Hls470 Evaluating Risk In Infrastructure: Assessment Answer

The local government is under immense pressure to improve the services offered by the public sector while containing the ever-increasing government expenditure. Although factors such as an increase in pension cost, health care cost and the aging population have dogged down the ability of the government to provide better and improved services, the local population has pressurized the government to be accountable for every contribution made through taxes, (Cepiku & Bonomi Savignon, 2012). In this article, I am going to recommend the best possible way the homeland department can improve the government facility sector and mostly stress on the adoption of one of the recommendations.

Sector overview

Services offered in this sector is uniquely governmental, most of these facilities are mostly government-owned or provided by governmental entities. These facilities obtain importance from the services they give to the local populace. It allows citizens to interact with government officials on a daily basis. They exist in order to conduct primary governmental services.

Recommendations  

There is no one way in which government services can be improved. The local government has thus implemented several approaches to improve its education institutions, commercial offices building, and the federal government facilities. Some of the adopted approaches is decentralization of government services, transforming the local government workforce composition, adoption of new changes in the budgetary structure, resizing the human resource department and emphasizing on results-oriented practices, (Van der Voet & Vermeeren, 2017). Although the local government has adopted some transformative reforms, their impact on the overall service delivery efficiency is very limited. This is particularly due to the lack of enough resources to carry out performance evaluation, the challenge of isolating the impact of an institution from external variables and the lack of pre-performance reforms within the government.

However, it is evident that the following factors if adopted will greatly improve service delivery in the government facility sector.

1. Adoption of appropriate practices in the human resource department. Quality service delivery is highly dependent on the commitment of employees in the organization. Proper employee training and skills development together with proper and progressive policies adopted in the organization help the employees to carry out their duties effectively and efficiently, (Singaravelloo, 2017). Proper human resource policies and quality practices by the various government departments will create a healthy organizational culture. Bureaucracy has highly affected service delivery by the local government. Proper compensation practices, emphasizing in hiring skillful employees and promotion of a good working culture is important in optimizing service delivery.
2. Decentralization of political influence and government spending on the local sub-government units. Decentralization of government operatives by ensuring that there are no inter-jurisdictional spillovers improves overall governance in three ways; it improves resource allocation by promoting employee accountability and reduction on the levels of corruption and abuse of public office, it also improves the overall cost recovery. These three aspects of management are linked closely and highly depend on the idea that the local government does not become a quasi-democracy, (Schmidt, Groeneveld & Van de Walle, 2017).

• In the education institutions, it is empirically evident that efficiency may be improved by increasing the scale of operations. The local government should provide high-quality skill and professional development platforms to the education stakeholders primarily teachers, district education administrators, and the local schools. teachers must be provided with professionally-oriented opportunities so as they can take advantage of the trainings that are available locally, (Jones, 2016). The creation of a sustainable incentive for the teachers should also be put in place so that they can change practices that are consistent with the training they received. The office of the homeland department should then assume the responsibility of monitoring the implementation process assess if the desired results will be achieved by the practices employed.

Progressive transformation of local government service delivery cannot be considered to be a panacea. It has its merits and demerits. Progressive transformation of service delivery critically depends on the design, implementation and the prevailing governmental arrangements, (Graaf, Hengeveld-Bidmon, Carnochan, Salomone, & Austin, 2018). The paper has critically recommended three actions that can be adopted by the local government to improve its service delivery on education institutions, commercial office building, and federal government facilities. The most viable option is the adoption of decentralized service delivery. However, this is only possible if the local government will encourage a local governance democracy. Democracy can be attained by ensuring that the local population is economically homogeneous and the decentralization of governance powers to the tax structure will create societal vertical externalities in relation to the high tax rates. In order to realize transformational development in this sector, the devolution of powers is highly recommended.

References

Cepiku, D., & Bonomi Savignon, A. (2012). Governing cutback management: is there a global strategy for public administrations?. International Journal of Public Sector Management, 25(6/7), 428-436.

Graaf, G., Hengeveld-Bidmon, E., Carnochan, S., Salomone, M., & Austin, M. J. (2018). Change Communication in Public Sector Cutback Management. Public Organization Review, 1-20.

Jones, D. M. (2016). Downsizing the Federal Government: Management of Public Sector Workforce Reductions: Management of Public Sector Workforce Reductions. Routledge.

Schmidt, E., Groeneveld, S., & Van de Walle, S. (2017). A change management perspective on public sector cutback management: Towards a framework for analysis. Public Management Review, 19(10), 1538-1555.

Singaravelloo, K. (2017). PPP: The right marriage between local government and the private sector in Malaysia?. Institutions and Economies, 142-166.

Van der Voet, J., & Vermeeren, B. (2017). Change management in hard times: Can change management mitigate the negative relationship between cutbacks and the organizational commitment and work engagement of public sector employees?. The American Review of Public Administration, 47(2), 230-252.