Abstract
Background: The aim of public service departments in South Africa is to improve service delivery through the transformation and improvement of human resources and the improvement of service delivery practices. Furthermore, it is important for the public service sector in South Africa to improve the quality of its service delivery, not only by comparing its performance with other sectors within South Africa but also by positioning itself amongst the best in the world. This can be achieved by benchmarking with other global industries and by implementing the most recent competitive intelligence strategies, tools and techniques. The environment of the public service organisations consists of competitive forces that impact the functioning of these organisations.Objectives: This article focuses on proposing competitive intelligence-related strategies, tools and techniques for gathering and analysing information in the public service departments in South Africa in order to enhance service delivery.Method: The study was qualitative in nature and was divided into two components, namely, (1) theoretical – through an extensive review of the literature and (2) empirical – an ethnographic study at the chosen public service department, the Department of Home Affairs (DHA). Ethnographic interviews with management-level staff, focus groups and document analysis were used to obtain adequate information to determine the current state of public service delivery in South Africa.Results: The results of the study was the development of a new competitive intelligencerelated framework for gathering and analysing information, and it represents a formal and systematic process of informing managers in public service departments about critical issues that these departments face or are likely to experience in future.Conclusion: The strategic planning tools and techniques of this framework will fill the gap that exists in public service departments. Once this framework has been implemented, it could assist these departments to improve service delivery to its citizens.
Highlights
The aim of public service departments in most countries is to lead the modernisation of the public service by assisting government departments to implement their management policies, systems and structural solutions within a generally applicable framework of norms and standards in order to improve service delivery (National Treasury 2004)
The Competitive Intelligence (CI) framework for gathering and analysing information at the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) is reflected in Figure 1, and it represents a formal and systematic means for informing managers about critical issues that the DHA faces or is likely to experience in future
The tools for the framework have been divided into several elements in order to inform managers of their focus in each category and to make it easy for the model to be used in any other service sector
Summary
The aim of public service departments in South Africa is to improve service delivery through the transformation and improvement of human resources and the improvement of service delivery practices. It is important for the public service sector in South Africa to improve the quality of its service delivery, by comparing its performance with other sectors within South Africa and by positioning itself amongst the best in the world This can be achieved by benchmarking with other global industries and by implementing the most recent competitive intelligence strategies, tools and techniques. The environment of the public service organisations consists of competitive forces that impact the functioning of these organisations
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