Contract management and service delivery in local governments in Uganda:A case of Serere district Local Government

Abstract

The main objective of the study was to examine the relationship between contract management and service delivery in Local Governments in Uganda taking Serere District Local Government as a case study. The study was guided by three research objectives which were to establish the relationship between; contract administration and service delivery, delivery management and service delivery and relationship management and service delivery. The study used case study and correlation research design where both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used. Quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS Ver. 20 which helped to obtain descriptive statistics that were used in interpreting the data while correlation and regression were used for testing and predicting the hypothesis. Qualitative data was analyzed using content analysis where data was divided into themes, sub-themes and categories which helped to sort data according to its relevancy of each piece of data that was obtained in the findings. Questionnaires and interviews were used to collect data from a sample of 134 respondents of which ninety (90) returned their well filled questionnaires giving a response rate of 67.2%. The findings revealed that all the relationships were positive and significant, except relationship between contract administration and service delivery. The results shows that there was no significant relationship between contract administration and service delivery (r=0.158, p<0.136), there was a significant relationship between delivery management and service delivery (r=0.532, p<0.000); while relationship between relationship management and service delivery was also significant (r=0.354, p<0.001). However, none of the variables were highly inter-related. The researcher concludes that delivery management is more significant in contract management than the blend of relationship management and contract administration accounting for 28.3% variation in service delivery in Uganda Local Governments. Suggestions are made for the local government’s political and administrative stakeholders as well as the policy makers in Uganda on the importance of contract administration components like procurement planning which is the foundation for effective service delivery in the entity. The study also agitate for the establishment independent Contract Management Department within the Procuring and Disposing Entity (PDE) for easy tracking of the contracts in the entity; need for continuous improvement for every procurement conducted, and the need to eliminate informal structure by enhancing communication between the entity and contractor.