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28 October 2004

Introduction

President Mbeki has prioritised programme implementation as a major emphasis of the third democratic government. Accordingly, in line with the commitment to accountable governance, we have placed the Programme of Action (POA) adopted in June 2004 on the government website for public scrutiny.

Some of the highlights of the Governance and Administration Cluster during the reporting period covering September 2004 and October 2004 are reflected below.

Community Development Workers

The deployment of Community Development workers is a strategic priority of government to improve interaction between government and citizens. The Community Development Worker (CDW) Programme is one facet of government’s endeavour to bring public services closer to the people. The Programme also aims to ensure that information on services and development opportunities are accessible, in order to facilitate their effective utilisation, especially by poor and disadvantaged communities.

The Offices of the Premiers in all the provinces are responsible for the co-ordination of the Programme, whilst Local Government Departments within the Provinces provide administrative and logistical support. The National, Provincial and Local spheres of government work in close collaboration to effectively implement the Programme.

The learnership approach is operational in all provinces and it has been adopted to ensure the transfer of knowledge and the necessary skills together with practical exposure that are required in order to create a fully-fledged and qualified Community Development Worker. The Local Government and Water SETA (LGWSETA) is playing the leading role in managing and implementing the learnerships. Previously 495, to date 518 learners have been enrolled and deployed into 131 municipalities in line with the President’s directive that CDWs be deployed in the 21 nodal points.

The CDW Handbook and CDW National Policy Framework provide guidelines with regard to the attributes, identification, selection and appointment of the CDWs and help in ensuring uniformity in the implementation of the Programme in all nine provinces.

A project has commenced on the alignment of the CDW Programme with other community-based workers’ initiatives in other departments.

Forty learners from Gauteng have been trained and equipped with laptops to provide immediate access to information on government services.

Provincial Status Report:
NUMBER OF LEARNERS IN THE LEARNERSHIP

Province
Eastern Cape

Number of Learners Enrolled
180

Total Number of Learners Targeted
350

Province
Gauteng

Number of Learners Enrolled
166

Total Number of Learners Targeted
320

Province
North West

Number of Learners Enrolled
60

Total Number of Learners Targeted
300

Province
Northern Cape

Number of Learners Enrolled
112

Total Number of Learners Targeted
200

NUMBER OF LEARNERS TO BE ENROLLED:

Province
Free State

Number of Learners to be enrolled
100

Total Number of Learners Targeted
300

Province
KwaZulu-Natal

Number of Learners to be enrolled
150

Total Number of Learners Targeted
300

Province
Limpopo

Number of Learners to be enrolled
350

Total Number of Learners Targeted
350

Province
Mpumalanga

Number of Learners to be enrolled
100

Total Number of Learners Targeted
300

Province
Western Cape

Number of Learners to be enrolled
150

Total Number of Learners Targeted
350

Funding

The National Skills Fund has approved R 70 million for the implementation of the CDW learnership based on 2 840 learners or 10 per municipality. This grant will be utilised only for learner allowance and training provider costs. The LGWSETA has committed a further R4 million which will be used mainly for material development, project management fees, accommodation, assessment and certification.

Minister’s International Programme

Collaboration within the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) Framework

The Minister for Public Service and Administration engaged in an intensive international programme during the period under review in the framework of knowledge sharing and learning in key policy areas that pertains to governance and public sector reform. These are in direct support of various items on the Program of Action of the Governance and Administration Cluster. In addition, it contributes to giving effect to the India – Brazil - South Africa (IBSA) multi-lateral relations initiative that South Africa has embarked on, as well as taking part in initiatives that are in line with restoring the role of the developmental state in an effort to achieve social justice across the world in situations of significant inequality. In some instances there will be regional spin-offs in the SADCC region.

In September the Minister in the Presidency led an official visits to India, the Minister of Communications and the Minister for Public Service and Administration accompanied him on this trip. In October the Minister for Public Service and Administration led an official visit to Brazil. The brief to the delegations that accompanied her was to ensure the consolidation of very specific deliverables with institutions and individuals of the countries visited in the areas of e-government and ICT capability for improving government performance, human resource development, service delivery improvement, monitoring and evaluation as well as in the area of good governance practice.

There is an imminent signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Ministry for Public Service and Administration (South Africa) and the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions (India). The MOU covers three broad areas, namely e-government, Human Resource Development and Monitoring and Evaluation. The mode of co-operation between the two parties will include exchange of experts in the field of public administration, exchange of materials and information on technology and monitoring and evaluation, secondments of public officials from relevant institutions and human resource development training of public officials. Attention has been given to both aligning it to the agreement signed between the Ministry of Communications (South Africa) and the Ministry of Information Technology and Communications (India) and identifying specific projects that will commence immediately after the signing of the MOU.

Examples of the projects that have been initiated include:

* The offering by the government of India of 100 training slots to be used for skills development as deemed appropriate by the South African government defined in accordance with our areas of scarce skills needs in the public sector. The first group of officials to be trained through this arrangement will leave for India before the end of this year and SAMDI will lead this process.
* A Peer Review Mechanism on e-government involving specialists from India, Brazil and South Africa, to review e-government strategy and roll-out as well as the institutions involved in implementation, such as SITA in the South African context;
* Development of a curriculum for Community Development Workers that will enhance their ability to support communities and gather relevant data in a participatory manner;
* Utilisation of participatory methodologies for monitoring and evaluation of service delivery, with a particular emphasis on poverty reduction;
* Implementation of an ICT for Development knowledge exchange mechanism and piloting of innovative applications focused on poverty reduction;
* Secondment of highly skilled strategic and technical specialists from, amongst others, the National Informatics Commission, the Centre for the Development of Advanced Computing and the Department of Information Technology, to SITA for periods of between 3 and 12 months.

Moreover, successful discussions were held with both the Tata Group and Satyam Computer Services with a view to these companies increasing their activities and profile within South Africa. The chairperson of Tata Sons Ltd, Mr. Syamal Gupta has indicated their intention to consider the funding of appropriate initiatives in South Africa. Three proposals have been submitted in line with this offer, from the South African Management Development Institute and the Centre for Public Service Innovation.

Brazil and South Africa will sign an MOU that will provide a framework within which joint projects will be undertaken. Some of the initiatives that will start taking effect within the next six months are the following:

* E-government: SITA, CSIR, OGCIO (South Africa) and SERPRO, PRODEB and ITI (Brazil) as well as relevant institutions in India undertook to facilitate collaborative R&D, the piloting and customisation of innovative solutions, and making use of open source software and other appropriate technologies. The parties agreed to share and replicate best practice in IT solutions, systems and applications, and also to build the capacity of public sector officials to manage e-governance strategy and programmes.
* Service Delivery Improvement: The MPSA and the Ministry of Planning (Brasilia) undertook to share lessons and experiences in public reform with a particular focus on the development and implementation of policy frameworks, models and current projects that aim to the improve the access of citizens to government.
* Human Resources Development: The Ministry of Planning (Brasilia) and SAMDI (SA) have agreed to provide public servants from the two countries with learning opportunities in various training institutions, agencies and departments to ensure that learning is transferred into the public service workplace. Both parties also agreed to conduct research into best practice to procuring and managing the implementation of training internationally. SAMDI will customise successful courses presented in Brazil within the SA context.

* Anti-corruption: A partnership was established with Brazil around Global Forums IV and V to fight corruption on an international scale, share and replicate good practice and discuss methodologies for monitoring and evaluating the impact of corruption and anti-corruption initiatives on government performance and service delivery improvement.

Multi-lateral Organisations

The Minister for Public Service and Administration also delivered against a range of responsibilities in the context of two multi-lateral organisations – the UN and CAPAM.

The Minister participated in the Fourth International Forum on Social Development. The Forum is a follow-up initiative to the outcomes of amongst others the 1995 World Summit for Social Development and subsequent international gatherings. It seeks to promote international cooperation for social development to support developing countries that are not currently sufficiently benefiting from the globalisation process.

Minister Fraser-Moleketi was asked to speak as introductory speaker on the theme “National Policies for Sustainable Growth and Prevention or Reduction of Inequalities” with a special brief to reflect on the role of the State and its main machinery, the public service, in reducing inequalities. One of the key policy questions with respect to the public service reform agenda that has dominated discussion in recent years in South Africa is what kind of public administration machinery is necessary to support the developmental state and cope with our dilemma of the “two economies”. The Ministers’ participation in this event should be interpreted within the context of South Africa’s commitment to, and experience in, giving effect to the ideals of the developmental state, as well as contributing to the creation of a world order that will support social justice across the globe. The Minister also opened the informal debate on the theme of the forum that was organised in the context of the 59th session of the General Assembly.

The Minister for Public Service and Administration participated in the biennial meeting of the Commonwealth Association for Public Administration and Management in Singapore from 21 – 27 October 2004 where she fulfilled responsibilities as a Board member and Chairperson. South Africa has been affiliated to CAPAM since 1994 and it is an important policy think tank and capacity building body in terms of public administration and management across countries that belong to the Commonwealth. Much attention is given to knowledge exchange and practical lesson drawn amongst senior officials and other practitioners across Commonwealth countries and the association provides an effective platform to ensure that discussions around public sector reform are not overshadowed by focus on developed and IT sophisticated countries but that sensitivity for under-developed administrations is maintained.

As Chairperson to the CAPAM Innovations Jury, the Minister has been exposed to some of the most groundbreaking and far- reaching public sector modernisation developments and general public governance reform and transformation initiatives across a wide range of settings. This incredibly rich collection of ideas will be shared in the public service in the months to come.

The anchor event in Singapore was the 10th Anniversary Biennial Conference under the theme “Networked Government”. The main and sub-themes were (Theme 1: Many Agencies: One Government; Theme 2: Engaging Citizens; Theme 3: Networking beyond borders) was highly topical given the G&A Cluster POA. CAPAM contributes to the movement of ensuring that government integrates and coordinates its work with the entire spectrum of organisations that find themselves in the public governance landscape and optimise unity of purpose, notwithstanding a diverse organisational landscape. Partnerships and electronic government are but two mechanisms that were discussed in this regard.

In her formal input under sub-theme 2, the Minister showcased South Africa’s Imbizo initiative as an example of governance reform that holds great potential for engaging citizens particularly in the implementation of public policy and programmes, as well as evaluating performance of government and its officials against the expectations of communities. She once again used the opportunity to emphasise the need for a strong centre to process the feedback received from the Izimbizo and to use this information to stimulate further action in improving the situation of the poor and marginalised, and also to inform future decision-making.

Official meetings with her counterpart in the Singapore Cabinet and the Singapore Minister of Foreign Affairs were held to ensure renewed impetus in a technical assistance programme that Singapore has structured to assist capacity development in the South African public sector. Within three months a new schedule for accessing this assistance will be exchanged between the two countries. The schedule will be mindful of identified scarce skills in the South African public sector, and specific strengths and experience that Singapore can offer. The technical assistance programme will also be structured to feed into our attempts of retaining top-ranking public service managers.

South Africa’s Support to the Democratic Republic of Congo Post Conflict and Reconstruction Effort

Developments with the DRC project intervention, aimed at supporting the transition and building confidence in the DRC public institutions, have increased in momentum. This increase in the pace for implementing the activities in the collaboration is informed by the identified need to strengthen efforts that will ensure that the pre election and transition phase of the DRC is peaceful and that the requisite mechanisms are in place for the elections to take place. In this regard, the focus of the collaboration and our intervention in the DRC has become more focused on the immediate objectives of building citizen confidence in the DRC public service and its institutions, while also strengthening the capabilities of the public service in terms of its basic administration. Within this framework, two critical activity areas have been jointly identified between the South African Minister of Public Service and Administration and her counterpart in the DRC. These areas of intervention focus on two areas: first, to conduct a public service census with the aim of developing a registry and database of the DRC public service; secondly, the development of a strategic framework that directly reinforces the DRC’s efforts to root out corruption and strengthen its anti-corruption initiatives across its public service. The project activities will be directly driven by senior officials who will be deployed to provide on-site and direct project implementation responsibilities within the DRC. The deployment of designated senior officials is presently scheduled to take place in the next 2 months.

Developments from the Conference of Ministers

The Pan African Minister’s of Public Services met for a series of meetings aimed at ensuring that the implementation of the NEPAD Capacity Building programme on Governance and Public Administration continues the required manner. Many African Ministers of Public Service were in attendance, including Sudan, where the urgency for post reconstruction and public institution capacity development has increased. Minister Fraser-Moleketi’s deliberated upon the need for building the technical capabilities required to more effectively manage the human resources of the public service such that they are able to more effectively respond to the development challenges which currently confront Africa. In this regard, valuable country experiences from across the continent were shared in an effort to build an African understanding of the lessons learned from public sector reform experiences. These included experiences from Namibia, Lesotho, Ghana, and Nigeria, to name a few. The Conference also reflected on some perspectives from union representatives regarding public service restructuring, and experiences were shared from global contexts such as those from OECD member countries as well as China. One of the most critical outcomes of the Conference was the re-affirmation of the importance of knowledge exchange and lessons- sharing as these serve to reinforce the importance of improving and strengthening efforts to ensure that policy choices across the continent resonate within the framework of the African Union and NEPAD as well as their concomitant objectives of strengthening Africa’s efforts to rebuild, renew and demonstrate leadership and ownership for its development.

The Africa Peer Review Mechanism

The preparatory processes for the African Peer Review Mechanism are underway. Of critical importance has been the establishment of an operational steering committee within the Ministry of Public Service and Administration. This internal steering committee is responsible for providing direct support to the Minister as is responsible for ensuring that the necessary preparatory activities and review process take place in an appropriate manner. The focus of the preparations is on ensuring that the lessons of those APR processes that have taken place are utilised and that the approach taken by South Africa is in line with a coherent strategic framework that enables the mobilisation of participation across all sectors of the South African society while fulfilling our obligations, as per accession to the review. It is important to ensure that this broad based participation builds on and consolidates our stated national vision for the manner and pace of our development as a country. Such participation should also enable us to take stock of our performance as government and as a nation and to find better ways to implement our priorities. In this manner we will be able to provide practical solutions to those areas of our government programme that continue to pose challenges in delivery. During this initial phase and in the next several months, we will be identifying the most appropriate mechanisms and governance frameworks to ensure that the process is impeccable in its integrity and that it is as inclusive as possible. In line with the requirements of the APR process, we will be generating a self-assessment report that will demonstrate government’s on-going efforts to critically review its performance.

Batho Pele Gateway

The Batho Pele Gateway Portal has been operational since the national launch on 3 August 20004.

* Gateway Portal and Call Centre Usage Patterns

Usage statistics from the gateway portal indicate that there was a total of 310, 706 and 512 visitors in the months of August 2004, September 2004 and October 2004, respectively. The overall number of visitors during these aforementioned months were 489, 1254 and 880, respectively. Whilst government recognises the usage of the portal, we acknowledge that the distinct benefits of using the portal are not yet widely known. There is a need for a planned programme of intervention to promote greater usage of this facility.

The toll free 1020 call centre, available on a 24x7 basis in six languages, has thus far been credited with saving time for those citizens not equipped with computers and the Internet. The call centre usage follows a regular pattern. The peak utilisation occurs between 15:00 – 16:00 each day. In order of popularity, the languages used at the call centre include English, Zulu, Venda, Xhosa, Sotho and Afrikaans.

During September 2004, 13,259 calls were received relating to services for foreigners. Another 13,476 calls were received relating to services for organisations and 42,167 calls were received relating to services for individuals.

National departments continue to add and update service related content to the portal to ensure that citizens are provided with relevant and user-friendly information.

* Research into Gateway Effectiveness

DPSA and the GITOC are engaged in a research project to empirically determine the benefits of the Gateway Portal and the call centre in terms of helping citizens to locate service information more quickly and accurately. While the research is not yet completed, the preliminary results suggest that the Gateway has the potential of enabling semi-computer literate citizens to gain useful service information in half the time relative to the less literate citizen. The higher the ICT literacy, the higher the service advantage from the portal. This indicates that digital inclusion has a distinct economic benefit.

In one experiment, it took on average 6 to 13 minutes to find most of the information on the Gateway Portal as opposed to 10 to 25 minutes when contacting the department per telephone.

* Citizen Feedback

The portal allows citizens to critique any aspects of the portal design and content, and comments have been helpful and taken into account in the continuous improvement of the project. The main objectives of this project are to improve the readability of the current content, to translate the content into the remaining 10 official languages, to introduce a more automated content management approach, and to equip the remaining 54 MPCCs with the Gateway Portal facility. The first 9 MPCCs were already equipped with the Gateway Portal at the time of the national launch in a pilot approach. Work is now in progress to establish this as an integral feature of all the MPCCs.

Extensive consultation is in progress for the E-Government Phase II programme. This includes members of government, parliamentarians, SITA, IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa) alliance partners, the private sector and citizens at large.

On Innovation for Improved Service Delivery

“From Red Tape to Smart Tape”

Early in July, Government launched the Future Watch Report on Reducing Red Tape in the Public Service, entitled “From Red Tape to Smart Tape”. The report aimed to stimulate thinking about new technologies and processes to enhance the work morale and to identify practices and processes that hamper effective service delivery. Both the members of the Public and Public Servants were invited to submit ideas on red tape reduction and the removal of unnecessary bureaucracy. The challenge closed on July 2004.

An external panel consisting of Public and Private sector managers was appointed to evaluate the proposals during August 2004.

In total 58% of all submissions were from public servants and 42% were from citizens. Eleven proposals were selected out of the submissions and the winners will be announced in November 2004.

In addition to the Red Tape Challenge, the Department of Public Service and Administration has made available an email address on its website where public servants and citizens can communicate with government and forward proposals to redtapetosmarttape@dpsa.gov.za.

Review of Public Entities

Government has initiated a programme to review Public Entities in order to develop a coherent regulatory framework for enhancing their governance, management, accountability and service delivery.

The objectives of the Public Entities Review include:
* The development of a classification framework supported by sound governance practices.
* A legislative reform programme.
* The promotion of a unified machinery of government in line with the constitutional values and principles for public administration.
* The provision of guidelines on accountability, governance, procurement, human resources and performance management.

This work provides a synergy with the programme on the Single Public Service system, particularly on issues of human resource deployment and remuneration and conditions of service. Government aims to enable mobility of human resources across all its spheres and the current human resources regimes are conducive to this objective.

Single Public Service

Providing seamless, integrated service delivery through a single window or access point is a major priority of government, and is one of the central objectives of the Single Public Service programme. Another is the need to ensure mobility between the spheres in order to ensure optimal utilisation and deployment of human resources.

Mechanisms have been introduced in government to facilitate transfers of functions and personnel across the spheres of government. The Ministry for the Public Service and Administrative has issued a transfer framework as a directive in terms of the Public Service Act. The framework can also be utilised by the Minister of Provincial and Local Government for implementation in the local sphere.

A study has recently been conducted comparing the conditions of service in the public service and local government. The findings indicate that both spheres have uniform systems including Job Evaluation in place, while they are both geared towards single medical aid and pension schemes.

Nevertheless, there are aspects in the conditions of service that are still different, for example diverse bargaining structures and systems which pose a challenge for the attainment of a Single Public Service.

Some of the work that has been initiated in this area includes the transfer of staff from local government to provincial government, which national legislation requires of the Department of Health. The cost implications are considerable, owing to the differences in conditions of service, but agreements have been concluded and the transfer of staff has begun.
The Department of Water Affairs and Forestry is also in the process of transferring approximately 8 000 employees from national government to local government in terms of the requirements of the Constitution.

Loss of tax benefits in transferring from one pension fund to another poses a challenge, but representatives of the Government Employees’ Pension Fund are engaging with SARS to obtain clarity and solve this problem.

SALGA continues with its rationalisation of conditions of service in the local government sphere. It is working towards a single defined contribution pension fund, and is reducing the number of medical aid schemes by a progressive process of accreditation. Other conditions of service are also being rationalised.

To complement the rationalisation process, DPLG is developing employment legislation for the local government sector. A discussion document has been developed.

The Governance and Administration Cluster has compared conditions of service and bargaining arrangements in the public service and local government and proposed a two-stage process for the establishment of a Single Public Service system. The first stage involves amending existing public service legislation and formulating legislation to establish uniform conditions of service for local government. The second stage will involve the formulation of framework legislation for the public sector as a whole, including Public Entities.

Implementation of Batho Pele

Cabinet recently approved the revitalization of Batho Pele in the Public Service. Batho Pele is about reconfiguring the service delivery machinery of government so that it gives primacy to the convenience and needs of the citizens.

The Batho Pele revitalisation programme focuses on four main themes:

* Taking public services to the people,
* Know your rights campaign,
* Citizen relations management, and
* Mainstreaming and institutionalising Batho Pele.

Several new and existing projects have been clustered under each of these four themes. The Programme comprises of 23 interdependent projects that differ in scale, complexity and timelines for implementation.

The following progress has been made so far:

* SMS deployment to coal face service challenge:

This phase involves the deployment of SMS members to a service delivery institution in order to gain first hand experience of service delivery challenges. This will ensure that SMS members develop policies that consider realities at the coalface of service delivery, thus avoiding consequences of adverse policy implementation.

The SMS training programme will be launched on 1 – 5 November 2004 during the Public Service Week (PSW) in Mpumalanga.

* During the PSW, participants will be given a questionnaire on issues affecting service delivery and that information will be used for the training of the deployed SMS members which starts on 8 - 20 November 2004.
During the first phase of deployment, three groups of SMS members will undergo training on service delivery from November 2004 - January 2005.
* The second phase of deployment will involve the actual deployment scheduled for February 2005.

Deployed SMS members will be expected to produce a comprehensive report on challenges identified during their deployment in the respective departments, which in turn will inform future deployment of SMS members.

Government-Wide Monitoring and Evaluation System

Public service reforms over the past decade have improved governance and increased accountability through enhanced planning, budgeting and financial and general management. Legislation such as the Public Finance Management Act and the conscientious work of oversight bodies have supported the monitoring and evaluation process. National and provincial departments are generally better managed and are becoming increasingly citizen oriented and service driven.

In keeping with the government’s long-standing drive to modernise the public service and increase its effectiveness, the focus is now on the next important area of public management needing attention: monitoring and evaluation.

Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) is the element of management intended to increase effectiveness by tracking and measuring progress against plans and by critically assessing outcomes and impacts.

Cabinet’s Governance and Administration Cluster has convened an M&E Task Team to establish a Government-Wide Monitoring and Evaluation system. The system will provide summarised, useful information drawn from various existing and new M&E systems.

Implementation of the project has already begun, including a review of existing M&E systems and a review of international good practice. Consultations are underway around appropriate performance indicators that can be used by departments across all spheres of government.

Concluding Remark

Greater strides have been taken in the past few months to improve service delivery, bring government services closer to the people, and heed the President’s call of bridging the gap between the two economies, and most importantly, to ensure a better life for all. However, we are not oblivious to the many challenges that we need to overcome in order to unleash the full potential of our developmental state.

Enquiries:
Madoda Mxakwe
Tel: (012) 314 7231
Cell: 082 462 7771

Issued by: Ministry for Public Service and Administration
28 October 2004