The Challenges Facing Performance Contracting Design and Implementation in the Kenya Civil Service

Abstract

Kenya is one of the countries in the world that uses performance contracting in public management as a tool for efficient and effective service delivery. This research sought to establish whether there are challenges facing the performance contacting at both the design and implementation level. This research was a descriptive survey study. The population for this study was the 8801 workers in the job groups L to S employed by the Government of Kenya Civil Service and working in headquarters in Nairobi Province.

The workers in the job groups L to S are the top players in the design and implementation of the performance contracting given that they generally sign the PC with their respective Chief Executives Officers. A sample of 384 workers from the Ministries/Departments was selected to respond to a questionnaire. Primary data was collected using a questionnaire delivered to sampled respondents by hand and collected the next day (dropand-pick-later method). Random sampling was used to determine a specific respondent from the sampling frame.

The results of this study indicated that the workers are properly informed of the contents of the PC, but there are challenges facing Performance Contract design and implementation in the Kenyan Civil service . The conclusion of this research is that the PC design has inadequate parameters to measure performance and that those included do not reflect the diversities of mandates of the ministries/departments; staff involvement in both design and implementation is weak; monitoring, controlling and evaluation systems are deficient; targets guide weight allocation with the departments aiming only to achieve the target scores by manipulating the weights with not much value added to the service delivery.

composite scoring methods favour technical ministries/departments whose targets are majorly quantitative; the Ad-hoc teams despite the variation in their composition has not fully helped improve PC implementation system; majority of the respondents are dissatisfied with the system of rewarding ministries/departments for good performance. It is recommended that there is need to review the parameters measured by the PC to ensure they capture the diversities of mandates of ministries/departments, Institutions under parent ministries be left to stand alone in PC process and that the government to provide a balanced scoring system to all ministries/departments.