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17 March 2009

Good morning

Welcome to the last briefing of the Governance and Administration Cluster in the current term of government.

Introduction
Government's critical focus since 1994 has been to democratise the State and improve its ability to better the lives of all our people. Working together with our people we set ourselves the task of ensuring that we create a state that is responsive to the needs of all the people of the country – A state that would, amongst others, ensure that basic services were available to all regardless of race, colour, gender or creed.

We were under no illusion that this task would need the total overhaul of the system we inherited and the co-operation of all the citizens of South Africa. We knew that unless we transformed the fragmented public service and put in its place new structures, systems and a new way of doing things, all our efforts would be in vain.

The construction of the democratic state is work in progress. The first decade saw major advances in this regard. They included the adoption of a democratic Constitution, unification of the fragmented apartheid state through the merger of separate entities, and restructuring of the public service. The policy and legislative framework for reconstruction and development was formalised. A new system of provincial and local government was established. Systems to integrate and co-ordinate government within and across the three spheres were introduced.

The experience of the past five years, has brought to the fore limitations of, but also the potential to enhance, state capacity to advance the goals of reconstruction and development.

Today South Africa boosts of a Constitutional democracy. We have strong representative institutions and an independent judiciary.

Democratic transformation and public participation
Successive policies and laws have helped deepen participatory democracy, while ensuring that we plant the seeds of a new and developmental public servant. Through our mechanisms, which include Izimbizo, ward committees, Thusong Service Centres and community development workers (CDW), we ensured that we broaden community participation.

Since 2001 we have regularly held Izimbizo, gone on provincial executive outreach programmes and increased the number of Thusong centres to 135.
We also have well over 3 000 CDWs and have ward committees in 98 percent of our municipal wards.

Traditional leadership
The Constitution provides for recognition of traditional leadership in the democratic dispensation. Several pieces of national and provincial legislation give effect to this provision, establishing a house of traditional leaders, defining the relationship to local government and specifying powers in the allocation of communal land.

Following Cabinet's approval of the establishment of the Department of Traditional Leadership last year, work has been done to ensure that the department starts functioning from 1 April 2009. The establishment of the department will ensure that matters of traditional leadership are dealt with at the highest level of management within government.

Promoting good governance
We have gone a long way in promoting good governance. Today our people have access to information in the State's possession.

The guiding principle in dealing with the people is that the people come first. The Batho Pele principles have ensured that the way public servants interact with the public improves.

Fighting public-sector corruption
Fighting corruption has preoccupied successive democratic governments. Government has steadily strengthened its hand to deal with corruption through the special investigating units and Special Tribunals Act, 1996, Public Service Anti-Corruption Strategy (2002) and the combating of Corrupt Activities Act, 2004.

Three anti-corruption summits between 2001 and 2008 have extended the fight against corruption to all of society.

As part of the rollout of the Local Government Anti-Corruption Strategy, 227 municipalities now have fraud prevention plans or anti-corruption strategies in place. The Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) has developed a conflict of interest framework for officials in the public service to deal with issues of corruption.

Public service and local government capacity
The first 10 years saw remarkable progress in unifying separate civil services into an integrated public service. The public service is now also more representative of society. Planning, monitoring and evaluation are being strengthened and we are continuously strengthening the management capacity of the public service.

Improving service delivery
The Department of Home Affairs (DHA) is improving operational management at civic services. The processing of enabling documents, including identity documents, birth, marriage and death certificates, has improved, and the turnaround times reduced drastically. Management of information statistics from the identity document (ID) Track and Trace system is being used on an ongoing basis to monitor provincial and head office performance. The monitoring of service level agreements and regular meetings with XPS Courier services has resulted in improved turn-around times in relation to the delivery IDs between the various DHA centres.

Public participation
The department has launched a communication programme to inform citizens to collect their IDs. Home affairs is currently producing an average of 120 000 IDs a month. There are currently 344 501 uncollected IDs at offices countrywide.

People who have lost their IDs are also being encouraged to apply for a replacement ID.

Once an applicant has applied for a reissue they can request a temporary identity certificate (TIC) to use while waiting for their ID to be produced. Registered voters may make use of a valid temporary identity certificate (TIC) for voting purposes if they do not have their green bar-coded identity document. However the department requests that people do not apply for a second ID if they still have their first ID in their possession. Recent research indicated that 67 percent of applicants did not bother to fetch their IDs because they still had another in their possession.

Despite the uncollected or unclaimed IDs, the Human Science Research Council (HSRC) reports that 97 percent of people on the voters roll have IDs to vote while Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) has managed to reach 23 million voter registration entry on the roll.

Fraudulent deaths
DHA stepped up systems and called on people who found that they were fraudulently declared dead while they are indeed alive to visit Home Affairs offices. People can still make use of the call centre (0800 60 11 90 toll free) to confirm their "Live" status. New programming is being put on the Track and Trace System, as an additional self-help facility for people to check "live" status via SMS and internet.

Office refurbishment
The department has refurbished 13 offices and is in the process of refurbishing 31 other offices countrywide.

The 13 refurbished offices to date are the following: Limpopo: Musina, Praktiseer; North West: Molopo, Temba; Free State: Botshabelo; Eastern Cape: Mount Frere, Lady Frere; Gauteng: Alexandra, Kempton Park, Soshanguve, Vanderbijlpark; Mpumalanga: Piet Retief, Nelspruit; KwaZulu-Natal (KZN): Tongaat, Amajuba.

DHA Client Contact Centre
The contact centre continues to perform exceptionally well, currently 98 percent of calls received at the Client Contact Centre were responded to within 20 seconds against the annual target of 80 percent.

Enhancing security
Online fingerprint verification

As part of the ongoing initiatives to ensure that it provides reliable support to the private sector and other government departments, the Department of Home Affairs met with the banking sector to look at the optimisation of the online fingerprint verification.

The online fingerprint verification system has been instrumental in reducing fraudulent access to the ID.

New passport system
A new passport machine has been installed and is currently being tested. With the arrival of the new technology the department will be introducing a new passport, with added security features, in April 2009.

ID smart card
Preparations to migrate from the green bar-coded ID book to a smart ID card are well underway. However delays in the awarding, by State Information Technology Agency (SITA) of the tender to produce the ID smart card, meant that the smart ID card could not be piloted in December 2008 as planned.

Anti-corruption
As part of home affairs' programme to eradicate corruption within its ranks, the counter-corruption unit has been working, together with South African Police Service (SAPS) and National Intelligence Agency (NIA), to identify, investigate and criminally charge officials involved in fraud and corruption. Joint investigations are also being undertaken into syndicates using fraudulent South African documents to smuggle people into the country. In December 2008, six other officials were arrested in Pretoria and Springs in one incident involving fraudulent documents. Out of this, three have been discharged from the public service. Another person linked to a fraudulent document syndicate, was arrested in Lebowakgomo, Limpopo on Monday, 9 February 2009). This brings to 67 the number of home affairs officials that have been arrested in the past 12 months.

Integration of planning
There is also more integrated planning across all spheres of government. Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) were adopted by all municipalities, which represents a 100 percent adoption rate.

Targeted groups
Apartheid's legacy of disadvantage and inequity weighs most heavily on sectors of society least well-placed to take advantage of the opportunities of democracy. For this reason, government has taken measures targeted at redressing inequities and promoting social justice for women, persons with disabilities, children and youth.

The recently launched JobACCESS Strategic Framework on the recruitment, employment and retention of persons with disabilities in the public service is one example of our determination to serve our people. The framework aims to strengthen compliance on the employment targets for people with disabilities in the public service.

Quality of service delivery
We have very briefly sketched our achievements. And in so doing acknowledge that the quality of service the public receives needs much improvement in many areas, informed by a stronger ethos of public service.

The macro-structure of the state is well established and fairly functional. The experience of working with the new co-ordinating mechanisms has brought new insights into what is needed to achieve the degree of integration that is necessary to achieve maximum impact.

The skills challenge
Understanding the performance of the state over the 15 years requires insight into the environment in which it operates. Much has been done to transform and democratise the state.

The challenges of state capacity are less to do with shortage of financial and other resources than with skills and institutional arrangements efficiently and effectively to deploy these resources. Service-delivery improvements are having some impact, but it is clear that local government faces a twin challenge of resources, and skills and systems, a challenge that is sometimes met by filling posts with people who do not have suitable skills.

Capacity Development Programme
In order to improve skills in the public service we have adopted a number of strategies. The Public Administration Leadership and Management Academy (PALAMA) (successor to the South African Management Development Institute SAMDI)) was inaugurated in August 2008, with a programme to bring about a large boost in public-service training in co-operation with other training institutions.

PALAMA recently signed partnership agreements with fifteen universities in three consortia to roll out the Executive Development Programme (EDP). These agreements will see the institutions train 1 000 senior public servants every year in the "hard skills" they need to manage and lead the public service at provincial and national level much more effectively than hitherto.

PALAMA is able to make a major contribution towards ensuring that the public service has the skills it needs to meet the economic and social challenges facing us as South Africans during this difficult period globally. Apart from universities, PALAMA has also developed a close partnership with academies and training units within provinces and local governments.

PALAMA has developed a four-day credit programme on Gender Mainstreaming Programme for managers in the public service. It is being rolled out and attended by managers in the public service at national and provincial levels. The one-day M&E and performance management courses were piloted with senior managers in KZN in December 2008 and a total of 291 officials have participated in various M&E courses.

A total of 16 000 public servants were trained from April 2008 to January 2009 on the Massified Induction Programme (MIP). This represents a 43 percent achievement against the 2008/09 target of 37 000. Strategies are in place to help improve the uptake of this programme and this includes a drive by PALAMA to present on MIP in top management meetings across the public service to ensure management endorsement and therefore improvement in participation levels by departments.

Technical deployments
Over 1 283 technical experts had been deployed to 268 municipalities since the commencement of Project Consolidate in 2005 to the end of December 2008. These have been in the areas of engineering (civil), finance (billing systems), town and regional planning (IDPs), project management and human resources development. Stakeholders include national sector departments like the Department of Local Government (dplg), Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT), Department of Water Affairs (DWAF), Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and National Treasury. Partnering stakeholders include the Development Bank of South Africa (DBSA) (Siyenza Manje Programme), Department for International Development (DFID), Ilima Trust, United Nation Development Programme (UNDP), German Technical Co-operation (GTZ), South African Institute for Civil Engineers (SAICE), South African Association of Consulting Engineers (SAACE), Institute of Municipal Finance Officers (IMFO) and United State Agency for International Development (USAID).

Skills audit
As part of the Local Government (LG) Skills Audit, 785 (54,5 percent) of 1 441 Municipal and Section 57 Managers have completed generic competence assessments in all 283 municipalities. Further, 8 568 (58,3 percent) of 14 693 employees in 23 municipalities, and the employees in one financial business unit in a metro below section 57 level completed competence-based skills audit questionnaires. Information was also gathered from 76 of 91 (83,5 percent) occupations in 53 of 57 (20 percent) municipalities targeted for the organisational development (OD) work stream. This is to arrive at baseline information on the proposed number of employees required per occupation, for providing an acceptable level of service in relation to the number of households a municipality is responsible to provide services to.

Performance Management System
The implementation of the Performance Management Systems (PMS) in municipalities has greatly improved with 223 municipalities having developed or reviewed their PMS frameworks. Of the 223 that have been developed or reviewed, 172 have been adopted by municipal councils. The establishment of Internal Audit Committees has also increased from 65 percent (184 out of 283) to 78 percent (220 out of 283.

Filling of posts at senior management
Local Government – Municipal Manager Posts as at January 2009

Positions: 283
Filled: 251
Vacant: 32
Women in posts: 20 (nine percent)
Signed Performance Agreements: 176 (70 percent)

Provincial and national Government – Senior Management Service Posts as at January 2009

Positions: 1 475
Filled: 1 218 (83,3 percent)
Vacancy rate:
Northern Cape – 31 percent
Free State – 19 percent
North West – 16 percent
Western Cape – 13 percent
KwaZulu-Natal – eight percent
Limpopo – 6,6 percent
Eastern Cape – four percent
Mpumalanga - ?
Gauteng – 0 percent
Signed Performance Agreements: 83 percent

Gauteng province maintains 100 percent employment rate.

Major lessons
One of the major lessons of the first 15 years of democratic government was the need to improve the performance of the state. While this need was acted on in many ways in the current mandate period, major trends requiring strategic attention have manifested themselves. They relate to matters critical to the capacity of the country to harness the commitment, energy and resources of society in joint action to advance towards the goals of democracy and development.

Completing the 2004-2009 mandate

Tasks to completed:

* 150 municipalities were identified to be supported in the development of their fraud prevention plans. 10 percent remain to be supported.
* The second National Anti-corruption Programme will be finalised.
* The Conflict of Interest Framework for the Public Service will be presented to Cabinet.
* The Impact Appraisal on the National Anti-corruption Framework will be presented to Cabinet.
* Continuously address the target of employing women in management positions.
* Implementation of the Local Government Strategic Agenda (2006-2011) is ongoing.
* Implementation of Human Resource Management Strategic Frameworks for the Public Service is ongoing.
* Implementation of public service and local government skills audits is ongoing.
* The rollout of the Accelerated Development Programme will commence in March 2009.
* Work to establish information and communication technology (ICT) connectivity and general service counters at Thusong Centres is continuing.

That in brief ladies and gentlemen, is our scorecard.

I thank you.

Issued by: Department of Public Service and Administration
17 March 2009