ACHIEVEMENTS AND CHALLENGES OF DECENTRALIZATION IN REALIZING PUBLIC SERVICE REFORM IN BURAYU TOWN ADMINISTRATION

Abstract

The general objective of the study is to identify the achievements of decentralization in realising public service delivery reform, in Burayu town administration. The study also focused on challenges faced in the process of decentralization and its service delivery.Burayu town administration is the population for this study. The town is organized with 23 different offices/ agencies/ and 6/six kebele administrations. Among 23 offices and 6 kebeles administration 5 offices and 2 kebele administrations which constitute around 30 percent of the town administration were selected as a sample from which data were drowned. As information collected from the office officials indicated that some of the offices were continuously visited by number of customers while in some offices the customers come seasonally. For this study, five offices in which there has been continuous visit of customers and sectors of government dimension were selected purposely to get sample of attitude survey. The total numbers of average weekly customer in five selected offices were 1247. From these, 127 sample respondents were selected randomly at the security spots of the service delivery agencies as they check in and then given the questionnaire which they were asked to submit when leaving the security gate for opinion survey and filled the questionnaire with strict guidance of the enumerator. Besides, all the leaders, managers, process owners were requested to fill questionnaires and to respond interview. To make better presentation and improve reliability of the sample, different weight were given for each selected agencies/offices/.Quantitative and qualitative survey method were used to assess the achievements and challenges of decentralization in realizing public service reform through open survey of leaders, managers, process owners, employees and residents of the town administration in each of the government dimension sectors.Primary data was collected from sample respondents using structural questionnaire and interview guides. Accordingly, there was one set of questionnaire which was filled by leaders, managers, process owners, employees and customers of respective sectors. Interview was also held with leaders of selected sectors/agencies/ to supplement data obtained through questionnaire. In addition, secondary data were collected from government documents, books, and articles on decentralization and public sector reforms were reviewed to gather secondary data.The collected data were summarized, edited, coded and data entry was done. It was analyzed using SPSS ver. 16.0 and computed by descriptive statistical technique. Frequency, percentage and mean were used to assess the achievements and challenges of decentralization in realizing public service reform in Burayu town administration and various characteristics of the sample population, such as gender, age, educational status, and income level were also analysed.