The Civil Service and Government

Abstract

Kofi Annan, the previous UN Secretary General had put it most pithily, 'good governance is the single most important factor in eradicating poverty and promoting development". A simple definition of governance is, " the process of decision making and the process by which decisions are implemented (or not implemented)". We could at once see that civil servants are the major determinants of the nature of governance - how effective it is and whether it turns out to be good or bad, both in the making of decisions by the political executive, their implementation, as well as in the conceptualisation and formulation of the laws by the legislature.