Accra, May 27, GNA - The media has been asked to spearhead the crusade for the implementation of the plan of action towards public sector reforms in Africa.

Mr. Alhassan Azong, Minister of State at the Presidency responsible for Public Sector Reforms, who made the appeal, said that this would enable stakeholders in the various sectors to be well informed on the actions towards more vibrant public and civil service institutions for Africa. He made the call during a media interaction in Accra on the impending Conference of African Ministers for Public Service (CAMPS), under the auspices of African Union.

The first CAMPS was held in Tangiers, Morocco in June 1994, and the seventh CAMPS is scheduled for Nairobi, Kenya in November, 2010. The objective of CAMPS is to support public administration in Africa through initiation of reforms, codes and standards. CAMPS among other issues, brings together its members to deliberate and develop strategies to address challenges affecting public administration and governance on the continent.

This is to create capacity within individual member States and public administrations to ensure the delivery of effective and efficient service to the citizenry.

Mr Azong explained that CAMPS sought to ensure a transformed public sector on the continent by providing a consultative and decision-making platform to assess the transformative processes taking place globally and locally within public administration. "It further provides a forum, for exchanging best practices, mentoring coaching, sharing comparative advantage and enhancing scrutiny on the reform agenda on the continent," he added.

Mr Azong said that CAMPS had adopted 10 thematic areas for implementation through service champions on the continent. "A Service Champion," he said, was a member State that had been requested and agreed or volunteered to spearhead the implementation of a thematic area within the overall implementation framework by facilitating and coordinating relevant thematic area activities within the continent. "Service championship is, thus a delivery mechanism through which a cluster of countries commit to work collectively on a given thematic area to spearhead implementation of programme activities, show-casing best practices, driving their approaches to benchmark levels and providing leadership to the continent," Mr Azong said.

The thematic areas are; Africa Public Service Day; African Public Service Charter, All African Public Sector Innovations and Awards; and Human Resource Planning and Policy Architecture. Others are; Leadership and Management; ICTs as an enabler for service delivery in Public Service and African Public Service Capacity Development Programme. The rest are; Post Conflict Reconstruction and Development, Performance Management including Monitoring and Evaluation and Public Sector Anti-Corruption.