public policy skills to be used in practice. Thus, students in public administration should not only have policy knowledge and policy attitude about the subject Public Policy, but also the public policy skills to act as professional public policy proposers and advisors to the government in power. The question can however be asked whether the curricula of public administration education and training programmes aimed at Ethiopian civil servants include modules on public policy to meet the requirements of the Ethiopian civil service in strengthening the policy capacity of the Ethiopian government.