Contract the Permanent Secretaries – but for what?

Botswana’s proposal to place Permanent Secretaries on performance contracts deserves broad support. Yet before a single contract is signed, Government must answer a far more important question than whether performance should be rewarded. It must first decide what performance actually means.

At the centre of this discussion sit Permanent Secretaries. Ministers determine political direction, but Permanent Secretaries are the chief executives of Government ministries. They control the machinery that translates policy into action and therefore carry much of the responsibility for whether Government succeeds or fails.

Like chief executives in the private sector, they should rightly be held accountable for performance. The challenge is deciding how that performance should be measured. This illustrates the fundamental distinction between outputs and outcomes.

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Outputs measure what Government does; outcomes measure what Government achieves. Every Budget Speech speaks of improving the welfare of Batswana, yet our performance management systems continue to reward activity more than impact. If Botswana is serious about performance contracts for Permanent Secretaries, that must change.

The Permanent Secretary responsible for Labour cannot claim success simply because another employment programme or regulation has been introduced. Success is reflected in higher labour force participation, more sustainable jobs and falling unemployment. The Permanent Secretary for Lands and Agriculture should not be judged by the number of ISPAAD fields planted, LIMID grants awarded, livestock vaccinated, boreholes drilled, acres under irrigation, extension visits conducted, tractors subsidised or farmers trained.

These are important means, not ends. The true measure of success is higher crop and livestock productivity, a wider diversity of agricultural products, greater value addition, lower food imports, stronger exports, improved nutrition and rising rural incomes. Every ministry should therefore have one defining national outcome against which its leadership is ultimately judged.

Supporting indicators will always be necessary, but a single principal outcome forces every ministry to answer one simple question: what measurable improvement happened because this ministry exists? Botswana would not be pioneering this approach. Countries such as New Zealand, Singapore and Rwanda increasingly evaluate public sector performance through improvements in productivity, education, health, employment, investment and citizen well-being rather than the volume of Government activity.

Transparency should become part of that transformation. Imagine Government publishing a real-time online dashboard allowing every citizen to follow progress against each ministry’s agreed outcomes throughout the year. Imagine every Permanent Secretary appearing annually before Parliament not simply to explain how money was spent but to account for whether measurable improvements were achieved and, where they were not, how performance would be improved. Such openness would strengthen both accountability and public confidence.

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