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5 November 2008

Programme director,
Members of the Executive Council,
Members of the Portfolio Committee on Office of the Premier (OTP),
Mayors and councillors,
Director-General, heads of departments, municipal managers and chief executive officers (CEOs) of public entities,
Members of senior management services and planners in government departments,
Our esteemed guests from national government and other provinces,
Distinguished ladies and gentlemen,

It is with a sense of humility that I stand here this morning to briefly share some thoughts with you on the occasion of this, our first provincial gathering on planning, monitoring and evaluation in the context of public sector service delivery. I must admit that I was a bit uncertain about the meaning of "Indaba" in the context of leadership of government setting aside two days away from their offices in what you would think should be serious business to advance the cause of the poor people of the Eastern Cape.

(These days you may find yourself in all kinds of meetings, some will be called "Convention", others "Indaba". I may not be surprised if they mean the same thing.)

Way back in the period leading to 2003, stakeholders and social partners in the Eastern Cape worked together to construct a strategic platform of development in which we could all hold a stake; set our 10 year vision of the Eastern Cape we sought to build; and committed our departments and institutions to the letter and spirit of this, the Provincial Growth and Development Plan (PGDP). A few years earlier, the 1998 White Paper on Local Government envisaged the introduction of Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) in the new system of local government, and in the recent past national government approved the National Spatial Development Perspective (NSDP).

Provincial stakeholders had this to say about the PGDP "The PGDP gives the Eastern Cape the opportunity for medium-to-long range (10 year) strategic planning to prioritise and address major structural deficiencies in the economy and the conditions of society. The challenges of provincial government transformation relate to the need to strengthen and integrate planning for provincial socio-economic development, while leading the process of decentralisation of service delivery to district and local municipalities."

Further, and perhaps conscious of the constitutional mandate, they said "provincial government will need to strengthen its policy, planning and oversight roles while delegating powers and functions to municipalities in a phased manner. This will be a challenging process requiring strong programmes to support management, planning and monitoring, and systems capacity in local government. Provincial government will need to take a lead in designing such programmes."

I suppose that part of what this Indaba should seek to do is to assess progress made thus far, appreciate new opportunities and challenges, and not allow this to be a mere talk-shop, but you should emerge with clear proposals and plans on how best we can improve the planning, resource allocation, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation landscape of the province.

Many amongst us will recall that the subject of this Indaba is the key element of the 'Public Sector and Institutional Transformation' pillar of the PGDP, and I believe will also agree that if there is one critical area of work that runs through the entire programme support system of government, and where we are failing dismally, that would be planning and monitoring.

The point here is that the electoral mandate of the present government in 2004 was based on 'A people's contract to create jobs and fight poverty.' The PGDP packaged a wide range of interventions to achieve this, including Agrarian transformation; diversification of the economy; infrastructure development, public sector and institutional transformation; etc, etc. The question I am raising is whether there was ever a deliberate effort of provincial government to make sure that all departments and institutions of the state develop plans that are aligned to this strategic task. I do get a sense that it was largely left to individual departments and entities to determine for themselves, for reasons best known to them, at their own pace how, from the planning point of view, they wanted to relate to the PGDP. In other words, there was no sense of co-ordination in the planning processes of government. If we can tell the truth, even the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) budget process has not come closer to addressing the problem because departments participate in it as a compliance issue, without substance in the nature and scope of programmes and projects to be undertaken over that period. In fact, I am on record to have said in the past that my observation is departments ask for and are given money, in the form of appropriated budgets, and later struggle to find justification of what they wanted money for in the first place. Look at the planning documents such as your annual performance plans that are submitted to executing authorities and legislatures, more often they lack substance, are without clear targets, and are often turned back for this or other reason.

Even government parastatals have little or no regard to what the specific policy priorities are for that particular period, and how do they position themselves in relation to that.

The consequence of this is usually demonstrated by the confusion that arises during implementation at the service delivery level often leading to non-realisation of the desired outcomes at community level. Again, the point I am making here is the province does not have a coherent plan that says, we have set ourselves to cut poverty and unemployment by half, and to grow the economy by between five to eight percent by 2014, but from the planning point of view, and as government as a whole, how do we get there, and how do we monitor progress in terms of whether or not were are getting there?

The same argument applies to how, as government as a whole, we relate to the IDP process as a municipal issue that we have very little, if anything, to do with. The result is that there is duplication of services, department's parachute projects, ward councillors are set on collision course with their communities, and no value for money allocated by government and approved by parliament.

Cumulatively, this is what has led to what others have called the service delivery crisis in the Eastern Cape. It is not because we have no money, but the system is clogged with inefficiencies arising predominantly out of poor planning and lack of monitoring of government programmes and projects.

Informed by these and other realities, in July this year we highlighted three strategic areas of focus as the need for (1) gearing up service delivery in key areas of need such as health, education and housing; (2) enhancing coherence within government and public institutions to deliver on the promise of a better life for all; and (3) laying the platform for future growth and development with particular emphasis on the next term of government.

In this regard, a lot of work has since been done culminating in the provincial service delivery turn-around plan costed to about R950 million in additional resources we need to make the desired impact. The experience gathered in this process was very useful for the Office of the Premier and departments, particularly those that worked painfully with us through that exercise. At least now we know what it takes to develop proper plans, project plans with clear targets and budgets. We also started monitoring meetings with departments, and all four focus area departments have been met, and we can now with confidence say we know their state of readiness to implement the turn around programme.

However, if you consider other critical areas in the PGDP such as infrastructure development, human resource development, and indeed, diversification of the economy and tourism development, I am arguing that the province lacks the kind of plans that seek to direct the work of government as a whole, and not only in the short term but medium to long term. Fourteen years into democracy, do we have a comprehensive infrastructure plan to wipe out the apartheid backlogs and provide basic services in the Eastern Cape? In recognition of the rich natural resources that our province is endowed with, do we have the plan, for example of how do we see the development of our beautiful coastline (the 'rusty jewel' of the Eastern Cape), and thus switch on the tourism light of our province? In the face of the skills challenges generally, but more particularly in the public sector such as shortages of nurses and pharmacists, mathematics and science educators, planners, project managers, civil engineers, etc, do we have a provincial plan on the basis of which I could stand here and claim that the people of the Eastern Cape have no reason to worry, everything is under control?

On the development front, provincial government has a proliferation of government agencies and public entities, municipalities are setting up municipal development agencies. But what is the plan? Do we know who is responsible for what, and thus optimize on the use of public resources? And may be stretching my point a little bit further, from the planning point of view, how relevant are we to the provincial economy as a whole? Do we, in our planning work as institutions and departments of government, ever take into account the needs of industry? For example, as we sit hear as leaders of government, and presumably the state, do we have a sense of what Mercedes Benz's, General Motors' or Volkswagen's needs are now and will be in five years to come? My sense is that we don't!

During November, the Premier and Members of the Executive Council will be at the service delivery sites to match implementation with the plans. Again this raises the question whether or not we have a system that is able to pick up problems and challenges early enough so that we may intervene as and when it becomes necessary. Or we read newspapers, and only then do we pick up problems about our own state institutions and service delivery entrusted upon us.

I think we need to thoroughly assess and build the planning, co-ordination and monitoring capacity of government, and in this regard, the Director-General has already started due diligence work with a view to setting up a fully-fledged branch in the Office of the Premier to be responsible for the overall co-ordination of government planning and the monitoring of government programmes.

I must indicate though that already in the recently conducted PGDP Assessment by the Office of the Premier through Eastern Cape Socio Economic Consultative Council (ECSECC), it has been revealed that provincial government's planning capacity, monitoring systems and centralised co-ordination capacity is weak. We leave it to this Indaba to prove us wrong, but we believe this is a fact. I also believe that improvements in the planning and monitoring and evaluation paradigm of departments, and government as a whole, will always be the function of the extent to which Head of Departments, Municipal Managers, Chief Executive Officers, and the Director-General (as the chief administrator in the province) take their planning work seriously, and prioritise it above everything else because, after all, planning should inform everything else. And talks to issues like not only going as 'invited guests' to your departmental and institutional planning sessions, but actively direct the work towards the attainment of the intended outcomes.

Similarly, you cannot continue to sign cheques and authorise payments without showing interest in whether such resources are, in fact, firstly being utilised for their intended purposes and secondly whether they are yielding the desired results. Otherwise, you will be embarrassed by your officials writing reports for you indicating that certain projects have been implemented, and yet they only exist on paper.

In conclusion, I wish to draw the attention of this Indaba to two issues that often are a source of concern to me. Firstly, resist the temptation to change planning frameworks and tools too often, in the name of transformation, to the extent that such changes do not make a sense at all to others.

Secondly, sustainable plans, and effective monitoring of the implementation of government programmes cannot be realized without the meaningful participation of the intended recipients of such programmes and plans (Nothing for us, without us!).

I wish all of you at this Indaba all the best, and may you engage in successful deliberations over the next two days.

I thank you.

Issued by: Eastern Cape Provincial Government
5 November 2008
Source: Eastern Cape Provincial Government (http://www.ecprov.gov.za)