•The Excellence Charter sets out and focuses on the public agency that the ODPP wants to be.
• It is a road map that will guide the Office for the period 2020 to 2023.
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The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) is Kenya’s national prosecuting authority established under Article 157 of the Constitution to exercise state powers of prosecutions. The Office acts independently in prosecuting criminal matters investigated by the National Police Service (NPS) and other investigative and regulatory agencies.
The ODPP must have due regard to public interest, the interests of the administration of justice and the need to prevent and avoid abuse of the legal process in exercising its prosecutorial authority. In this regard, the ODPP developed and recently launched the Excellence Charter to guide these processes.
The Excellence Charter, a departure from commonly known and used Strategic planning sets out and focuses on the public agency that the ODPP wants to be; a prosecution service that is more responsive to the needs of mwananchi. It is a road map that will guide the Office for the period 2020 to 2023 and focuses on transforming the Office into a 21st century prosecution service.
Upon assuming office, the Director of Public Prosecution decided to collapse the 2016-2021 Strategic Plan to the three-year innovative Excellence Charter in order to be more focused on enhancing access to justice to all.
Before developing the Charter, the ODPP carried out a survey to identify ‘pain areas’ and came up with six strategic commitments through a thought leadership workshop in order to address the pain areas. These commitments are: Independence and Integrity; Lifelong Learning; Reshaping Prosecutions; Servant Leadership; Organizational Effectiveness and Inter-Agency Networks. These commitments reflect the ODPP vision of being a just, fair, independent and responsive prosecution service. To achieve these commitments calls for commitment, sacrifice and creativity from both internal and external stakeholders.
This, indeed, is fresh thinking and new way of running public institutions. We hope to follow through and implement the six strategic commitments we have identified not only to enhance access to justice but also to build public confidence in the Office. A noble initiative indeed!
The Charter allows mwananchi to hold accountable and review any decision the ODPP makes hence making the criminal justice accessible and friendly to the public. This is long overdue!
The ODPP commits through the Charter to be more proactive in interventions on issues of public concern such as the fight against corruption, organized crime, counter-terrorism facilitation for victims of crime and safety of witnesses, case management, centralized case intake systems, research and development, all aimed at enhancing the quality of prosecutions.
The charter brings into focus the urgent need for harmony in service delivery within justice sector agencies all in the interest of enhanced access to justice to all. This is because justice actors are part of a chain and a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
The only way to ensure provision of quality services to Kenyans and ensure justice is served fairly and efficiently to all is enhanced collaboration in addressing delays in the delivery of justice by all criminal justice actors. Indeed collaboration is key in order to effectively fight against growing cases of corruption, organized crime and transnational crime which threaten the security and development of our county.
Further, the Charter seeks to deepen collaboration with local and international justice institutions and partners involved in governance, justice, law and order sectors, use of technology to improve the efficiency of the prosecution service.
In line with the Charter, the ODPP is in the process of developing an automated performance management system which will make it easier to track and monitor the performance individual employees, departments and the office in general. In this way the Charter is more focused on injecting accountability, transparency, legitimacy, public confidence and quality control in all its operations.
The pursuit of excellence is a high ideal which can only be achieved through a culmination of deliberate efforts and habits. It is this ideal that every government institution must strive to achieve in order to be accountable to the public.
The Excellence Charter is now developed and launched. What we expect from the ODPP is that they now roll up their sleeves and invest all their energies towards implementing the Charter to the letter. The public is watching and waiting to hold you accountable on this.
Beatrice Omari is the senior assistant director, public communication