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"WORKING BETTER: INCREASING PUBLIC SERVICE ACCESS AND IMPACT"

INTRODUCTION

Through door-to-door visits during our elections campaign we came face to face with ordinary South Africans. This gave them an opportunity to speak to us about their lives. These visits, as with our Izimbizos, are a rich source of information on how ordinary people experience public service delivery and how it can be improved.

South Africa is a diverse country, with many differences. Ours is the reality of two economies and the challenge facing us at the beginning of our second decade of democratic governance is to use the machinery of the state to bridge the divide between them.

We must not accept the two economies as a permanent feature of our society, but should rather understand the current context from a historical perspective and recognise that it can be changed.

For this to happen we must act! To make a difference we should not only contemplate the situation and speak about it. Writing about the effects of French colonisation on Algeria, Albert Camus, the activist and intellectual, observed

"if you think it is an inevitable state of affairs, then say so; if you think it is an outrage, then act."

This government, at the start of our second decade of democratic government, is committed to act! The President clearly is the personification, and a very strong advocate, of such an activist orientation. I would like to assure the people's representatives in this House that the Ministry for Public Service and Administration is 100% committed to marking this term of office with action!

I have realised that many people have great difficulty in actually understanding what the relationship is between the work in this portfolio and the functioning of government through the various line departments and across the spheres of government.

The most pertinent questions to ask in this respect are:
"Does the programme of action of this portfolio translate into better human and organisational capacity able to undertake in a more effective manner the tasks and responsibilities in the various line departments?"
and

"Over the past decade have we succeeded in putting in place enabling and integrating frameworks and mechanisms that support the different initiatives that are undertaken by leadership and management in the various line departments?"

Allow me to highlight the connections between the work of this portfolio and those of my colleagues in the respective line departments. When the Ministers of Correctional Services and Social Development in their respective budget votes raise the issue of how conditions of service for the public servants employed in their departments impact on the availability and motivation of their staff it directly relates to the frameworks that we have put in place, and relies on the solid relations that we have managed to build up with our counterparts in organised labour.

When the Ministers of Housing and Water Affairs and Forestry report on the challenges that they face with regards to corrupt activity in their respective sectors, the initiatives that they announced will draw on, and fall within the ambit of, the overall anti-corruption strategy that we have developed and are steering for the entire public service.

When the Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs and the Minister of Home Affairs report on the success hitherto of the internship programmes and announce the plans to scale these initiatives up in the year to come, in my portfolio we are proud of the policy work that we have undertaken in this regard. The guidelines that we are providing allow line departments to pursue these avenues of capacity development with greater ease and within a stronger framework of uniformity across the public service.

You have received a printed copy of the budget vote report. You will find in that document the detailed progress reporting against initiatives announced previously. I would like to use the limited time available today to rather look ahead, and highlight selected key initiatives that reflect my perspective on the future term. I see this as fulfilling my role as Minister on this occasion - serving as the interface between you as duly elected representatives of the people and the bureaucracy that reports to me.

My Ministry, the Department of Public Service and Administration, the South African Management Development Institution, the State Information and Technology Agency, the Centre for Public Service Innovation and the Public Service Commission (obviously our relationship with the latter is very different than with the other four) [are] is responsible for providing the necessary policy background against which individual line departments can fruitfully exercise their operational independence, knowing that in the bigger scheme of things they are all acting within a shared and unifying context. As a collective we will have to ensure in the term ahead that we develop a public service that will continue to make us proud as a machinery of state that serves the interests of our people.

A machinery that systematically allows those who find themselves in the quagmire of hardship and deprivation to experience the benefits of true liberation and live with the dignity that is the fundamental human rights for which we have fought.

A machinery that will realise the fulfilment of government's side of the bargain in the People's contract. This will demand that we extend ourselves from our traditional comfort zone of policy formulation to becoming much more actively involve in monitoring implementation of our policy frameworks and providing assistance in creating capacity across the public service, in order to overcome any impediments to successful implementation. As the Ministry responsible for Public Service we will have to be on the look-out for behaviour, policies, systems and/or structures across our public institutional landscape that threaten the essence of public service, and we will create the capacity to intervene in such circumstances.

I am proud of the policy and management frameworks we have developed over the past decade. Our international exposure has ensured that these are amongst the best in the world. I am convinced that we can achieve much more through better, more considered and careful implementation.

I am very proud of the recognition that we are receiving for innovation that is taking place in various loci in our public service.

Those of you who watched the media coverage of the very successful Africa Public Service Day celebrations that we had on Saturday would have noticed the fact that the SAPS Limpopo Mobile Service Vehicle project has won an UN Public Service Award and this will be bestowed on them in two days time in New York. I met with Director Wahab who has spearheaded the innovation in transforming a Caspir into a mobile multi-purpose centre. The sheer symbolism of this innovation as an effort in transformation from the old public service to the new democratic one is overwhelming. Director Wahab impressed me in terms of his quiet leadership style and his absolute commitment to get on with the job that has to be done. And I wish for many more 'Wahab's in the Public Service.

In addition four projects from South Africa are on the initial short-list of the Commonwealth Association on Public Administration and Management (CAPAM) public service innovation awards. These are:

• The Social Development Information Management System of the Department of Social Development;
  
• The National Treasury/Turner & Townsend development of a framework for more effective expenditure on capital infrastructure;
  
• The City of Johannesburg's Pikitup '100 Spots' project; and
  
• The Public Service Commission's Citizens Forums for Service Delivery Improvement developed in partnership with the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Public Service and Administration

These have been short listed out of 154 international submissions. To underline the degree of our success let me reveal to you that a country such as the United Kingdom has only a single entry that made it through the initial selection process.

Nieteenstaande ons suksesse staar ons steeds 'n klomp uitdagings in die gesig. Armoede en werkloosheid doen Suid Afrika groot skade aan. 'n Aansienlike proporsie van ons mense is verdoem tot lewens van blootstelling en onbillikheid.

Ons staatsdiens moet beter word in terme van wat ons doen. Hetsy ons regulasies implementeer wat dit makliker maak vir die privaat sektor om aan die internasionale ekonomie deel te neem. Hetsy ons regulasies afdwing om herverspreiding te bewerkstellig wat nodig is om 'n billike stelsel in Suid-Afrika te skep. Hetsy ons direk dienste verskaf aan diegene wat geheel van die regering afhanklik is vir toegang tot bv. onderwys en gesondheid. Ons moet eenvoudig beter doen met wat tans tot ons beskikking is. 'n Hernieude fokus op effektiewiteit reg oor die openbare sektor het nodig geword.

Despite our impressive successes, we still face many critical challenges. Poverty and unemployment continue to blight South Africa and as a result many of our citizens are condemned to lives of hardship and injustice.

Our public service simply has to get better at doing whatever it does. Whether we implement a regulatory framework that facilitates the private sector participating in the international economy. Or whether we enforce regulations that are intended to achieve redistribution that is a necessary precondition for achieving an equitable dispensation domestically. Or whether we are providing services directly to that sector of our population that are wholly dependent on government for accessing services such as education and health services. We need to achieve better results with the same resources and the same people. This requires a renewed focus on effectiveness across the entire public sector.

In order to achieve the public service that we have in mind, through an elaborate process of consultation, we have prioritised six broad areas to attend to during the next few years.

These are:

1. Establishing administrative practice in line with the notion of the developmental state, specifically getting the basic good administrative practices in place and ensuring that Batho Pele is whole heartedly embraced as the integrating organisational culture for the public service;
2. Focusing on our human resources, their development and management, for the public service;
3. Improving on governance, leadership and management;
4. Revisiting the macro organisation of the state and the relationships that underpins it, specifically the issues of improving co-ordination and integration, creating a single public service and to ensure that Public Entities are optimally integrated in government activities;
5. Consciously preparing for policy implementation by amongst other things strengthen our capacity to provide support and intervene where threats to service delivery occur and removing red tape as far as possible
6. Facilitating and practising evidence based decision-making by strengthening the systems for monitoring and evaluation, as well as performance management.

During the review and assessment process that I drove during the first quarter of this year in order to arrive at the above mentioned priorities I was once again impressed by the integrated nature of management and administration. We need both to succeed in operating in a huge organisation such as the public service.

Public management involves mastering the art of governance, including giving meaning to principles such as efficiency and effectiveness, transparency and accountability.

Administration is about the day-to-day systems and procedures that make governance work so that institutions and resources are effectively utilised.

Where we might have inadvertently neglected sound administrative practice in our quest to transform the public service we will give administration-renewed attention. We will concentrate on getting the basics right, first!

The next phase of public service and administration in South Africa will require that skills sets and approaches be valued and applied in all components of the public service. One of the mechanisms that will spearhead this is the compulsory induction programme that we have agreed to during the most recent Cabinet Lekgotla. Every serving public servant will be exposed to this as a matter of urgency and every new recruit that joins the public service will go to an appropriate level of induction soon after being employed.

Since we have received very valuable inputs regarding our public sector reform initiative through the process that I have referred to earlier, I am intent on continuing to strengthen my relationship with a wide range of stakeholders that in different ways interact with public sector transformation. These are our intellectual community, both at Universities and in various research institutions. These are the practitioner community - be they public service managers, labour, civil society partners, consultants or the media. And these are international friends and associates that continually offer to give freely of their time and experience, often also backing it up with very tangible financial support, in order to help the extra-ordinarily South African story to remain exemplary and successful in our transformation effort. We need to still consolidate the rich feedback that we have received during the first round of our engagements and then develop strategic partnerships that will shape the future agenda even further.

PROFESSIONALISM

The review process also highlighted the need to instil pride in our public servants. In order to restore pride in public service as a career, in order to attract the cream of our society to join the public service, in order to ensure better performance by public service employees, we have to strive at creating an ethos and demeanour of professionalism.

In our public service professionalism does not directly relate to qualifications or position in the hierarchy. Instead, professionalism is about how work is done, how citizens and colleagues are treated and the adoption of an ethical, constructive and problem-solving approach to working life.

It is the prevailing belief systems that are increasingly recognised as a factor that sets successful organisations and successful countries apart from those who are struggling. It is the people employed in the public service, their skills, their motivational level, their way of working that will make the difference. Therefore the emphasis that we will continue to put on the people in the public service, and getting the people management aspects right, will be a trademark of this term of office.

In his State of the Nation Address earlier this year, our President highlighted the importance of addressing the key issue of public service culture.

The President noted that "We must be impatient with those in the public service who see themselves as pen-pushers and guardians of rubber stamps, thieves intent on self-enrichment, bureaucrats who think they have the right to ignore the vision of Batho Pele, who come to work as late as possible and knock off as early as possible".

Complying with Batho Pele requires that departments set and measure standards for each of the services they deliver. Visits, spot checks and inspections will be used to assess general compliance with Batho Pele requirements. The Premier of the Eastern Cape has already started paying surprise visits to some hospitals in that province. Cabinet has agreed that compliance with Batho Pele principles in all public service organisations will become a standard item in the performance management contracts of Directors General and Heads of Departments.

Over the coming year we will be specifically investigating the extent to which public service standards are really being set, measured and met. Service users must be advised of these standards by the relevant government office that they are dealing with and at the same time should be informed about recourse mechanisms available to them if standards are not met. We will rely on the assistance of our citizens to give us honest feedback on their exposure to government departments.

An important element of our Batho Pele programme is the Batho Pele Change Management Engagement that promotes a new public service belief set: "We belong, we care, we serve".

The Africa Public Service Day celebrations on Saturday 19 June offered an occasion where many public servants and their families could build on the esprit de corpse of the public service. The theme for this year was Capacity Building for the African Renaissance. Through this family event we gave some recognition to the contribution and sacrifice that families make in supporting the public servants in working long hours in sometimes difficult circumstances, for example the police, prisons, schools and hospitals.

The Batho Pele Change Management Engagement programme has as its slogan "Together beating the drum for service delivery". The drum is a powerful African symbol that calls communities to rise to action. The Programme represents a call to all public servants to roll-up their sleeves and serve the public in a manner that is caring and which delivers results.

It will be rolled out through a series of workshops and leadership engagement sessions in national and provincial departments. It is being piloted in the Eastern Cape and the Department of Home Affairs and will thereafter be rolled out to the rest of the public service.

Attitude and a common belief system is however not the only consideration in improving the performance of our public servants. We need to ensure that all public servants have the skills and knowledge they need to be able to do their work excellently.

If we fail to meet this challenge the public service will slip further and further behind, becoming increasingly ineffective and we will ultimately fail in our task of providing a better life for all.

The Public Service Human Resource Development Strategy is in place and workshops have been held to communicate the content thereof and help departments to develop their own strategies by formulating credible Sector Skills Development Plans. SAMDI is in the process of developing appropriate strategies to ensure that training is aligned to workplace needs and that the outcomes of training can be linked to performance management processes. SAMDI is engaged in the development of a compulsory induction and re-orientation programme for all members of the public service and is working with SALGA and other partners on the establishment of a Municipal Training Institute.

Management capability continues to be highlighted as a factor in sub-optimal performance in the public service and featured prominently in the review and assessment process that I have referred to earlier. In my Budget Vote speech last year I reported that we have completed a Competency Framework for the Senior Management Service and that we would be translating this into a Development Programme for Senior Managers that will allow us to coordinate and encourage skills development, and assist with recruitment to the SMS.

We can now report that the SMS Development Programme is at an advanced stage. The Competency Framework has been converted into the proficiency levels 'competent' and 'advanced'. This means that an SMS member will be at either of these levels, and should they not make the grade, development programmes will be available to assist them in developing these competencies. The implementation of the framework will allow the public service to plan, recruit, assess and develop the SMS cadre.

We will focus on encouraging and building the capacity of managers to recognise and support problem-solving and proactive behaviour amongst public servants, in order to build a culture of innovation within the public sector.

One of our HRD strategies with a longer-term perspective is that of internships and learnerships. Cabinet has approved proposals to institutionalise and strengthen these in the public service as vehicles to fight unemployment and to develop skills targeting the youth - school leavers and unemployed graduates. The National Skills Fund has made available R106 million to the PSETA for this very worthwhile project. Obviously this increases the urgency with which we have to resolve the governance challenges that confront the PSETA in its current form. I am committed to a three-month timeframe to finalise the institutional arrangements for the PSETA in order to align it to other SETAs.

I have implemented a turnaround strategy for the PSETA. It is a programme aimed at ensuring that the PSETA is appropriately positioned and staffed to meet the objectives of the National Skills Development Strategy as well as the Human Resource Development Strategy for the Public Service. It is also ensuring that appropriate governance and accountability structures are in place and fully functional. We will also make provision for the appointment of a management company to facility the enrolment of participants to learnerships. The successful company will be appointed with effect from 1 July 2004. This will constitute the first phase towards meeting the GDS target, assigned to the Public Service of enrolling 10 000 unemployed youth in learnerships by March 2005.

Guidelines have been developed for internships and mentorship. Workplace preparedness workshops have been held.

I am pleased to note that most departments have an internship strategy. Ministers have been reporting against these in their respective budget votes. Obviously this indicates that the programme is becoming institutionalised.

The total numbers of interns and learners for this year is close to 7000 for both national and provincial departments. This constitutes a significant improvement compared to the 1 234 reported in the previous year.

We are still plagued in key sectors with specific skills shortages. For example, South Africa is widely recognised as an exporter of well-developed information and communication technology skills. The South African government is negatively affected by skills poaching by other countries and the private sector. As a result, we will be introducing an exchange programme with the ICT industry to stem the loss of skills.

The Government Information Technology (GITO) Council is currently working on a programme that will facilitate this exchange. This will fundamentally alter the pattern of skills movement and ensure that the public sector can retain the most critical ICT skills.

In order to further address skills shortages and skills mismatch, the public service needs to work more closely with our tertiary education institutions and various professional groups to ensure that the wide range of skills likely to be needed by the public service in the future will be available.

Over the coming year I will be initiating a process with higher education institutions to develop a practical framework agreement for ensuring future skills are properly identified and provided in the coming decades.

An important component of building professionalism in the public service is the maintenance of sound working relations between the state as employer and the people who work for it. I believe the degree to which we have succeeded in achieving maturity in the relationship between employer and organised labour is one of the key achievements in public service transformation during the past decade.

What lies immediately ahead is that a new multi-term agreement needs to be negotiated, whilst restructuring will remain a priority area. In this regard the employer will attempt to not only negotiate the introduction of an employee-initiated severance package, but also an agreement to guide ongoing restructuring in the public service.

Macro benefits such as a housing and medical aid as well as the issue of the determination and retention of scarce skills will be high on the collective bargaining agenda.

ANTI-CORRUPTION

Corruption is recognised globally as a major threat to sustainable development, since it leads to bad economic decisions, undermines confidence and deprives the poor of resources intended for their use.

South Africa may be a relatively new democracy with a young public service but in terms of what we have achieved to raise our level of integrity, we rank with the best in the world: the Public Integrity Index released by the Centre for Public Integrity confirms that this Government is serious about fighting corruption. In ten short years we have managed to be ranked in the index amongst far more established democracies.

In December 2003 I signed the United Nations Convention against Corruption on behalf of South Africa. The Convention has since been tabled in Parliament for ratification. Together with the African Union Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption as well as the SADC Protocol against Corruption, the UN Convention constitutes the portfolio of global anti-corruption standards with which countries must comply. I am pleased to say we already meet all the mandatory requirements.

The Public Service Anti-corruption Strategy remains the blueprint for anti-corruption work in the public sector and its implementation is part of the core mandate of DPSA's Public Service Anti-corruption Unit.

The Strategy is in its last year of implementation and the focus will be on:

• Implementing new stringent screening mechanisms for employees
  
• Presenting draft legislation to regulate post-public sector employment and the employment of corrupt individuals
  
• Having adequate capacity in all departments to fight corruption as it occurs in these departments, including accredited ethics officers
  
• Establishing capacity-building and orientation programmes aimed at anti-corruption practitioners, including the magistrates and prosecutors responsible for administering the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act and secondly employees in general to make them risk and ethics-aware within the context of our Batho Pele values
  
• Commencing with data integration and analysis within the Corruption Management Information System that was developed on Open Source Software as a collaborative effort of the DPSA, CPSI, SITA and the CSIR.

DPSA regularly receives requests for support with anti-corruption work in departments, public entities and local governments. We will continue to provide assistance wherever we can. A major area of concern is local government: their needs will be accommodated in the Local Government Anti-corruption Strategy being developed in the Anti-corruption Coordinating Committee, in which the Department of Provincial and Local Government participates.

The Second National Anti-corruption Summit will take place in November. The event will seek to strengthen inter-sectoral cooperation and assess our progress in addressing corruption measured against global standards and our national requirements.

The Summit will also define the national anti-corruption programme for the next decade.

INTEGRATION

Public services have traditionally been delivered by separate agencies each responsible for a discrete, specialised area. It has become increasingly apparent that this approach often does not work. All too often poor communities receive an incomplete package of services they require. Since some services are necessarily preconditions for accessing other public services or for further development, many development initiatives fail to improve people's quality of life and social resources are not optimally used. In this regard we must recognise the pivotal role that the Department of Home Affair's citizen services play in development and service delivery. Without a valid ID number people cannot access grants and state support, they cannot exercise their vote and find great difficulty in operating in the formal economy.

This has led to a growing recognition of the need for public services to be integrated at many levels and in many different ways. If we have learnt one massive lesson from the intervention in the Eastern Cape it is the need for integration across government. If we analyse the Budget Votes delivered hitherto this is a theme that emerges time and again. Note the comments that the Minister for Trade and Industry has made for better use of the integrated development planning process as well as improved inter-governmental relations. For example, community planning needs to have an integrated nature so that the full spectrum of needs is considered and addressed. Organisational learning and best practices should be integrated into standard service delivery procedures to achieve greatest impact.

I am convinced of the benefits to be achieved by promoting public service integration in a thoughtful, critical way. Some of the key initiatives that we will be pursuing in this regard include creating a single public service, making good use of information technology, deploying Community Development Workers and the creation of Multi Purpose Community Centres.

Allow me to elaborate on some of these. The public service in South Africa comprises national and provincial governments and does not include the local government sphere and public entities.

It has recently been agreed that we need to give effect to the Constitution regarding the creation of a single public service that will encompass all three levels of government. This has become necessary specifically to facilitate the mobility of our public sector human resource capability. The differentiation in dispensations of conditions of service has become an obstacle to achieving mobility. In order to address this framework legislation will be drafted to centrally regulate and standardise conditions of service in the Local Government sector. Once conditions of service in the Local Government sector are centrally regulated and standardised, mechanisms to ensure smooth transfer, mobility and deployment of staff across the three spheres of government can be put into effect.

DPSA has already developed a Policy Framework to facilitate mobility between the three spheres of Government. The framework provides guidelines on transfers and offers advice on how to manage the transfer of benefits, such as pensions.

Government has for some time also been concerned about the number of public entities and their very different performance levels. The diversity of public entities has in some ways resulted in the fragmentation of government service delivery.

In order to ensure that public entities are implementing government's policy goals, and to ensure that entities are accountable and have sound systems in place, the DPSA and the National Treasury are conducting a review of the corporate governance, HR and procurement practices, corporate forms and the classification of public entities. The project will be finalised in July 2004. An overarching regulatory framework for public entities will be developed in line with the findings of the project.

The Batho Pele e-Gateway provides comprehensive information on government services from a single portal that can be found at the government website www.services.gov.za. We will be formally launching the first phase of the Batho Pele e-Gateway project next month.

Phase One of the Batho Pele e-Gateway has recently been completed and access to the portal will be possible at selected Multi-Purpose Community Centres and at 55 Post Office sites including through Public Internet Terminals. The MPCCs selected for Phase One implementation are located across eight on the nine provinces, at Mbazwana (KZN), Sterkspruit and Tombo (EC), Mapela (Limpopo), Atlantis (WC), Galeshewe (NC), Namahadi (FS), Mpuluzi (MP) and Lerethlabetse (NW). The Universal Services Agency and Sentech have contributed to this process by providing connectivity in these sites, many of which are in deep rural areas.

Phase 2 of Batho Pele e-Gateway will include: the consolidation of the information on the portal; the development of the payment engine to facilitate transactions; the development of a mechanism for user authentication; the alignment of back-office IT systems to facilitate on-line transactions; and the expansion of the existing access points (MPCCs, Post Offices, local and provincial Gateway Service Centres). We will develop effective partnerships with the private sector and NGOs, to leverage off existing infrastructure and utilise other opportunities for integrated service delivery, particularly within the development nodes.

The portfolio, primarily through SITA and the CPSI, will continue to identify more effective ways of using technology to introduce efficiency into the service delivery process, to improve integration and coordination as well as to bring the benefits of technology to the poorest of the poor. The results of five mobile technology pilot projects testing the use of wireless technologies in improving services will be made available by early 2005. The portfolio will continue to support the more effective utilisation of Open Source technology in the public sector.

CDWs

Community Development Workers is a new type of public service employee specially tasked with assisting and enabling social development. They will be tightly integrated with community structures and assist in breaking through layers of government and bureaucratic inertia. They will be public servants on a mission! They will ensure that local development initiatives are taken forward in planning instruments at higher levels of government. The CDWs are the realisation of a dream that those with a developmental perspective to governance have been sharing for some time.

My Ministry has developed and implemented a Community Development Worker training programme in the form of a learnership registered through the Local Government and Water SETA.

495 learners were enrolled in a CDW learnership to give them proper training to prepare them for their role. I am happy to acknowledge the presence of some of these learners today. They are Bennie Kekana, Maude Pretorius and Dumasile Tshabanqu, all from Gauteng. From Limpopo we welcome Marvin Ngubeni, Jacob Lebogo and Jan Mashala.

An additional intake of 745 learners will be enrolled by the end of July 2004. 200 municipalities have been identified for the deployment of the learner CDWs.

Working with provincial and local governments, DPSA will ensure that CDWs are deployed in the 21 identified urban and rural nodes by the end of this calendar year.

RED TAPE

In my Budget Vote speech last year, I mentioned that Government had become concerned that many of the procedures and processes intended to regulate and manage the Public Service are impeding the pace of service delivery as they constitute obstructive red tape. The Minister of Home Affairs in her Budget Vote referred to this phenomenon quite strongly.

In South Africa red tape has been identified as a prime barrier to effective service delivery and therefore one of the main barriers to effectively realising the objectives and the spirit of Batho Pele.

In March the DPSA, CPSI and SITA launched a report, entitled - "From Red Tape to Smart Tape: Easing the administrative burden of public service delivery". The purpose of the report was to provide an empirical basis for discussion on the matter and therefore aimed at seeking solutions.

At the same time, I also announced and launched the Red Tape Challenge in order to put red tape at the centre of Public Service discourse and attention. The first Challenge closes at the end of July, after which point the most innovative and effective solutions will be selected for recognition and implementation.

Thus far we have received just about 100 submissions from the citizens and public servants. We are in the process of analysing the responses received; and will continue to do so until the closing date of 31 July 2004.

The suggestions have focused on service delivery in general with specific submissions dealing with red tape and perceived red tape in dealing with the public service. We also need to deal with the responses in a mature manner, thus any negative criticism or comments received must be seen in the spirit of building a people centred public service.

Madam Speaker, I wish to give the house a brief insight into some of the comments received. Numerous comments have been received on how we can improve the number and format of the forms used in the Department of Home Affairs for the various life events. We will consolidate all these ideas and take the matter further with the department. We will have to take cognisance of the legal implications of implementing some of the suggestions. This sentiment on the use of forms in the public service is shared by a Mr. Patric Tariq Mellet, from Cape Town, who states, "that there are too many complex and poorly designed forms" and "the forms become an end in itself rather than a means to an end".

It is interesting to note that most suggestions from public servants deal with the lack of adequate delegations in departments. A Mr. Tony Brutus from the Department of Water and Forestry comments, "I am entrusted with ensuring we comply with complex and intense procedures, but I am not entrusted with being able to balance an account." This was in response to his inability to pay an account to another parastatal - the South African Post Office - "because the payment system (BAS) requires particular forms". Perhaps, it is time that we seriously reconsider the delegations in operation in all departments at national and provincial level. This can be a challenge to line departments to be proactive.

INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMME

As part of South Africa's foreign policy a series of active international and regional engagement have been implemented. This is in recognition of the fact that our own development cannot be isolated from developments in the region and across the globe.

In the area of public sector reform it is a constant effort to create and maintain the space in which our African efforts can be suitably customised for our own circumstances, and to resist the factors that are prompting us internationally to conform to a predominantly Western way of working.

To highlight this factor allow me to re-interpret for the African context a comment of Gabriel García Márquez in the lecture that he made during the 1982 Nobel Prize awards ceremony on the relationship between Latin America and Europe.

"Africa neither wants, nor has any reason, to be a pawn without a will of its own; nor is it merely wishful thinking that its quest for independence and originality should become a Western aspiration. However, the navigational advances that have narrowed such distances between Africa and the West seem, conversely, to have accentuated our cultural remoteness. Why is the originality so readily granted us in culture so mistrustfully denied us in our difficult attempts at social change? Why think that the social justice sought by progressive Europeans for their own countries cannot also be a goal for Africa, with different methods for dissimilar conditions?"

Over the next year I will work at consolidating past efforts and balancing international involvement with local and regional challenges.

We will at the end of this year launch the African Management Development Institutes Networks (AMDIN). Such a network will enhance the performance of the institutes and ensure that they lead African capacity development efforts.

In August we will also be releasing a report on donor support to public sector reform in Africa. The report is expected to shape future thinking and policies on donor assistance to public administration.

A project is also being prepared that will enhance African intellectual leadership in public administration. Over the next few months various practitioners, politicians and academics will be brought together to reflect on the public administration challenges and strategies in Africa. This process will culminate in the development of a summary brief to guide public administration reform over the next few years. This will be one of my central contributions to the 5th Pan-African Conference of Ministers to be held in 2005.

An important international engagement is our active participation in the NEPAD Peer-Review Process. My Ministry will be leading South Africa's participation in the review process. We will, as a matter of urgency, establish the internal processes needed for the review process and will ensure that we work with the APRM Secretariat to ready SA for its review due to take place in the first quarter of 2005.

INTERVENTIONS

Our work during the past year, specifically in the Eastern Cape but also elsewhere indicated the need for us to change the manner in which the DPSA has been working thus far. We will have to change from an arms length approach that we have maintained over the first decade of democratic government to one that is very practical and constructively engaged.

Our experience in the Eastern Cape has helped to define an operating model for integrated institutional support that is being refined for use elsewhere. As part of this the DPSA is preparing to implement an early warning system and a structured system for providing institutional support.

Getting Home Affairs working properly in the foreseeable future will be a major step in ensuring that all South Africans receive the kinds of public services they deserve. Accordingly we will provide unconditional support to this key department in realising its turnaround strategy.

In his recent State of the Nation Address, the President indicated that one of the three pillars of government's strategy of fighting poverty and underdevelopment is the building of a social security net to meet the objective of poverty alleviation.

During this financial year our team will be focusing on the setting up of the Social Security Agency so that it is operational by April 2005.

Institutional turnaround and interim management require scarce, highly specialist skills that need to be fostered and nurtured if they are to be available when required.

I have therefore resolved this year to start the process of creating a specialist capacity to house the expert skills needed to quickly address service delivery failures in a sustainable, developmental way.

M&E

The importance of accurate and reliable information in improving performance cannot be overstated and has been recognised by the President in his call for monitoring and evaluation (M&E) to be treated as a national priority.

As part of the work planned in the Governance and Administration cluster we have identified the need to ensure that all department s undertake rigorous, integrated monitoring and evaluation internally as well as the need to create a government wide monitoring and evaluation framework.

Consequently the Department of Public Service and Administration is establishing monitoring and evaluation functions in all its programmes as well as an overarching planning, monitoring and evaluation function to attend to the combined impact of all its programmes and that of other institutions within the Ministry.

The thread needed to link many elements of the public service management framework is that of performance management.

While a basic policy and implementation framework is already in place, it is not being implemented with the necessary rigour and as a result, individual performance often does not get properly assessed and improvement has not become a feature of workplace culture in the public service.

Departments have had the opportunity to implement and apply the Performance Management and Development System at senior management levels for just over two years now.

An exercise was recently launched to determine the extent to which departments have complied with the requirements of the Performance Management and Development System and to provide departments with an opportunity to comment or give inputs with a view to review and improve the system. The results of this research will be finalised by the end of October 2004.

Experience has shown that in a number of instances, there are signals that can be identified to serve as early indicators that service delivery may be compromised in certain institutions.

During the past financial year, we have developed a framework for an Early Warning System on service delivery that will direct our intervention activities referred to earlier on.

The framework contains specific indicators whose monitoring will help managers identify areas of potential risk to institutional performance before these actually impact negatively on service delivery.

The framework will be implemented in targeted departments and be refined as implementation is rolled out to others.

GRATITUDES

In conclusion I would like to express my gratitude to the Chairperson and members of the Portfolio Committee on Public Service and Administration for their consistent support and dedication.

To the African National Congress from where I always draw inspiration and dedication, my sincerest thanks.

I would also like to thank the Chairperson of the Public Service Commission, the Directors General and the Chief Executive Officers of the institutions in my portfolio.

I am pleased to announce the appointment of a new Director General for the DPSA, Professor Richard Levin.

I would like to extend a special word of thanks to Mr. Alvin Phumudzo Rapea for leading the DPSA as Acting Director General for over a year.

Since my last budget vote Mavuso Msimang has taken over at the helm of SITA and he is already making significant progress with strategically refocusing the activities of SITA. He is actively involved in a process of formulating an ICT charter for the industry with a view to promoting BEE initiatives in the sector.

I also wish to thank the Boards of SITA and CPSI and note the difficulties experienced by the Board of PSETA over the past year.

Finally I would like to thank the officials of these departments and institutions for their hard work and dedication. Without their efforts we could not continue to make great strides towards building a better life for all.

Die staat wat fokus op ontwikkeling vereis dat die staatsdiens in alles wat dit doen kwessies van armoede sal aanspreek. Die staatsdiens moet sigself bemoei met die tweede ekonomie deur noodsaaklike sosiale en ander dienste wat ontwikkeling en ekonomiese groei ondersteun, te bevorder. Die staatsdiens moet verseker dat alle dienste toeganklik is vir selfs die armste en mees kwesbare sodat hulle opsies en keuses in die lewe ook kan verbeter.`

The developmental state requires that the public service address issues of poverty in everything that it does. The public service must concern itself with the second economy by providing essential social and other services that facilitate development and economic growth. The public service must ensure that services are accessible to even the poorest and most marginalised so that they are given greater choices and better options.

All citizens and public servants can find inspiration from one of the respondents to the Red Tape Challenge, Mr Khehla Jonas Mashinini. He writes and I quote "I finally would really stress that this country deserves the best service delivery, in order to cement our modern democracy. The time has come for us all to work very hard to build together our beloved country South Africa." Baba Mashinini, Ngiyabonga.

Change is inevitable and after ten years our people are readying for the harvest. They are looking forward, with great anticipation to gather the fruits of freedom of our democracy. Our people have suffered much, they have sacrificed much and they are entitled to the fruits of freedom.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Jabu, Nothando, Themba and Solomzi, as well as my mother and mother-in-law for their consistent support. They keep me focussed and committed and give intense, but always constructive criticism.

The African intellectual and author, Ben Okri, provides us with much food for thought on the necessity for internal personal transformation to ready us to contribute to societal transformation. I quote:

Thousands of years of loving, failing, killing,
Creating, surprising, oppressing,
And thinking ought now to start
To bear fruit, to deliver their rich harvest.
Will you be at the harvest,
Among the gatherers of new fruits?
Then you must begin today to remake
Your mental and spiritual world,
And join the warriors and celebrants
Of freedom, realises of great dreams.
You can't remake the world
Without remaking yourself.
Each new era begins within.
It is an inward event,
With unsuspected possibilities
For inner liberation.
We could use it to turn on
Our inward lights.
We could use it to use even the dark
And negative things positively.
We could use the new era
To clean our eyes,
To see ourselves more clearly.
Only free people can make a free world.
Infect the world with your light.
Help fulfil the golden prophecies.
Press forward the human genius.
Our future is greater than our past.

Issued by: Ministry of Public Service and Administration
21 June 2004