"People are the lifeblood of any organisation and the agents of reform and renewal in public administration. The knowledge, skills, values and attitudes of public servants are at the heart of state reform". If this statement is true, then the challenge facing the South African government, and other developmental states, in terms of building the human resources capacity of the state, is enormous. In particular, we need to harness and develop the capabilities of the public sector to meet our service delivery improvement imperatives, as articulated in the President's call for the "... mobilisation of the public sector to speed up social transformation" There are a number of factors militating against successful skills formation and the elimination of skills shortages in the public sector, which need to be addressed. The greatest of these is probably the fact that training is very often of doubtful relevance, rare