Bigirimana's study on employee attitude in Uganda’s Civil Service

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A senior government official has challenged Uganda’s public sector to rethink the human factor behind service delivery, arguing that employee attitude may be the missing link in improving the performance of the country’s civil service.

Pius Bigirimana, a long-serving civil servant and currently Permanent Secretary to the Judiciary, made the remarks while defending his doctoral study on “Attitude in Civil
Service” at the Uganda Management Institute (UMI) recently.

His research examined how employee attitudes influence the effectiveness, productivity and accountability of Uganda’s civil service.

Bigirimana said the study was inspired by his many years of experience in public service and the persistent challenges that continue to affect government programmes despite several reforms aimed at improving efficiency.

“First of all, my experience in the public service and the way there have been reforms, not one, not two, has made me think that there is something wrong in the civil service,” Bigirimana said during his defence.

Over the years, Uganda has implemented a number of public sector reforms designed to improve transparency, efficiency and accountability in government institutions. These include administrative restructuring, capacity-building programmes and performance management systems.

However, Bigirimana observed that despite these interventions, service delivery challenges continue to persist across ministries and government agencies.

“If these reforms were to be of great value, then the civil service would be performing better,” he said. “Instead, every other day, people are agonising and saying there is no money and things cannot be done. Even when people get the money, some of them still do not perform.”

According to him, the continued performance gaps prompted deeper reflection on whether the problem lies beyond financial resources and institutional structures.

“So I asked myself, what is the problem? Is it really because of resources? Is it because of the environment? Is it culture? What exactly is it?” he said.

His reflection led him to explore the role of mindset and personal attitudes among civil servants in shaping the quality of service delivery.

“I started thinking that maybe it is the mindset, the attitude. To what extent has this affected the entire service delivery system?” he noted.

Bigirimana explained that negative workplace attitudes often manifest in delayed projects, weak accountability systems and corruption within government institutions.

“We have so many projects that sometimes do not get finished on time because of people’s attitudes,” he said. “You have corruption, which is eating the service. That is partly because of attitude.”

He added that some civil servants disengage from their responsibilities despite being employed to serve the public.

“You have people who are absent from work, people who fake idleness when they are doing jobs elsewhere,” he said. “Some even say, ‘It is government,’ forgetting that this is actually their government and they are the government themselves.”

Driven by these observations, Bigirimana undertook research to empirically examine whether attitudes among civil servants significantly influence performance and service delivery outcomes.

“I felt I should dig deep and do research to see whether my feelings are correct or not, empirically, so that I can inform the world of knowledge but also have what we call utility value,” he explained.

To ensure the research was manageable and focused, the study examined selected ministries rather than the entire public service.

“When you are doing research, you cannot study everything. You limit yourself to a smaller section,” he said. “That is why my professors guided me to focus on a few ministries.”

Despite this narrower focus, Bigirimana believes the findings are relevant across the civil service because many government institutions face similar operational challenges.

“What affects a commissioner in the ministry of lands might be the same issues affecting someone in trade or education,” he said. “So the findings will be helpful for everybody.”

One of the key outcomes of the research is the development of a proposed model that could guide attitude management within the civil service.

“If I develop a model, then I will give it to the public service so that it can be used to improve performance,” he said.

The study also explored whether the challenge of employee attitudes affecting public sector performance is unique to Uganda.

Bigirimana found that similar challenges exist in many other countries.

“This issue of civil servants’ performance is almost everywhere,” he said, citing examples from Nigeria, Malaysia, Ghana and the United Kingdom.

“So if it is everywhere and people have seen that it affects performance, then what exactly is this attitude? What type of animal is it? That is what I wanted to interrogate.”

He expressed optimism that the research could contribute to strengthening Uganda’s civil service by encouraging public officers to recognise their role in national development.

“If attitudes improve, then service delivery will improve, and projects will be implemented on time,” he said.

Bigirimana hopes the study will spark broader discussions on professionalism, responsibility and mindset among civil servants as Uganda continues to pursue reforms aimed at improving governance and public sector efficiency.