Applying Batho Pele principles in South African public archives – Do public programming initiatives count?

Abstract

Archival records exist for the benefit of society; therefore, people are at the very centre of the purpose of keeping archives. The South African government developed the Batho Pele principles to embrace them as a charter for public service to ensure a reliable and customer-oriented public service. Archival institutions such as the National Archives and Records Service of South Africa and the provincial archives are not exempted from this responsibility. These repositories form a part of the South African Public Service and play a crucial role in promoting the preservation and access to significant records that have enduring value. The National Archives and Records Service of South Africa and the provincial archives are responsible for preserving public and non-public records and promoting them to the public. In this quantitative study, an online survey completed by 20 archivists from these repositories helped establish whether archivists from the National Archives and Records Service of South Africa and the provincial archives utilised public programming initiatives to fulfil the Batho Pele principles. The analysed data indicated that the public archival institutions struggle to conduct public programming initiatives, and their limited efforts were not effective. This implies that most of these repositories did not consider public programming initiatives as tools to implement the Batho Pele principles. The study recommends that South African public archival institutions take advantage of the ‘window of opportunity’ presented by the Batho Pele principles to strengthen their outreach strategies to improve archival service quality.

Making public service delivery more accessible to people with disabilities: The South African government narrative

“…The main aim of these principles is to ensure that government goods and services are delivered in a most effective and efficient way, by establishing and strengthening the skills and attitudes needed for the improved service delivery. This is also supported by Mojapelo et al,2021, that Batho Pele principles were designed to ensure that there is a reliance good customer service in the public service and sector. Batho Pele principles also ensure that service delivery is done in an open manner while also maintaining balanced provision of goods and services (Matyana and Mthethwa, 2022b).…”

Examining Front-Line Administrative Services in a Selected Public Higher Education Institution

“…Understanding the ramifications of front-line administrative staff service on the service experience of FTENs is crucial. This understanding can aid in addressing current service challenges, soliciting feedback, and enabling the institution to mitigate student attrition while discouraging negative publicity [6,107,121]. The findings below provide insights from participants regarding the implications of front-line administrative staff service on the service experience of FTENs.…”

Advancing Ethics-led Administrative Discretion in Public Administration: A South African Perspective

“…Perhaps, one of the greatest challenges to the newly founded democratic administrative state was the difficulty in taming its inherited apartheid, ethically barren administrative discretion in the practice of public administration. Here, Batho Pele provided what Mojapelo et al ( [26], p. 357) call a "window of opportunity" in taming the then ethically unconscious administrative discretion inherited from the apartheid era. Thus, Batho Pele presented an opening to cultivate the much-needed administrative morality in the practice of public administration in the new republic's ethically attuned democratic dispensation.…”