15th June, 2011 
Innovation in public services is just as important as innovation in private companies.
When civil servants and top officials in government departments, agencies and ministries are not innovative, the effect is felt not only by businesses but by everyone else in the country.
For example, if the police force became more effective, through innovation, the entire society would simply benefit. An effective and efficient police force not only makes the public feel safer, but it even makes a country more attractive to foreigners and foreign investors, and this has too many advantages as we all know.
Unfortunately innovations are not very common in our culture, especially in government, and the impact of this weakness can be very far reaching.
For example, the traffic police seem not able to stop the nearly anarchic behaviour of bus drivers on the road, which has led to many car accidents. The bus drivers regularly violate traffic light rules, almost always overspeed (especially in the evening when they are making an extra buck above what is required by the bus owner), overload the buses, and so on, putting many lives in danger every single day. The traffic police are of course right when they say they do not have enough resources to monitor them; after all, this is a poor donor-dependent nation, right? Right, but this is where innovation comes in.
Why, for example, couldn’t they try something like undercover traffic policing? These could be people who pretend to be regular bus passengers but working for the traffic police to monitor from inside the bus these dangerous behaviors of the drivers. If the bus driver goes through a red light, the officer can just produce his ID at that point and tell him that he is under arrest. If the bus is overloaded, the undercover cop could easily tell. In no time, the bus drivers will stop doing all these dangerous acts because they won’t know which passenger might be a plant from the traffic police!
This is probably not done anywhere in the world right now (as far as I am aware), but that should not prevent us from trying something new, something different. If it works well, other poor countries might copy from us; if it doesn’t work at all, we can abandon it and try something else. Our only focus must be to solve our problems in the most efficient and effective way.
An idea like undercover traffic policing does not require getting huge donor money to buy some expensive cars, gadgets, etc. It can be done today and it will have bigger results than the more expensive standard solutions that we think are the only ways of doing things.
And if other problems arise from a solution like this, the job of the managers at the traffic police department is to keep thinking of solutions to solve those new problems. For example, it might just happen that the bus drivers could start getting to know who these police officers are and thus behaving themselves when they spot one. How to solve such a problem? I don’t know. But the managers working full time on this can know the answer if they can realize that thinking is their primary job as executives, whether in the public or private sector. (Perhaps they could regularly transfer these undercover cops to different bus routes on different days, and then they could even start exchanging them among different towns, etc so that it is difficult for drivers to memorize them. Or they could focus on using reserve undercover cops, who would be more numerous in number etc … the point is that it is the job of the “bosses” in these departments to keep innovating even after innovating).
This is just one example of a very simple (almost obvious) innovation in one area of public service that could have big effects if indeed it can work (I don’t know). Innovators do not look for complex or impressive ideas, they just look for answers – for ways of becoming more efficient in delivering the desired results.
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I love to read the work you put out, it reminds me of how much more there is to learn and in this particular occasion i have learned alot from you, thank you for once again opening up our eyes more, i love the undercover cops idea, i would never have thought of it myself..
Good post Chanda, did anyone from the public sector follow up with you and repeate ChemTalk’s sentiment?
Interesting read; I don’t think our government can innovate given our current situation where everyone wants to please someone else. I think it would have to start with ourselves, the citizens. We need to demand better services from the civil service — keep in mind that they are paid from our taxes. If we can realize this, maybe, just maybe we may get somewhere.
When is the next ‘Can government innovate?’ coming out?
I ready your article regarding minimum wage you are a classic example of a bookworm with no real practical solutions,Your article is western borrowed materials misapplied in a third world setting.Be original and practical.Coming to your article on can Govt innovate the answer is yes the problem is you write very good articles and point at the problems and expect someone to do something, The results will be no one will do anything.Get your butt off your chair and do something instead of just writing which is leading you and your country nowhere.
I stopped reading your comment on the first sentence, so I don’t know what else you said since it started as an impolite and insulting comment. Have some manners when you want to engage someone intellectually on his own article or forum.
Samuel Tembo, please go to Zambia Watchdog if you want to insult. There are a lot of progressive Zambian minds benefitting from Chanda Chisala’s article. Its true you should learn some manners and maybe go to school again if you want to comment on intelligent articles!
Mr. Chisala, keep it up. Im a regular reader of your articles which are written soberly. Keep it up!
Chanda,
Your innovation is a brilliant one, but I disagree with the idea of using police officers as undercover cops. Our police officers are highly susceptible to corruption because of their horribly bad conditions of service. They cannot therefore do this job effectively, but may instead just use this as an opportunity to extort bribes from erring minibus drivers like they always do at road blocks.
The best way to deal with reckless minibus drivers is not to use police officers as undercover cops, but patriotic and conscientious citizen volunteers like you and me. You need to engage people who will not do it for the money but for the good of the country. I am sure many Zambians would do this willingly if called upon. The Road Transport Safety Agency (RATSA) and the Zambia Police Service should invite volunteers and give them the necessary mandate to carry out this task, complete with IDs and other paraphernalia of authority to all willing citizens. This will confuse the minibus drivers because they will not be able to memorize the faces of these undercover volunteers. They will also not be able to bribe these volunteers with their fifty pins because the volunteers will be carrying out this task purely out of a sense of patriotism and civic responsibility.
I have been missing out on intellectual discussions due to mainly focusing my attention on the articles from the papers. I am an airline pilot with a back ground from the Zambia Air Force. I left the Air Force twelve years ago upon realization that it was not brilliance that got one promoted but mostly affiliation and boot licking. There then lay the problem like for many other government institutions that makes it difficult for those willing to use their brains for bettering the institution, but find it hard to do so due to these frustrations. Most brilliant people leave these organizations to propel themselves into better jobs because it is difficult to get through to people who are set in their own way and are not willing to change. Similarly the unruly behavior of the mini bus drivers can never be changed mostly because it has been tolerated by authorities. I used to be a volunteer Road Traffic Inspector when it was introduced but I wonder what happened to that organization. I want to commend you Chanda for a job well done and for setting up this site. I am now in the diaspora earning a decent salary for my contribution to the aviation industry, something that would have been impossible to achieve had I decided to stay, this is true for many other professionals. We would like to be innovative but it is difficult in certain circumstances.