G Fraser-Moleketi: Parliamentary Media Briefing, February 2004

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Statement by the Minister of Public Service and Administration, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, MP, at the GCIS Parliamentary Media Briefings, Cape Town
11 February 2004

While internationally support has grown for the need to streamline and in some cases downsize the core public service, it is also increasingly recognised that the state remains a pivotal development partner, with which private sector and civil society needs to work. "Increasingly the state is called upon to act as linking pin of processes of planning, consultation, negotiation and decision-making involving diverse players, State and non-State, at different levels of governance. It is the hub of activities connecting multiple partners and stakeholders from very varied fields, activities, regions, cultures, professions and interests (United Nations [UN], 2001, World Public Sector Report: 31). This is certainly true in the context of South Africa, where the development agenda of the country is underpinned by the need for a strong state that both provides the enabling environment for social and economic partners to flourish, and directly ensures the delivery of basic needs services, particularly to the poor.

The comprehensive Government and Administration (G&A) cluster programme on improving performance of the state has numerous initiatives to build a capable South African state, that focus around four broad outcomes:

1. Streamlining systems and processes of the machinery of state to enable better alignment of resources and capability with national priorities.
2. Integrating service delivery mechanisms and capacity to provide citizen-centred, responsive service delivery machinery.
3. Directly combating poor performance, corruption and institutional inefficiency.
4. Contributing to governance improvements and capacity building beyond South Africa, within the context of New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD).

1. STREAMLINING SYSTEMS AND PROCESSES OF THE STATE TO ENABLE BETTER ALIGNMENT OF RESOURCES AND CAPABILITY WITH NATIONAL PRIORITIES

The President in the State of the Nation address on 6 February 2004 clearly outlined our national priorities when he states:

"The advances we must record demand that we ensure that the public sector discharges its responsibilities to our people as a critical player in the process of the growth, reconstruction and development of our country."

The G&A Cluster faces the challenge of ensuring that the systems and processes of the state are equipped to deliver on these priorities. In this regard the cluster is undertaking the following work:

Improvements will be made to the National Planning Framework implemented by The Presidency, in order to facilitate integrated governance. In particular the Medium Term Strategic Framework will be placed at the centre of the policy prioritising and budgeting process, to ensure that financing is allocated to priorities programmes.
Preparatory work for the creation of a single public service is being conducted, initially focusing on the rationalisation of conditions of service in the local government sector.
In line with developing the framework for the single public service, the review which is being undertaken of public entities, in particular, their governance arrangements, human resource practices, procurement procedures and their sustainability as public entities. There are currently 336 public entities employing about a quarter of a million people who fall outside of the public service. The proliferation of these entities, all created under disparate legislation, need to be assessed and aligned so that these resources are better directed towards achievement of national priorities. Accordingly the accountability framework of PEs needs to reflect this aspect.
The cluster will develop common standards (definitions and classifications) for departments and other users of statistics to improve on departmental specific monitoring and evaluation systems. The National Statistical System will assist clusters to develop suitable indicators to more effectively track performance, particularly with regards to service delivery.

2. INTEGRATING SERVICE DELIVERY MECHANISMS AND CAPACITY TO PROVIDE CITIZEN-CENTRED, RESPONSIVE SERVICE DELIVERY MACHINERY

The President last week also spoke of the progress that we must achieve "with regard to the integration of our system of governance, achieving seamless cooperation both within and among all spheres of government".

The G&A Cluster is actively addressing the reality that service delivery at times takes place in a disjointed and irregular manner, forcing the citizen, rather than government, to act as the integrator of services. In order to address this, the G&A cluster have an active range of programmes that will be aggressively scaled-up over the next year.

46 Multi-Purpose Community Centres (MPCCs) have been established, including an additional six since July 2003. Of the 46 centres, 23 provide services beyond those of government, with a total of 400 services now available in rural and under-serviced areas. The range of services in nine of these centres will initially be greatly extended through creating access to the central e-government Gateway portal. Run under the auspices of the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) in partnership with provinces and local authorities, the technology linkages in these sites will be provided by the Universal Services Agency. The central portal will delivered on the infrastructure of the State Information Technology Agency.
These sites are strong examples of integration in practice, focusing on citizen need. The key improvement is the introduction of a General Services Counter (GSC) that uses the Gateway portal to deliver better services. The GSC will allow MPCCs to deliver a wider range of services, including services of departments that are not physically present at the MPCC. To rural and previously disadvantaged communities living in isolated communities, the GSC will open the door for these communities to have access to full package of government services required for a better life. The role and importance of the GSC will increase over time but over the next two months, it will play a crucial role in providing essential information to citizens and businesses.

A GSC is fully functional in one of the nine sites (the Mapela MPCC in the Limpopo province) with the remaining sites coming on stream over the next six weeks. The sites are: Mbazwana MPCC in KwaZulu-Natal, Hartebeeskraal MPCC in the Western Cape, Sterkspruit MPCC in the Eastern Cape, Mpuluzi MPCC in Mpumalanga, Namahadi MPCC in the Free State, Galeshewe MPCC in the Northern Cape, Tombo MPCC in the Eastern Cape, Leretlhabetse MPCC in the North West, and Faranani MPCC in Gauteng.

In addition to the GSC, the Centre for Public Service Innovation will introduce multi-media facilities (television), that will enable people to access Gateway directly and a range of business process improvements.

As we speak a multi-sectoral government stakeholder workshop is taking place in Mpumalanga to develop the model for more rapidly rolling out MPCCs and increasing their service offerings.
The Community Development Workers (CDW) Programme

This programme, announced in last years' state of the nation address, is well underway.

The CDW initiative is integrated and linked to key government flagship programmes such as Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP), Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Programme (ISRDP) and Urban Renewal Development Programme (URDP). At national level, the Ministry for Public Service and Administration has taken overall responsibility for the project and is working hand-in-hand with the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA), South African Management Development Institute (SAMDI), South African Local Government Association (SALGA) and Department of Provincial and Local Government (DPLG). These departments are responsible for ensuring the establishment of appropriate co-ordination structures at a provincial level as well as developing and managing the National Monitoring System on the CDWs.

Provincial departments of Local Government in consultation with local government will take responsibility for the deployment and placement of CDWs. The provinces will be the employer but the municipalities will provide the workplace for the CDWs.

The CDWs will work closely with community structures especially Ward Committees to identify areas where service delivery interventions are required.

The key policy decision since the July Lekgotla 2003 has been the adoption of a learnership strategy in preference to immediate employment of CDWs as public servants. There are several reasons for the adoption of this strategy. A short orientation-training course will not be adequate to prepare a person to be a CDW; thus longer-term training is essential. The learnership strategy allows for on the job training, and deployment under mentorship. This will also help fulfil the President's injunction in the State of the Nation Address "that we attract the right people into this cadre of CDWs, train them properly, and supervise them effectively". The learnership strategy enables learner CDWs to obtain credits and ultimately a qualification over the one-year course.

There are already 60 learner CDWs in the field in Gauteng and by the end of February there will be 342 learners in the field under supervision of mentors. By the end of May there will be a total of 910 deployed in the field. On completion of the one-year learnership, the trained CDWs will be eligible to apply for posts in line with public service practice. Ultimately we envisage over the medium term, the creation of 2840 CDW posts.

The CDWs will benefit from the use of technology through being provided with a mobile platform (a lap-top with GPRS connectivity) that will enable 40 CDWs in a pilot programme to access central e-government portals. The programme is a unique example of public service and local government directly confronting challenges to integration presented by different conditions of service, multiple providers of government services and needy communities.

The ultimate success of CDW programme will be determined by the extent to which government is seen to come to the people, rather than citizens having to continuously seek out government to obtain services.

The Gateway portal will be made available through the existing www.gov.za website, building on the familiarity that citizens already have with government information. The test site can be accessed on www.services.gov.za. The Phase 1 launch will focus on improved information on services, with Phase 2 providing a base for on-line transactional services. The production site contains content regarding 4600 services offered by government. The launch of the portal will coincide with the development team reaching the required target for data verification.
Additional service points benefiting from the central portal will be available in 55 sites across the country provided by the South African Post Office, through Citizen Post Offices, Public Information Terminals and Internet Cafes.
Making use of the wide penetration of fixed line but in particular mobile telephony, citizens will be able to access information from the portal through a national call centre, using the 1020 number.

ID CAMPAIGN

Following the Electoral Commission (IEC) Voter Registration Weekend on 24 to 25 January, the department has done a broad assessment of the distribution of identity documents (IDs) to their rightful owners in preparation for the national general elections. The department managed to process 95 276 IDs during the week of January (weekend ending 09 January 2004), 110 905 IDs for the second week (week ending 16 January 2004) and 94 125 for the third week (week ending 23 January 2004). 317 579 IDs were issued to their rightful owners in the first three weeks of January 2004.

At the beginning of 2003, the department set itself a target to issue out 2.5 million IDs. During 2003, the department also managed to dispatch 2 660 859. Out of this number, 1 596 515 are new or first applications and 1 064 344 are reissues. Thus, the department issued 1 673 697 IDs. Out of 1 673 697, at least 1 004 218, were first applications and 669 479 reissues.

By 27 October 2003 prior to the first register weekend that took place in November 2003, 307 707 IDs were uncollected in our offices countrywide. In addressing this challenge the department embarked on a rigorous campaign to get people to collect their IDs through door-to-door deliveries and a multi-media campaign to raise the level of public education, awareness and consciousness. As a result of this campaign our analysis of the statistics show that by 25 January 2004, the department had 78 740 uncollected IDs in the regional offices

3. DIRECTLY COMBATING POOR PERFORMANCE, CORRUPTION AND INSTITUTIONAL INEFFICIENCY

The attention that is being given to improving planning frameworks and enabling greater integration of services is appropriate and moves the public sector into a new phase of efficient and effective delivery. Earlier there is reference to the State of Nation Address where the President speaks of the integration of our systems, but he also makes strong reference to raising the skills level within the public sector to "ensure its managerial and technological modernisation driven by a clear understanding of the developmental task of our democratic state".

However, the G&A cluster is also very much aware of the need to continuously focus on getting the basics right, ensure that public servants are accountable and are doing their work, that non-performers are called to account and corruption is eliminated from our systems.

The cluster therefore has the following programmes underway:

* Anti-corruption

One of the challenges that we have faced until now is our inability to provide hard, consolidated statistics on corruption. At present we have no single database of this kind of information, which includes information on disciplinary cases, risk areas, prejudice to state and the efficiency of handling corruption cases. In order to improve the efficiency of reporting on corruption and protection of whistle-blowers, an Integrated Corruption Management Information System is currently being developed, for release in 2004. We are pleased to report that this system is being developed in partnership with the CSIR's Meraka Open Source Centre, utilising Open Standards and Open Source Software (OSS) products, supporting the newly adopted policy of government on the use of OSS.

The proposed Corruption Management Information System (CMIS) will not only address major gaps in our knowledge of the incidence and perceptions of corruption, but will also contribute greatly to the rollout of the Public Service Anti-corruption Strategy. The CMIS will allow all stakeholders to capture and maintain information through a web-based interface. For security reasons, different levels of access will be built into the system. The system will be used to audit anti-corruption capacity, conduct risk assessments and track the process of data collection.

There are three phases to the project. The first phase has begun and is expected to be completed by mid-April. There will be a first iteration based on an initial assessment of user requirements (needs analysis), audit of current systems, etc. The system is envisaged to be functional around July this year, and should be populated and running by January 2006.

* Reducing Red Tape

One critical issue hampering effective service delivery is red tape or unnecessary bureaucracy. Interaction between government departments, agencies and citizens is formal. Rules, regulations and procedures govern interactions between citizens and government. These are necessary to ensure equitable and fair access to services, and to guarantee good governance. At times however these rules and regulations become inefficient and costly; they impose an unjustifiable administrative burden on both citizens and public servants; they become red tape. The social and economic costs associated with red tape are difficult to quantify. A reliable costing exercise has yet to be conducted in South Africa, but the burden exacted by red tape is likely to be substantial. A number of factors are now converging that suggest this is the opportune time to address red tape challenges:

The intensive policy work of the last ten years has seen a regulatory framework emerge which paves the way for red tape reform. Relevant in this respect are the Electronics Communication and Transaction Act, the Public Finance Management Act, the Public Service Act, our e-Government and Information Security policies.
The Batho Pele Principles have embedded a client focus in the public service and service levels are improving.
Government's information management and administration capacity continues to be enhanced through technological innovations.

As an initial step in tackling red tape reform the Centre for Public Service Innovation, an agency falling within my portfolio, in conjunction with the DPSA and SITA, will launch a learning document on red tape reform on 10 March 2004. The report, entitled "From Red Tape to SMART Tape", is the second in a series of Future Watch reports aimed at stimulating innovation in the public service. It reviews trends in red tape reform globally and provides a framework for considering these trends within the South African service delivery context. It also documents a number of international, but more pertinently, local case studies, which demonstrate that efficiency challenges in service delivery, are already being addressed. The Future Watch report on red tape reform is a call to all government departments and agencies to find opportunities to collaborate with the DPSA and CPSI in undertaking red tape reform projects.

Although specific projects for reform have yet to be identified, it is anticipated that the priority reform areas will include:

Business processes within government, especially the sharing of crucial information across government departments, functions and agencies, which facilitates service delivery transactions.
Service delivery to the most disadvantaged of South African citizens, where the efficient provision of social grants is more than a matter of convenience.
Improving the efficiency of integrated service delivery points, such as MPCCs, particularly the related back office challenges. Enormous progress has been made in getting services to citizens in remote locations, now we must make every effort to ensure that we ease any administrative burdens that may still impede access.
Finding ways to ease the administrative burdens placed on Small, Micro and Medium Enterprises, where the cost of administrative compliance may constrain economic growth.
The Cluster, due to its transversal role across government, will develop a framework for the management of interventions. An early warning system has been developed and piloted. The system tracks indicators that relate to the service delivery performance of departments. The intention is to quickly identify shortfalls in service delivery, and address these as quickly as possible.
An effective example of the success of dealing with a range of institutional performance issues can be seen in the Eastern Cape Intervention.

Achievements in Eastern Cape:

Basic Management:

New procurement delegations and new frameworks for procurement
Financial management support, supply chain management support, human resource support and information and communications technology (ICT) support for two years to set in place sustainable capacity
Backlog payments to employees of R86 800 000

Improved internal controls: Internal audit functions have been established in the four IMT departments and audit capacity has been brought in for two years to assist these departments.

Human Resource Management, leadership and management
Critical vacancies are being filled and a huge number of posts in health have recently been advertised. There is a scarce skills strategy in place, especially in the rural areas and forms part of the negotiations at national level. All managers have undergone competency assessment and development plans for these managers are being finalised. All health managers have received new performance agreements and the performance of managers in education is currently being conducted for past years. Two Heads of Departments are being disciplined for PFMA transgressions.

Fighting Corruption: Besides audits relating to items such as procurement, hospital stock, petrol card abuse, which have been completed, with cases being prepared for this financial year, 1323 cases have been managed by the Interim Management team. Only 115 still need to be completed. Of the completed cases, 286 involve theft and fraud. Of those found guilty, 42% have been dismissed.

4. CONTRIBUTING TO GOVERNANCE IMPROVEMENTS AND CAPACITY BUILDING BEYOND SOUTH AFRICA, WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF NEPAD.

"All major current international developments emphasised the importance of constructing a new world order that is more equitable and responsive to the needs of the poor of the world, who constitute the overwhelming majority of humanity" (President Mbeki, SON 2004).

South Africa, through the Minister and Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA), plays an influential role in the International and African governance and public administration community. At the request of the NEPAD secretariat the South African public service and administration ministry has spearheaded the development and adoption of a continental programme on Governance and Public Administration. The programme focuses on institutional capacity, research and data availability, innovation and training in public services across all African countries, and has now been adopted as a programme of the African Union. Some of the practical work that has already taken place under the auspices of the programme includes:

Seminar on public sector performance management
Initiation of a programme on leadership capacity development
Development of a programme of action on e-government
Collation of data on the size and shape of the African public sector
Establishment of a supportive 'Network of African Management Development Institutes (AMDIN).

In addition to this comprehensive programme, South Africa has also been called upon to provide direct assistance to other countries. As part of the bilateral agreement with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the South African government has been requested to provide technical assistance in the arena of governance and public administration, a welcome change from the tendency of African governments to draw expertise from countries of the North. The South African design team visits the DRC next week to define our programme of support

The cluster is firmly committed to making South African experience and expertise available to our neighbours, as part of our commitment to building the African Union. Improved state capacity across the continent will contribute to poverty alleviation and enhanced economic opportunities, which is in the collective interest of the continent. Equally, we believe that South Africa can benefit from experiences elsewhere in Africa.

Issued by: Ministry of Public Service and Administration
11 February 2004