NSSF
New Public Management (NPM) is an approach in public administration that applies knowledge and experience gained in the world of management and other disciplines to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public service performance in modern bureaucracies. New public management focuses on public sector management that is performance-oriented, not policy-oriented. Based on the results of this study, there were three policies or strategies in the New Public Management (NPM) as an effort in governance, which were the reorganization of public administration, decentralization of partnerships and networks, and innovation.
New Public Management (NPM) is an approach to running public service organizations used in government agencies and public services, both at local and national levels. This term was first introduced by academics in the UK and Australia to describe the approach developed during the 1980s, as part of an effort to make public services more straightforward and to improve its efficiency by using a private sector management model. New Public Management (NPM) is generally seen as an approach in public administration that applies knowledge and experience gained in the world of management and other disciplines to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public service performance in modern bureaucracies. New public management focuses on public sector management that is performance-oriented, not policy-oriented. Lately, public sector organizations have often been described as unproductive, inefficient, of low quality, and lacking in innovation or creativity.
Basically, the aim of reforms is to improve public sector performance and increase transparency and accountability. More broadly, this is a manifestation of the desire to go towards good governance. The implementation of Good Corporate Governance in managing a company is very important because it can directly provide clear instructions in making appropriate and responsible decisions and enable safer management of the company so that it can increase the value and trust of partners or the community (Suwandi, Arifianti, & Rizal, 2019). At present, there is a rapidly developing concept related to the public sector, which is New Public Management (NPM).
The reorganization of public administration (PA) is targeting the size, costs, and objectives of the PA. Public labor is often downsized (e.g., through layoffs) that supports externalization. Public action was stopped by incorporating market principles and professional style personal management in bureaucratic organizations. This includes focusing on standards, performance measures, output control, and competition (Barberis, Grossmann, Kullmann, Skovgaard Nielsen, & Hedegaard Winther, 2019).
NPM has been accompanied by a process of decentralization and devolution in accordance with the principle of vertical subsidiarity, where agencies closer to citizens are considered capable of framing problems and implementing solutions. However, managerial, if not entrepreneurial, decentralization can negatively impact social participation, especially in social policy, while social risk can be delegated without adequate resources (Barberis et al., 2019).
Public-private partnerships and networks have become joint policy instruments. Network governance requires clear expertise and roles. If local institutions use networks to dump social questions on their partners, democratic accountability will be limited and replaced by output control and financial accountability. Lack of coordination can stimulate particularistic interests, endangering the scope of risk for social groups that are less politically prioritized. In disadvantaged areas, actors taking part in networks may not enjoy the resources and expertise to develop community capacity to replace unrelated public action and to adapt to competitive management requirements. Weaker networks that need more support are likely to be more influenced by austerity measures, increasing their dependence on “grant coalitions” for public funding. Sharing goals and tools among various actors can be complicated. Unclear asymmetries of power and tasks can create holes and overlaps in the network, leaving social needs uncovered and powerless actors (Barberis et al., 2019).
The following are the New public management approaches adopted by NSSF in the advancement of goals of the institution.
DIGITIZATION BY NSSF
NSSF has digitized most of its activities in order to ensure better customer satisfaction. Now days NSSF sends electronic messages to its clients on their balance. Information technology has taken part in NPM’s initial thinking but has always been one of the few elements that were never integrated into such a concept. New technology continues to develop all the time. In the 1990s, the internet and the web were a form of great innovation, which in turn also influenced public management and governance institutions. In the 2000s, Patrick Dunleavy and his colleagues from the London School of Economics and Political Science began to see digitalization or “E-government” as something more than just a supporting tool for the New Public Management or institutionalization of infor-mation technology (Greve, 2015). Dunleavy et al. (2006) stated that NPMs had carried out their duties and the different elements of NPM were stopped or had withdrawn quickly. Instead, they see DEG as the main alternative and characterize it with three elements, which are: 1) Reintegration includes roll back from institutions, joint government, re-government, restoring central processes, radically reducing production costs, re-engineering office functions, concentrating procurement and specialization, and network simplification; 2) Need-based holism including client-based or organization-based reorganization, for example, interactive information search and inquires, data warehousing, end-to end service reengineering, and agile government processes; 3) Digitization processes including electronic service delivery, new forms of automated processes, radical disintermediation, active channel streaming, facilitating isocratic administration and joint production, and moving towards open-book governance.
Digitalization in NSSF has replace NPM as the dominant doctrine or paradigm in public management and government. The NPM has carried out its work and its different elements had been stopped or backed down quickly. The following three problems are inherent in the digitalization agenda, namely transparency, social media, and shared service centers (Greve, 2015).
Transparency has become a major concept pursued by many governments. According to the OECD, government actions, and those responsible for those actions, will be subject to public scrutiny and challenges (OECD 2005: 29). The OECD in their 2005 report treated transparency as an element of “open government”, with two other elements: accessibility and responsiveness (Greve, 2015).
The next one is social media. The way social media works has the potential to change relations within government, between politicians and public managers, and between public managers and public or citizens. New tools have emerged, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other services. New services appear all the time. Citizens can now become “friends” with public organizations or managers, connected to public managers, follow politicians or organizations on Twitter, and so on (Greve, 2015).
The third one is the Joint Service Center. Joint service centers are one of the main ways to achieve more efficient and effective governance. It is often promised by digital age governments. The principle is about connecting data power in large “call centers”, to use economies of scale efficiency, and to see the problem of “Big Data”. The practice is that the government focuses on many tasks that were previously delegated to each organization. The
NPM movement has called for the decentralization of management responsibilities and managers often need their own data to be able to make strategic decisions such as business on behalf of their units. However, it becomes inefficient because data are not collected or stored in a similar manner, and therefore it is often difficult to retrieve aggregate results (Greve, 2015).
Different strategies that NSSF is using in enhancing better service delivery to the clients as New public management approach.
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)
EDI is a technique based on agreed standards, which enables computers in different organizations to successfully send business information of transaction from one to another. They emphasize that EDI reduces on the lead-time simply because transactions are faster and more accurate (Lysons and Farrington, 2006). According to Chaffey (2007), EDI involves business transactions like, placing orders, invoices, delivery and payment transactions. EDI works according to standards implying that the organizations using it have to agree on the systems and the soft ware that they are to use (Chaffey, 2007).
The EDI approach is associated with Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) he cites an example in a supermarkets, when a product is purchased the check out operator scans the bar code on the label and automatically registers the price on the cash. In the same way in case of stock replenishment, the machine can order automatically as the stock reaches the re order level.
According to Sollish et-al 2007, shows that EDI. Works as follows;
Company A sets a purchase order using its internal business software
EDI soft ware transforms the order from the internal format to a standard 850-purchase order document format.
Company A sends the 850 standard purchase orders to company B over a third party value added network.
Company B receives 850 purchase order document and will translate it from EDI to its proprietary format.
Typically, company A will send an acknowledgement to company B
According to Clarke (1998), EDI will replace paper based purchase order with electronic one and sites the following as advantages that are associated with the use of EDI in reducing procurement fraud.
Reduction of paper work.
Reduced errors.
Reduction of inventory levels.
Supports just in time (JIT) inventory policies.
Facilitates global purchasing.
Promotes long term buyer supplier relationships.
Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT)
According to Lysons and Farrington (2006), EFT is based non-electronic transmission of receipts and payments between banks and their customers or the purchasers and suppliers. It enables paperless payments to be made to suppliers “here money travels not paper”. EFT involves automated digital transmission of money between organizations and banks. Lysons and Farrington (2006) state that the buying organization will make payment to the supplier using EFT, in a more convenient and accurate way.
According to Chaffey (2007), EFT is associated with the following advantages;
Reduction of costs due to elimination of cheque writing receipt canceling.
Increased speed of fund transmission. This is fast, accurate and safe.
However, it is also associated with some disadvantages like; Difficulty to implement especially where purchasers and suppliers may prefer to make and receive payments by cheque. It may cause problems especially with digital signatures.
E-mail is a process by which letters, orders or other documents are sent by a computer along telecommunication lines to appear on the Visual Display Unit (VDU) at their destination. They emphasize that incase buyers use this technique in the process of buying, sending and receiving of messages can take minutes instead of days. (leanders et-al, 1998) Chaffey (2007) emphasizes that the recent innovation is the use of websites, which provide free e-mail facilities, and does not require any software other than the web browser. Kennedy (2000), describes internet based on e-mail and stresses that the internet messages are sent through e-mail and thus gives examples like;
Hot mail (www. hot mail.Com)
Yahoo mail! (www.yahoo.com)
Kennedy (2000), further categorizes e-mail broadly into in-bound and outbound. Inbound e-mail is received from outside the organization such as from suppliers. Outbound e-mail is sent from the organization to another an example is from the buyer to the supplier, e-mail reduces on costs associated with movement thus resulting to efficiency on procurement activities.
Smart cards are integrated circuit chips used to store customer specific information including electronic money. They have ability to provide intelligence and store significant amount of information of up to 20 pages of text. Smart cards will be used to purchase goods or services, store information, and above all, they can be availed to all potential users. (Lysons 2006)
The following are the benefits of using smart cards;
They offer convenience since they are of the same size like credit cards.
They store reasonable amount of information and thus will be easier to be accessed by the organization for use at any time.
They are economical and thus reduce on the handling fraud.
They provide confidentiality and security of information
According to Enslow (2006), smart cards provide effective and efficient means of storage and compatibility, especially with EDI, which facilitates easy movement and exchange of information. The global use of smart cards will depend on the introduction of global payment standards that are currently being developed.
This device connects several networks together. As used in e-business it means a central repository exchange such as the star network. In the network, a server is a control computer that holds database and programs and programs for many computers (Herper and Thompson 2005).
According to Herper and Thompson (2005), the buyers PCs will be connected together with the suppliers PCs and information regarding business transactions will be conducted, since all the information is kept in the server computer.
E-Market place ; Lysons (2006) asserts that, e-market is a web site that enables procurement officers to select the best suppliers in the market electronically. In this situation, a procurer is in control especially in open market places. This enables procurer to evaluate all potential suppliers for a particular product or service and make informed buying decisions regarding what and where to buy. This brings efficiency in procurement since the best-evaluated bidders will be given contracts to supply. According to Chaffey (2007), e-market is applicable where; the market is large enough, product specification and information are subject to rapid changes, suppliers have difficulties in comparing similar products from different vendors, the cost of locating, appraising and evaluating suppliers is high.
Electronic- catalogs ; E-catalogs are web pages that provide information on products and services offered and sold by the vendors. (Lysons 2006) According to Lysons (2006), e-catalogs mainly include; sell side catalogs; buy side catalogs and third party catalogs, E-catalogs support online transactions especially ordering and payment capabilities. The advantages of e-catalogs includes; facilitation of real time communication between buyers and sellers; Allows room for the development of closer buyer-supplier relationship due to improved vendor services. Enables suppliers, respond quickly to market conditions by adjusting repackaging (Lysons, 2006).
Material Requirement Planning (MRP); MRP systems are primarily used to determine when to place orders for standard materials, so that they will arrive exactly when needed this helps in reducing the level of inventory held and theft in inventory (Sollish, et-al 2007). According to Sollish, et-al (2007), MRP processes involve forecasting demand for individual parts so that they will be ordered in advance of receiving actual customer orders. This complex process is generally handled by computer soft ware program through decision support models, using calculated algorithms to predict future requirements .According to Chaffey (2007), MRP reduces procurement fraud in the following ways; The level of stock kept is reduced and this reduces on the costs associated with holding stock and missing of items in the inventory. Proper planning on when to order and receive goods. Assists in forecasting demand about the future among others.
From the above, information and communication technology techniques that companies employ in the reducing procurement fraud, internet is seen as the most important one since it helps organizations to interact with their suppliers in the shortest time, with no errors and above all at lower costs. This helps in cost reduction and proper customer satisfaction through achievement of the five rights related to procurement.
The NSSF has also modern New management approaches of managing Employees.
Listening to employees challenges and complaints ; Employees want to know that their opinions and insights are being heard, Listening is just as important as writing and speaking when it comes to communication skills. The act of listening does not often make its way onto the list of types of communication. Active listening, however, is perhaps one of the most important types of communication because if we cannot listen to the person sitting across from us, we cannot effectively engage with them.
Enhancing the Technical Skills of employees; Technical skills involve skills that give the managers the ability and the knowledge to use a variety of techniques to achieve their objectives. These skills not only involve operating machines and software, production tools, and pieces of equipment but also the skills needed to boost sales, design different types of products and services, and market the services and the products.
Offering training opportunities to develop the Conceptual Skills of employees; These involve the skills managers present in terms of the knowledge and ability for abstract thinking and formulating ideas. The manager is able to see an entire concept, analyze and diagnose a problem, and find creative solutions. This helps the manager to effectively predict hurdles their department or the business as a whole may face.
Keep Pace with Changes in the Industry; Today, organizations need to be nimble enough to keep up with new technologies and ways of doing business. This is why continuous employee training is essential. Further, industries are constantly evolving, along with the rules and regulations they need to adhere to. In order to stay competitive, business leaders need to ensure that their employees are kept up-to-date on the latest developments in their respective industry.
Disaggregation of different branches of NSSF
NSSF has over 19 branches across the country this has helped in bringing the services neare to the people.
Disaggregation enhances a system of co-responsibility between institutions of governance at the central, regional and local levels according to the principle of subsidiarity, thus increasing the overall quality and effectiveness of the system of governance, while increasing the authority and capacities of sub-national levels.
Disaggregation also to contribute to key elements of good governance, such as increasing people’s opportunities for participation in economic, social and political decisions; assisting in developing people’s capacities; and enhancing government responsiveness, transparency and accountability.
Disaggregation stimulates the search for program and policy innovation, first of all because it is, per se, an innovative practice of governance. Second, because through its implementation, local governments are required to assume new and broader responsibilities in order to provide public services for all. The assumption of new responsibilities through decentralization often requires improved planning, budgeting and management techniques and practices; the adoption of new.
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