An initiative of
the National Academy of Public Administration, 
and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
and the Bobst Center for Peace and Justice, 
Princeton University




Oral History Program 	Series: 		Civil Service
				Interview no.:	L3







Interviewee: 		Omponye Kereteletswe

Interviewer:		Daniel Scher

Date of Interview:	14 July 2009

Location:		Gaborone
			Botswana			



Innovations for Successful Societies, Bobst Center for Peace and Justice
Princeton University, 83 Prospect Avenue, Princeton, New Jersey, 08544, USA www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties
SCHER:	Today is the 14th of July, 2008. I'm here in Gaborone with Dr. [Omponye] Kereteletswe, the Coordinator of Public Sector Reform [CPSR] in the Office of the president. Sir I want thank you very much for taking time out of your day to sit down with me.  

KERETELETSWE:	You're welcome.
	 
SCHER:	I know you're an exceptionally busy man, and I do appreciate it. Just before we begin with some of the more specific questions I had for you, I wonder if you would mind just telling us a little bit about yourself and the career trajectory that has brought you to this position now. 

KERETELETSWE:	I am Omponye Coach Kereteletswe, and I am from the northwest part of Botswana, a place called Nokaneng. I live a life of many purposes, and my life purpose is of course to assist organizations that I work for, my family, and the world at large to prosper. The question for me for planting the seed, a teacher by profession and an ordinary farmer. I have two kids, a boy and a girl and a beautiful wife. I don't regret being here. Even at the time when I was conceived, I take it that there were maybe some 400 million spermatozoa and of which one made me, and in essence, therefore, God had a reason to have me and just make a difference in people's lives through my life purpose.  

SCHER:	Excellent. I'd really be interested to learn a little bit more about this office here, this CPSR. Could you describe a little bit about it, its structure, history, and how it was established?

KERETELETSWE:	The Public Service Reforms Unit sounds like it is a unit, but it is a very big structure in terms of function. Reforms in this country started way back before independence in 1966, but those were piecemeal in nature and community-based. But enshrined or embedded in our traditional democracy of the traditional ktogla systems, the traditional chiefs at that time under the British protectorate were able to be innovative in terms of bringing about what you may call development. I remember even after 1966 we had close to six secondary schools that were built by the community in trying to reform their societies, because most of the children went to South Africa for senior secondary or for secondary education. 

	As a result, that also affected the kind of employees that we had. We had a lot of foreign-based employees and expatriates, if I may say, and an uneducated work staff in terms of the human resource, the Botswana citizens. Therefore at independence the focus was education and to make sure that we turned things around. 

	But as you know, development is a process, and as such during this time there was very-in other words, the communities or the chiefs themselves were responsible for-but when you talked, studied African nationalism, when it started of course in the late 1950s strongly, but it entered from around 1948 and so on, then communities had to survive, and national unity was the way. That, for me-we don't talk much about that, but that's really-that was the beginning of the reform, not necessarily through political structures, but through even families and across boundaries. People beginning to realize that they can co-exist and live in a society. 

	But not digressing too much, what happened then, from 1966 there was then the establishment of the constitutional government, and the Ministry of Finance was mainly dealing with development planning, and reforms were viewed as such. There was no private sector at that time. 

	So then around 1976, 1977, we started to see some kind of complacency creeping into the public service. This was as a result of the citizens now saying, we have a few of us educated, we can take over, but without necessarily sometimes trying to define how we can do it, because it is still a process. It is not a matter of if I am educated. There are other things that go with it. So in the '80s there was that. Then there was a push for expatriates, and so on. But at the same time, there were job evaluations that were carried out to try and streamline the public service, and so on, and coming up with all sorts of pay structures. Because initially, it was just like maybe just [...], who were in even higher positions at that time. It worked for us, yes, but the times changed, and therefore structures also had to change to cope with the complexities. 

	So in the early 1990s we also realized that it was getting difficult to manage a lot of these systems that we had manually, but at the same time we were blessed in that there were now diamonds being mined and now beginning to start to bring more revenues, particularly late '80s, and [...] something around the '70s, but it was more pronounced in the late '80s, when our diamond revenue really shot up. Of course with the advent of HIV and AIDS and so on, definitely there were other things-. And mind you, all these things in the context of reforms, all these things that I call challenges, most of them are really man-made challenges. They are challenges that come about because maybe we did not understand something in terms of the change process, and that was back to the person.

	So now in terms of context and discussing reforms therefore, one may,-I'll be hopping from state to the individual, because it is through the people themselves that we may achieve what we want to achieve. It is about the shared-vision kind of approach where everyone is a leader. Now in 1995, the president, the former president, Sir Ketumile Masire, who was actually the second president of this country, came up with a movement that was referred to as Sir Ketumile Masire Productivity Movement, where now we're trying to say: we need to make sure that we produce more with less. But you see, if you look back into the plans and processes and other related issues, you realize that development planning and other activities that went with it influenced the kinds of results that we got. It is as straightforward as that. The kind of problems that we are seeing today are from yesterday's solutions, and I think Peter Senge is right. 

	Now in 1996, the national vision was then: the first vision, that was at thirty years of independence, was reflected in the public service to say, how are we going to move forward to make sure that people can deliver. We can account for results and make sure that the promises that we give to the citizens are delivered through the right structures, and so on and so forth. What happened is that we then realized we had to go for productivity, for public service, because: One, they were complacent. Two, there were difficulties in terms of learning the value system, and then, as a result, we are now trying to introduce too many laws, too many regulations, code of conduct: this, that. You see, it doesn't matter how many times, how many of them you produce: if the vision is not shared, if there is no connection in terms of spirit in order for us to have the eagerness and the energy to make this happen, then it will just be talk.

	Then later we said, OK, now we need to measure performance. Ah, trouble. That's where trouble started, because in the first place performance management is good, yes, but it all matters as to whether you take the clock on the cabinet, 7:30, and you stop it when they knock off at 4:30. And checking as to what was done and what kind of output and so on was going to be a challenge. Why would we focus on small things when they don't understand the big things? 

	Now strategic planning became key. To say we need to plan, we need to do that. That's when we introduced-in fact, the first thing that we did in the early '90s was to introduce the computers, the human resource, to reshuffle the payroll and so on and so forth, those computer systems. But at the same time, those computer systems were actually mimicking the traditional way of doing things, simply because we didn't have the processes in order to automate to increase efficiency. So in fact, instead we doubled the cost because we're now running two systems, one keeping historical data and the other manual men running it at manual speed and not utilizing the speed of light. So really, this was the first part.

	The second part was now for performance management in terms of ministries coming up with strategic plans, coming up with visions and so on. But the visions were not necessarily aligned to the visions, the national visions. So alignment was an issue. Therefore priorities could easily be misinterpreted. So we were able to hold on. [...] challenge in terms of mindset. For my ministry is that cost-cutting issues, behaviors of people still getting down to the people themselves. So we said, okay, we've introduced systems, but we have to also educate our people. That's why we introduced the balanced scorecard, we introduced the entire public service. We used the balanced scorecard. In other words we have the performance management tools in place to try and assist us to cascade priorities.

	Well, if you can measure it, you can manage it and you can improve it. [...] So, in terms of chronology, those were the major factors in terms of reforms until now. Now we are trying to move fast with our e-government program so that we move closer to an integrated government. Government cannot integrate without its people. At the same time now, we have to widen our communication with society. For example, we have programs like Taking Service To the People, where we go and see how district officers are actually serving the people, the destitutes and all those other people, to check how programs are taking people away from poverty. 

	There are small factors that play to the GDP growth, and sometimes we don't pay attention to those. More important, we were able to carry out little studies, but those little studies that we carried were around-we were trying to identify the major problems that this country is actually having. Remember, we are mindful of the fact that we are a middle-income economy. What that means, sometimes I don't know. But at the same time, we know that we are working very hard to move from sector-driven to efficiency-driven and making reference to the global competitiveness index, or the global competitiveness report of 2008, where clearly we went some steps up. Of course, at some point we were 71 in the world out of 134 countries, and we were able to move to 56 in three-and-a-half [...] 

	So yes, those are interesting statistics, but at the same time you look at the factors that actually lead to that. We are mindful of some of the weak areas. But at the same time we know that some of these things-you cannot solve some of the problems by accelerating maybe, by too much push or force. There are processes that you can accelerate but each time a caterpillar is in its cocoon and it is still struggling, still as a butterfly from its pupae; if you break open that thing you are likely to get a dead or smaller caterpillar. But if you give its period to mature you are likely to get that. But to make sure that you get the end product there, you have to invest.

	Now, in this country, we have been-there has been a shift, like I gave you a history of how dependent we were on ourselves in terms of doing-putting our education up and so on. But later, when we became independent, that maybe was interpreted as becoming dependent now on government by its people. Because we are not footing as much as we should. This world, productivity, efficiency is from a mindset: change from a self-rising state as we used to to another state that we think we can rely on someone else. So this kind of dependence is not just to government. It is, for example, its people depending, like at the family level, dependence on uncle, dependence on family and so on. But there is now a change. Because of the education, now we are starting to kind of break those connections.

	You see what happens is this, taking from the four bonds, if these four bonds are strong, whatever I can call them, and this is a family, wife and husband-if this is strong, then if you place a child here, that child will not fall through. But if this is weak, that child is going to fall and will be caught by someone else. That someone might be the society, and if it is not the society, it is government. 

	Now these structures here at family level are weak. That's why we are able to be penetrated by issues like HIV and AIDS. We know what kills us, but it is simply because the physical-it is simply because the mental stance and the emotional and the spiritual bonds are weak. It is only the physical. It is like touch and go all the time. This is like that. We come up with the so-called empowerment schemes where we want to empower the citizens. Still, these bonds are still so weak that even when we try to reform, when it comes to diversifying, we give them loans, the first thing that they will not do is not to finance a loan or maybe to buy a hammer or a Range Rover or something like that. So it is more surface. 

	The other problem that we're having is, of course, the bit that I mentioned which is the thing about being in control, or the thing about seeing life. We're operating from a scarcity mindset; therefore reforms agenda needs to function. For example, we say we don't have water in this country. We're drilling and we're doing all sorts of things, but we are not paying attention to the whole system. We don't understand why the lakes are running dry. Now what has happened is that, for example, from 100% of rain in this country, 100%, from 100% of rain how much water first in this country are we able to capture, and the answer is 20%, and from the 20%, how much do we drink. I don't even ask where the 80% is going. We drink from our dams perhaps one-third. Where does the one-third go? It is taken by evaporation. Then you go and look for more dams. 

	It is not that you ask them, where can we get water? You know where they look? Down, instead of up. So that's one side. This is why I am saying, to move the reforms agenda you have to look at the collective; you have to look at the whole system and make sure that the different parts can fit and there is constant collaboration in terms of moving together.   
	 
SCHER:	So just maybe a little more specifically about this Public Sector Reforms Unit here. Have you been involved with it since its establishment?

KERETELETSWE:	I was involved with it from maybe 2004, although I was not based here but at a different ministry but dealing with reforms, but working with a big office. 

SCHER:	And this unit was created with what goal in mind?

KERETELETSWE:	In fact, I digressed. You should keep bringing me back.
	 
SCHER:	 This is fine; it is very interesting.

KERETELETSWE:	It was introduced with the idea of measuring performance. Then it was actually placed in the Directorate of Public Service Management [DPSM]. In fact it was introduced-it was started in 1999. Then the permanent secretary, when a new permanent secretary to the president [PSP] was put in place in 2003, he decided that it must be moved out of DPSM to Office of the President, and it must directly report to him in order to drive the reforms agenda. But it was based on performance management. In 2006-in fact 2007, when I came full time here-the focus changed because now we're looking at overall reforms from decentralization, everything. It is still called a unit, but it is headed at the permanent secretary level.  

SCHER:	Excellent. The PSP who thought that this unit should come from DPSM to the Office of the President-his thinking was that he could have more influence and more control over overall reform?

KERETELETSWE:	He felt that in the first place they were too far, they should be nearer. He felt that as the head of civil service, really, the reforms agenda is top priority, and therefore that would get plenty-that also connected it with other structures that actually assisted in reforming the other people outside government, including the National Productivity Centre, the Vision Council, those structures that are also responsible for carrying out some forms of reforms. 
	 
SCHER:	 Excellent. How many members are there within the unit?

KERETELETSWE:	It is a small, but I guess powerful. Well, they don't say that; it is only me who sees it that way. Unit of 12 people, and currently we are at nine with three vacancies because at the same time people that, once they are here. they get admired and easily attracted. Sometimes the government is not able to cope with-the other one just left to join the Swedish as a project manager for eight countries.    

SCHER:	She went where?

KERETELETSWE:	The Swedish.
	 
SCHER:	So how are people selected to serve? You say you have three vacancies. Are they just advertised like regular positions, or are they appointments by the Office of the President?

KERETELETSWE:	Normally we advertise, but like any organization there are situations where we may have identified specific talent elsewhere.

SCHER:	As you say you see it as being a powerful unit. Can you talk a little bit about the powers of the unit and what your specific functions and responsibilities are?

KERETELETSWE:	The power of this unit maybe is not as powerful as you'd think or as it sounds, but the power of this unit has been its ability, one, to respond to the needs of the customer, being the public service, because we serve as a lubricant to them in terms of us changing their minds and hearts. I won't say it is 100%, but we are humbled by that experience. Now they believe performance; they believe targets can be set, but they know the danger of setting targets. They also believe that systems must be self-sustaining and we don't have to be pumping money all the time. They also believe we can go for a no-wrong-door policy, in other words, where we serve the citizen better through our e-government one-stop shops. So in essence they have also got to believe that we've got to serve the citizens with a face, and in my view that's it. 

	It also used a different approach. Instead of using force and threats, the philosophy changed slightly to be responsible. You are there for a reason. You are not there by mistake and so on. And the other thing was that the selection of people sometimes used to run through assessment centers and so on. But we also brought a caution that we rush for assessment centers because we don't mentor, because we don't coach, we don't have role models. And we think that an assessment center can give us something else. Yes, they can help, but there is something that we are not doing. So all those-particularly after changing ways with expatriates and so on-were replaced, and all this came in for fairness and other things. So in my view the reforms really-the unit worked very well in terms of bringing those.

	Then, also, we are instrumental in terms of harmonizing policies and laws to cope with the changes like the constitution. There are some changes. This is a place where we conquer the unconquered, and as such, we think out of the box most of the time. We have those workout sessions where we really have to think out of the box and understanding that we cannot necessarily sustain ourselves by our past. The challenges of tomorrow are more complex, more diverse, and as such we have to rely on the future in order for us to survive. Leading from that is what we are seeing as a challenge, and thus what we have to do.  
	 
SCHER:	So can I see if I've got this right. You're responsible for, in some ways, selling reforms to the public at large, to the public service itself-. 

KERETELETSWE:	Selling, doing, facilitating, bringing aspects, strategic planning drawing.

SCHER:	This sounds like a mammoth undertaking for-so you're really at the heart of all of these activities. 

KERETELETSWE:	For example, I'll drive the NDP [National Development Plan] 10. I just finished with parliamentarians right from the top. It's like a flu right from the top from AG to the man on the ground.
	 
SCHER:	 Sure.

KERETELETSWE:	In terms of lubricating the system, this is what I do. I didn't know what form of-I didn't know how we were going to do this, but I was going to just show you how this office is viewed, because this office is actually the right brain of the-the think tank, if you like-of the permanent secretary to the president. It does not only have in it technocrats, but it also has advocates. You see, small like this, but you see at the ministry there is a small diagram here. Excuse me for one second. Just look at this diagram.

SCHER:	This is part two of the interview with Dr. Kereteletswe. I'm just looking at this diagram, and I have a better idea of how you function.

KERETELETSWE:	This is the public service reforms.
	 
SCHER:	 Right.

KERETELETSWE:	Then our job is to facilitate the cabinet and this office. We're the secretariat to this body called the PIC [Performance Improvement Coordinator] force, where all the permanent secretaries sit to support the permanent secretary to the president.  

SCHER:	Okay. 

KERETELETSWE:	Then ministry structures have also what is called performance improvement coordinators who do similar jobs, but at the implementation level to these people here [points to chart], in terms of implementation of those reforms, including at the districts and departments. So this whole body is normally what they would do, but if it is national planning it is us and the minister of finance and development planning.   
	 
SCHER:	Excellent. Could I just stop for a moment please?

	This is part 3 of the interview with Dr. Kereteletswe. Your task is really-I guess I'm interested in-as you say, you're sort of lubricating the reforms from the very top to the very bottom. I was wondering if you'd comment a little bit on the challenges of selling a reform process at various levels of government.

KERETELETSWE:	The challenge is people-the challenge, in my view, is people. First, the leadership commitment to the reforms is very, very important. Where there is-in bureaucratic states it is always very important to always hit it from the top, and when there is buy-in there will be no problem. The other challenge, and also a lesson, is that there is also a need to internalize and to live the value systems. In most cases, we just write our values and put them on a wall-and we don't live it, so we need to do that.
	
	The other thing: we introduced our reforms initially in a piecemeal manner and in a manner that was not ordered, and to some extent it was also hardening the change process. In other words, as much as people are difficult, it is also very important to always have people who are clear and knowledgeable about reforms. You see, in most cases, in developing states like ours, people in the reform area-they are not necessarily born, they are people who may be, who may have excelled in their areas and with interest and they have a heart; they are brought in, but it takes more than that. That's one other lesson. So equipping and having the necessary capability and skills-of course, after understanding the context and so on-is also extremely crucial. But, more important, you can't-reform means to bend, means to make a difference, means to transform, and as such you can't transform if you don't have a defined burning platform. You really need to know what is burning and the lessons you learned, and each failure should really be a lesson: keep persevering and soldiering on.

	So the compelling reason for change must be clearly spelled out, and the reforms must be relevant and appropriate. Really, by this I mean sometimes decisions made at different levels are not communicated in the manner that they should be, and by the time the change is introduced to the very people on the ground, it is like they are not made aware of the change-it is like they are supposed to make, to-first, they adopt an idea and next put it in practice, that's when they're made aware. This complicates the change process. Awareness and the campaign; it is very, very important. 

	The other thing is the idea of harmonization with legislation, because there is a tendency sometimes to ignore the legislation, and we get stuck on some of the things, and sometimes you might even end up in court. The other thing in reforming that we felt we needed to pay attention to also was the issue of monitoring and evaluating the progress. But by this I am referring to a situation where we are now very serious with strategic planning, which is actual result-based cascading right from  the top of government to the village level-the village having a strategic plan where we are focusing on building neighborhoods and building families, because it starts there. Most of these problems, you think you can solve them with money, you can't.

	Of course there are other ways, like the quality of joint planning, oneness, in terms of moving forward as a country in the world, those are the four keys. These are four drawn circles of causalities that were established for government in order for us to identify areas of leverages in all those. We have been doing that, and you won't believe that a budget dropped from applying some of those techniques, from 120 billion to something like 39 billion. Sometimes we interpret development as infrastructure; then there are some things that really matter in human development. For example, if you change the mindset and get people to understand that their health is in their hands. Instead of saying, I'll build you a hospital, I'll do that, I'll do that. That hospital is there, not to say that the hospital is not good, but that hospital is actually clearly a mess and that, you know, one day I'll be ill. Yes, we know, but maybe it should be for old people and coming up with robust policies, like from now on every government building that is going to be put up will have a training room for physical-a gym. Every building like this will have that because it is different. 

	If I had my gym in the morning and I'm here and I'm really under pressure, like I was here at 4:30 this morning, just to connect with other people in [...], we're two hours ahead; I need to have a way of toning down and meditation and so on. So all those things we see that as a possible move or change. The other most important thing that we felt was that cross-fertilization of ideas is extremely important, and we realized that benchmarking is very, very important. Benchmarking as a burning platform is very important, because when you have a burning platform you are able to learn from others, you are able to have meaningful conversations with others, and so on. 

	I've seen that happen. A lot of countries came here for benchmarking in Africa: Nigeria, Namibia, Lesotho. A lot of them, they do come. I facilitated a couple of countries around, including Jamaica. So in my view, yes, that is the whole idea. But when you think of it you realize that you can transform Botswana, but you realize that at the end, what is Botswana? Is Botswana my world, or the world is Botswana? That concept applies: is my village my country, or my country my village?

	For example, if you look at issues of land reform. You know, this country is the size of France, and we have 1.8 million people approximately, and I will complain that I can't have land to build a house. The complaint would be not that there is no land, but just because I can't get space just next to my father. So it is the whole mindset. So these are little things that sometimes you don't see, but later on they hit at us badly. So when you look at it, you realize that you can't just transform Botswana; you have to go regional. That's why you have SADC [Southern African Development Community]. You look at SADC; then you have to expand. So really it's the whole system. Already I'm talking foreign policy and all this. So it is all systems and we help everybody. 

SCHER:	That is certainly admirable when you've got so much on your plate already. One question I wanted to come back to a little bit, and that is this idea of winning support, because, as you say, many other countries come here to look at Botswana and draw benchmarks from it. But within the private sector, especially since public sector reform has a long history in Botswana and has been going on for many years, do you find it difficult to convince people of the importance of reforms or the importance of learning new systems for performance management or these types of things?  

KERETELETSWE:	No. But initially it was not easy. Initially, just like introducing a computer system, in most cases people associated that with literacy. But if you look at it from the point of view of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it has very little to do with skills. Skills is the hiding place to say-you know there is a certain ego that I'm molding, that if this computer is going to be working for me, then there are some certain things that I may not do and, in most cases, corrupt practices. So I don't know how it is like in other countries, but we found that sometimes e-government was not taking off not because it was necessarily a bad thing, but it was just because it was a reform that was going to bring in some security elements in the accounting system, and so on and so forth. Sometimes you address the symptoms of a problem, but if you don't drill down into people, some of these changes may not take off. 
	 
SCHER:	So how do you deal with-I guess you would call that resistance from people who may not want these sorts of reforms to come in. 

KERETELETSWE:	Now, there is both the polite way and the more difficult way. The polite way is to make sure that we avail everything that we have to avail in order for specific jobs to be executed, and the tools being the person, the necessary workshops and so on, and training through our reviews, performance reviews. If all that, if you fail to perform, we realize it is purely on resistance, then of course we have some other meaningful conversation to make choices between 1.8 million people whom we represent and a family of two, perhaps, and maybe maximum seven children. The chances are 1.8 million will win.

SCHER:	To what extent does your office actually get involved with those sorts of decisions? So if you say a particular ministry is not implementing reforms as you would like to do-. 

KERETELETSWE:	In fact I don't even say anything. I don't even say anything. Because everything that I do I do on behalf of the permanent secretary to the president. I'm sent by him-I'm his technical right man to do those things. He is also a facilitator. He has his way of doing it, sometimes hot, but in most cases he is somebody who has always over time spent a lot of resources on helping people. But when it comes to a time when you feel you've done your part and you can't do it anymore, then you come to those sorts of discussions. But I really get involved with the high-level people, right maybe up to director level, but more mainly with the executive permanent secretaries, because I'm responsible for their reviews. I'm actually the secretary to those reviews and chaired by the vice-president and permanent secretary to the president. I sit there. I am the three-legged-I am the technical processor of all those. I analyze them. I receive them. 

	We have a lot of conversations with them. They prefer to have those conversations with me than with him. When they signed that agreement, really it is clear between me and the permanent secretary. 
	 
SCHER:	I see. Where did the inspiration for this, the creation of this unit really come from? In my experience I don't think we've come across this sort of unit.

KERETELETSWE:	It came from the permanent secretary to the president. Actually it was the vision of Mr. Elijah Legwaila. I think he left in '96. This concept was really, the concept of reforms, particularly work improvement by teams, was borrowed from Japan and Singapore, and they later realized that we need to have a unit to coordinate those. Later we realized that, yes, these teams can improve performance, but it was performed by junior officers and it was like for competition, because I knew our leaders would compete like we're having a public service convention, where the people who best perform in teams will come and showcase, in August. So it was like a competition. But later it was then said, but then how do you manage performance? In other words, how do you watch people who are performing, because it was just a blanket statement with annual increment for everybody and so on. Then later it was the PSP, the current, who actually moved the office from DPSM to here. 

	It is a multifaceted-sometimes it has been difficult to write down our mandate, what exactly our mandate is, because we do strategic planning, we do development plans, and how do we introduce our reform, that this is how we want to see our development prong? If it is a ministry like finance, we just go in and be consultants and make sure the plan is out. And later, because once you have that development plan, then it is us to cascade it.     

SCHER:	Okay, I see. I'm trying to get a very clear idea of your mandate. It's so big. You're involved at almost every stage, right?

KERETELETSWE:	Almost every stage. Because-up to the person-because at the end we are holding them accountable for results. And remember, in the development budget, like our country where we have 30% development budget and 70% called recurrent for maintenance and other things, of this 70%, 65% is actual personal enrollment salaries. Therefore it is quite a resource, it is quite a chunk. Definitely there must be an accountability system, because this is public money for making sure there is some kind of return. That's the only way we can actually get to socioeconomic and social development. 
	
SCHER:	So looking back at your time here so far, are there any particular reforms that have been quite successful, that you consider Botswana to really be the model in? Because, obviously, performance management is a big one that I've heard quite a lot about, and it seems that it has been quite successfully implemented, but are there perhaps lesser-known ones?

KERETELETSWE:	Yes, in fact, we are saying the performance management system-it was, you see, the performance management system, in our view, was a reform and it was a system at the same time. Then later, other performance management systems came in like the balanced scorecard. It is also a performance management system, but I think the power that was in this was all these reforms. We introduced the performance management system. We introduced the performance-based reward system. We introduced the balanced scorecard and then introduced the process engineering and then introduced integrated result-based management systems thinking. Now, in any government, what is more important about this is that now we are calling all this a performance management system, because they are now integrated and they become a powerful tool when they are integrated than if you just use one. Because if you are talking about efficiency, you may talk about improving efficiency in terms of a manual process, but once you computerize it is another story. 

	The other thing that I thought I should mention is that we have [...] minds. I'm not negative about ourselves, but sometimes we don't see opportunities when they are abundant in terms of reforms. Really, I want to zero down on technology here; that it is cheaper, for example, to put up a technology system than to build a road. In other words, we can actually bring services, take services to the people much faster electronically than trying to build roads, not to say roads are not necessary. Even where there is the most complicated terrain, if you are able to cross once with wireless or whatever, you'll be able to address those people and so on. This is one way that we have come up with a strategy to try and address the disadvantaged communities in really, really rural areas. Actually, we are quickly taking technology now. And I guess it is sinking in areas that we thought were much, much better. 
   
SCHER:	I have another question for you, and I've read this from some of your speeches that you've given, that you have a particular concern about reform fatigue.

KERETELETSWE:	Yes.
	 
SCHER:	I was wondering if you could speak a little bit about what this concern is, and how you're dealing with it.

KERETELETSWE:	My concern here was that somebody will carry this briefcase with all these tools and go to a rural area and unpack the briefcase and people will say, now, balanced scorecard, PMS, that, that and that. So all we are saying: this is for the back office; there is no need for them. There is one true PMS. If you go out to do strategy, make it simple. Those people aren't meant to be technocrats. Therefore, the idea is not to divorce what we do from work. In other words, they shouldn't see this as an academic exercise. We don't have answers but we can facilitate. We attempt as much as possible to ask the right questions; that can take us to the future. We do make those extrapolations.  

SCHER:	I wanted to get back a little bit to some questions about popular support. We spoke a little bit about your interactions with the public and sort of educating them about the reforms and the point of the reforms and these types of things. 

KERETELETSWE:	To the point that we have TV program interface, we also have radio programs. Every Tuesday-it is Tuesday night now. At four o'clock, if I open my radio, one minister and a ministry will be on talking about service delivery. The public will be asking, why is this not happening? In my village this is what we are seeing. Feedback, feedback, feedback. 
	 
SCHER:	 Is this something advocated by your office? 

KERETELETSWE:	The ministries are scheduled by this office, yes.

SCHER:	So you'll say to a particular ministry-.  

KERETELETSWE:	They are scheduled right after April-end of the year. They know, they prepare in advance, they know when they're on including district commissioners, including the districts. They do come briefed.
	 
SCHER:	 So it is radio and TV?

KERETELETSWE:	It is radio and then TV on Tuesdays where we talk productivity. I program-we make sure every three months we are in there. There is a radio program in the morning, where when there is a burning issue I'll give a brief at around a quarter to seven, and then after the news at twenty past seven until nine o'clock they are just asking and commenting on those. 

SCHER:	Could you give me an example of a burning issue?

KERETELETSWE:	Well, a burning issue could be in a village displaying our mindset, in terms of a silo where we put up a dam and the dam will be ready, but people will not drink water for the next one and a half years from the dam. 
	 
SCHER:	 They will not?

KERETELETSWE:	You build a dam and then the village, they are supposed to take water from the dam but they will not because somebody who was supposed to do other things to take water from the dam to the people did not plan or was not involved or like that. 

SCHER:	Okay. 

KERETELETSWE:	So the public, now, they will ask how come the dam is up and we're not drinking? It's a burning issue. A school is opened and it has no-a big school of about 2,000 people, and we didn't put up a proper drainage system. First there was no water, and the school could not be opened. It opened late, and when the water was connected finally [...] only realized that the drainage and other things were not up to standards... So the whole village became stinking. The next Tuesday it was a different ministry, but people just digressed and said, tell us about this village, what is happening? So there are such situations. That's why we tightened the planning process.
	 
SCHER:	I see. That's very interesting. You consider public support to be a critical element in what you're doing. I mean, is it really necessary to have the public on board?

KERETELETSWE:	Yes, because there is a danger, but not necessarily a big one, but to fall back to the traditional way of doing things, the way our forefathers were firm in terms of leadership to an extent that you can [...] you can be, not necessarily your father, but somebody, an elderly person, when he finds you doing something wrong could actually take action on the spot, and that is changing slightly. But at the moment the public definitely is in support of the permanent secretary to be firm, because sometimes we are doing some disservice to the public. Long queues, unnecessary delays, and so on. So yes, anybody who attempts to improve things, they'll support-and I think they are in support of what we are doing here. It is only that they sometimes think we are very slow, but that's the nature of the-.

SCHER:	So that is one of the challenges in maintaining their support, is I guess trying to emphasize that things take a little bit of time.

KERETELETSWE:	Yes, a little bit of time, but you also go to them. They know now they have the village development plans, and so on so they know what is going on; they are informed.
	 
SCHER:	 Do we still have a little bit of time?

KERETELETSWE:	Three minutes.

SCHER:	I have quite a few more questions, so maybe I'll just ask you a question to wrap up. There are many people in countries around the world in similar positions, obviously not in exactly similar units like this, but in similar positions to yours in terms of having to convince other people of the necessity of broad-based reform in a number of different areas. Let's say in a country, a person comes into a job such as your own on the first day, what is the type of advice that you would give a man such as yourself who is in this position. I can rephrase the question slightly to be like, what are the things you wish you had known on your first day on the job that you know now?

KERETELETSWE:	Maybe, for me, it was maybe I should-I was already doing this sort of work of changing the minds and hearts of people towards something and trying to contribute to the world in terms of writings, literature and publications. But one thing that one needs to pay attention here is that you need to be open-minded. You need to have a heart most of the time in moving the world. You have to persevere. If you are really knowledgeable having an idea, those might be new ideas. There are those people who [...] because for us this is an independent structure; it was not there at independence, and like I've shown you here, this piece can easily be cut off and I'll be cut off. So it is a matter of making sure there is buy-in in the leadership. If you step on people's toes at the same time-you do it where it is necessary. That kind of deep thinking with the leadership is very, very necessary-why you want to do something. 

	They may differ with you, but one also needs to know when to step back. There are times when I say, OK, it's me, or I'm out. So not to be a threat but being a value, from a value-system point of view that some certain operating principles that I may not cross, and therefore I cannot do if it means taking that, and things like that. But open-mindedness is key: collaboration, asking people, benchmarking, and really being humble but being at it all the time. Because you can't-you have to-it's like a technology office, you have to reform something static. What we have done now may not sustain us tomorrow, but we also know what it takes to move from what we have now to the next level. 

	Like I said, I have gone through the information age, the knowledge age and so on, and I am looking forward to a stage where it will take [...] to a consciousness age, and somebody really for this kind of job needs to be that kind of conscious, awake to a lot of things and holistic in thinking. But it is a very enjoyable job if you are just human. The permanent secretaries, most of them are my friends. We enjoy what we are doing together because we see value in it, but it is more about taking this journey and [...] this rapport from a value-based system and pure work that you need to bear in mind before you go in. Because without those relationships, then forget it; it can't be forced all the time. The harder you push, sometimes the system will push back much harder than you can resist. But open-mindedness, business acumen, be clear. Most of the people now, it all depends on the state, because sometimes it is easier to do them at a place where there was maybe nothing. At least you know what you are dealing with. You might think that you're a messiah, but the way they are introduced and the treatment of them, and you are now calling them one, they are still asking, but now can we say that there are many-why one?-and I say, no, it is just a tool box. That's it. Simplicity is really key, simplifying fairly complicated structures, breaking them down to pieces. That's key in my view.      

SCHER:	Thank you very much for your time, sir. I know you are very busy. That was a very good note to end on.
Innovations for Successful Societies				Series: 	Civil Service	
Oral History Program						Interview number:  L-3
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Use of this transcript is governed by ISS Terms of Use, available at www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties