The South African government machinery has historically been organised as the public service and the local government service. This created a perceived lack of alignment at the levels of policy and service delivery, which was seen as a reason for poor government performance in addressing development challenges. The Department of Public Service and Administration therefore proceeded to create the legislative and institutional basis for a single public service. South Africa has a complex set of development goals to which the public service must respond and this requires thorough-going public sector reform, with due attention to major reform trends elsewhere in the world. While the efforts to construct the single public service attempted to incorporate some of these trends, it appears to have fallen short with respect to constructing a development paradigm for government services.