The Design and Implementation of Business Process Reengineering in the Ethiopian Public Sector

In 1996, the Ethiopian government introduced the Civil Service Reform Program (CSRP) to disentangle the intricacies of the old bureaucratic system, and to build a fair, responsible, efficient, ethical and transparent civil service that accelerates and sustains the economic development of the country. However, lack of competent personnel, prevalence of attitudinal problems and absence of a strong institutional framework constrained the success of the reform. To reinvigorate the CSRP, the Ethiopian government has been implementing BPR in public organizations since 2004. In this regard, there are claims and counter-claims on the effectiveness of BPR implementation in improving the performance of public organizations. Motivated by such claims, this research has assessed the design, challenges, implementation and outcome of BPR in four public organizations using questionnaires, interviews, observations and review of secondary sources.