Deputy Minister on Dept of Public Service & Administration; State Information Technology Agency (SITA) Annual Reports 2008/09

Meeting report

Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) presentation
Hon Roy L Padayachie, Deputy Minister of Public Service and Administration, greeted Members and apologised for the absence of the Minister, who was attending a Cabinet meeting.

Professor Richard Levin, Director-General, reported that during the 2008/09 financial year the DPSA had delivered on many critical projects and programmes. Where projects were not completed as planned measures had been put in place to address challenges. It had developed implementation and maintenance of policies and systems on job evaluation and grading, and maintained an effective and efficient programme management office to establish and co-ordinate a single public service. The 2015 Public Service Human Resources Development Strategy, approved in December 2008, was being implemented across all national departments. The DPSA was continuing to hold discussions with the Public Administration Leadership and Management Agency (PALAMA) to develop the roll out of the Action Learning Programme, for which financial commitments would be finalised during the 2009/2010 financial year. It was coordinating the implementation of human resources (HR) planning tools in the public service; as of 31 March 2009, it had received 62 final HR plans and 37 draft HR plans. The developed HR planning tools were piloted in two departments and tools were reviewed where necessary. It had extended the skills database project to 20 national departments, but completion had been delayed by problems with the updating of Persal information and extraction reports.

The DPSA had completed a report on assessment of the status of skills in the public service. It was collaborating with Higher Education South Africa and participating in university career open days. The Minister had approved the final Draft Wellness Management Policy for the Public Service. The DPSA had launched the JobACCESS Strategic Framework on the 3rd March 2009 and posted it on www.dpsa.gov.za . It had completed a report on the Public Service Women Management Week. The number of women in senior management (SMS) had increased slightly to 39%% (slide 49). The Public Service Women’s Week was hosted by most departments. The DPSA had developed occupation specific dispensations (OSDs) for social workers, emergency and medical personnel, pharmacists, medical officers and dentist, and medical and dental specialists. It had completed a research report on and a draft policy on a funding model for a policy on post retirement medical assistance post-retirement medical assistance. It had developed the new generation e-government framework; it had incorporated an information technology (IT) shared service model for the public sector into a new IT Plan for Government and undertook road shows countrywide; it was also developing the prototype system to e-enable the identified services and hoped to complete this during the current financial year; it had compiled a draft report reviewing the State Information Technology Agency (SITA) call centre to which end it had sent questionnaires to all national departments and to the nine provinces. It had trained 55 municipalities in Limpopo, Mpumalanga, and Free State on the development and implementation of service delivery improvement plans (SDIPs), and provided training on the Batho Pele Change Management Engagement Programme (BPCMEP) to additional municipalities, bringing the total number of trained officials to over 1 000, spread over 274 municipalities. Ten of the 33 national departments and 22 of the 106 provincial departments had submitted their SDIPs by June 2008, and the numbers increased marginally by the end of the 2008/2009 financial year. Bribery forums had been conducted. The Minimum Anti-Corruption Guidelines (MACC) had been developed and included in the Public Service Regulations to enforce compliance, and a financial disclosure system had been established. The foregoing really accounted for progress. The DPSA had translated the Know Your Service Rights (KYSR) booklet for the Social Cluster into all official languages and distributed it widely; it had also developed and provisionally approved the KYSR booklet for the Justice Cluster.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) the census in Kinshasa and Bas Congo had been completed and was 80% complete in Bandudu and Maniema. The project was launched in Kasai Orientale province. As part of providing support to the DRC 250 000 copies of the Anti-corruption Code of Conduct for public officials were delivered. Three senior DRC government officials visited the DPSA in a study tour to better understand the functioning of financial disclosure and the National Anti-Corruption Hotline. African Public Service Day (APSD) was celebrated on the 23rd June 2008. A panel made up of academics, non-government organisations (NGOs) and public servants robustly debated the theme from policy to results-based implementation.

Public Service Week (PSW) was celebrated during the week of 17-20 June 2008 across the public service with the Northern Cape province serving as a national hub. The Learning Network was convened in November 2008 and was attended by 790 participants from the three spheres of Government. The DPSA had completed its report on the network. In 2008/2009 just over 600 community development workers (CDWs) were recruited and trained in the CDW learnership and over 3 000 were deployed in municipalities through the country. It had developed a detailed database but the mobility of CDWs made updating difficult. It had completed the CDW national master plan and cascaded the process to the provinces. By the end of March 2009, seven draft provincial master plans had been developed.
 
The DPSA had, on 31 March 200, an establishment of 492 posts, of which 385 were filled. There was a turnover rate of 18.2% as of 31 March 2009 (slide 47). It was 3% short of the national target of 80% for black employees; for female employees it was 11% short of the national target of 50%, and 0.44% short of the national target of 2% for employees with disabilities (slide 49). Contract workers filled 24 of these posts additional to the establishment. The vacancy rate was 21.7% (107 posts) (slide 45). The bulk of the DPSA’s vacancies, however, were unfunded. Under the stewardship of the Minister, the DPSA was reorganising to match its budget (slide 46) and capturing its structure on Persal. Of the personnel budget 99.6% was spent. During this performance period 151 (30.7%) posts were job evaluated. Of the 151 posts job evaluated 9 posts were upgraded and 2 posts were downgraded. Of the 151 posts evaluated 18 people were upgraded due to their posts being upgraded. The turnover rate for the DPSA was 18.2% at 31 March 2009. The DPSA was joined by 69 people, while 20 people left because of death, resignation, expiry of contract, early retirement, severance package, or transfer to another department. At of the end of the 2008/2009 financial year, 77% of senior management staff members were black – this was 3% short of the national target of 80%; 39% were female – this was 11% short of the national target of 50%; 1.56% were disabled - this was 0.44% short of the national target of 2% (slide 49). Performance bonuses were awarded to 171 (49.09%) of 384 employees. 156 (51.83%) recipients were at levels 2 to 12, and 21 (25.30%) were senior management staff members. 110 recipients were female and 67 male. A total of R2, 836 million was spent on performance rewards. The DPSA employed two foreign workers: one at senior management level (level 13, the other in middle management (level 12), both men with specialist skills (slide 51. Strike action had involved 25 people. One person was suspended in order to carry out investigations; 11 were disciplined for misconduct. Training was given to 179 employees. Development interventions benefited 67 males and 112 females and one employee with disability. The DPSA had a Health and Wellness Committee with representatives from all branches and a senior management staff member responsible for it (slide 52).


Prof Levin reported an unqualified audit for 2008/2009, but admitted that it had had no updated, approved strategic human resource plan and no finalised, approved risk assessment and fraud prevention plan for 2008/2009. The Auditor-General had mentioned these under Other Matters.

By way of conclusion, Prof Levin said that the DPSA had worked hard to ensure optimal use of resources, and that a dedicated Programme Management Office monitored quarterly the execution of projects.

Discussion
Dr H van Schalkwyk (DA) asked what the remunerative policy framework for the single public service entailed and if there was information available to Members (slide 35), and what the criteria for receiving bonuses was (slide 50).

Ms F Bikani (ANC) thanked for the DPSA for the report, and asked what specific measures had been put in place to address challenges when projects remained incomplete. She asked about the implementation of the human resource development skills audit. There had been many problems with the municipalities; she said that the DPSA was spreading a gospel that was not successful. Hospitals and pharmacies were a good example of non-improving service deliveries. She asked about the National Anti-Corruption Hotline and if it benefited South Africa as a country and what had been done to ensure its success, about CDWs, who seemed to not know where they belonged, and about human resource management and vacancies - in particular why it was difficult to fill vacancies, how posts were advertised, and why only nine posts had been upgraded. She asked about the performance appraisals in local government, and the performance rewards. She said that the presentation did not tell the Committee abut the DPSA’s monitoring and evaluation strategies and how it ensured that they were established in each department. It appeared that the DPSA gathered information and left, but it was important to interact while monitoring.

Mr A Williams (ANC) said that some of his questions had been anticipated, but that there need to be serious intervention on the CDWs, who played a vital role but did not know to whom to report and were not being resourced sufficiently, or even provided printer paper to print reports. He complained abut the non-functioning of the Thusong Service Centres, which had not been mentioned in the presentation. There was no point in having a booklet on human rights if the Thusong Service Centres were not working. These Centres needed to be empowered, and services integrated.

Ms J Maluleke (ANC) commented on the training of 55 municipalities in Limpopo, Mpumalanga, and Free State on service delivery, and the spreading of this training over municipalities. She asked why there was so much dissatisfaction with service delivery despite service delivery improvement programmes, what the core areas of these training programmes were, and which municipalities were involved, and said that Members wanted to check the monitoring and evaluation of this training.

Mr L Suka (ANC) asked under which directorate CDWs fell. There was a gap in the monitoring of the community development workers. He also asked about persons with disabilities.

The Chairperson asked about anticorruption strategy, the indaba guide, which the Committee wished to study, and gender issues. She wished the Committee to meet the DPSA on the Thusong Service Centres. The DPSA’s high vacancy rate was an embarrassment. She asked about the Centre for Public Service Administration and the African peer review.

The Deputy Minister explained that the CDWs fell under the Service Delivery Improvement Unit of the DPSA; however, he had been directly involved in overseeing the CDW programme through this directorate. Perhaps the first thing to explain was that the CDWs together with the Thusong Service Centres were both service delivery interventions that originated in the DPSA. They were intended, particularly the CDWs, to be a mechanism that would straddle across the spheres of Government and close the gap between the poorest of the poor and Government services. However, the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs was responsible for the implementation of the programmes. At the national level there were two departments in terms of the Cabinet memorandum that had the responsibility nationally to co-ordinate the programme – the DPSA and the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs. However, the direct responsibility for the implementation of the programme was that of the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs. The CDW programme had suffered from falling between two stools – the DPSA and the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs. The DPSA had done much work to formulate guidelines, to guide the implementation of the programme, because the DPSA envisaged it as its responsibility to incubate the programme; and because there had been no consistent policy there had been much variability across the provinces.

He continued that the CDW programme was an inter-sphere programme originating nationally then devolved to the provinces. However, the CDWs were based in the wards of communities. It was a strange situation in which the provinces were responsible for implementing the programme; the CDWs had to work in wards; while oversight, management, and governance of the CDWs constituted a serious problem. Many officials complained that there was no monitoring or reporting on the CDWs. In some provinces the CDWs were located in the speaker’s office, in others in the municipal manager’s office, and in others the office of the mayor. The officials assigned to supervise CDWs were performing this duty as one of as many as 20 functions. To complicate matters, the entire budget for the programme was from the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs. The project was very under-resourced. Most of the CDWs were public servants of a special kind, who received, at best, their allowances; they had no transport, no cell phone allowances; some had laptop computers, but most of them did not. ‘There is absolutely no support from Government on these matters.’ As there was no dedicated funding from the National Treasury, the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs endeavoured to find the money to keep the programme going. The DPSA’s work on CDWs had been directed to finding a clear policy on the programme in order to achieve consistency of implementation across the provinces. In particular, it was important to resolve the question of funding, consistency of implementation, location of CDWs, and in particular resolve the duties of the CDWS, who were not intended to compete with councillors. Some CDWs occupied positions in political branches and used their political authorities to interfere in their work. He mentioned the six provincial summits and said that the Department needed to give the Committee a more comprehensive briefing on the subject.

Prof Levin replied that the DPSA examined the reasons for not implementing a project: it could be a problem of funding, or over-commitment on the part of the DPSA. With regard to human resource development in municipalities, the DPSA did not have a mandate over the municipalities, for that was the area of the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs. However, in the spirit of an integrated pubic service, the DPSA had begun to work with the latter Department in a number of areas. In the area of human resource development, the Batho Pele change management programme which was really about sensitising municipalities to Batho Pele. The Batho Pele white paper was applicable to the public service which consisted of national and provincial and local government. However, in view of moving towards an integrated public service the DPSA had developed a specific programme of training which was directed towards building internal capacity around Batho Pele principles. The DPSA was currently conducting an impact assessment of that programme.

Prof Levin said that the DPSA was endeavouring to give support to the head of public services in the DRC, including on anti-corruption measures. The DPSA had hosted visits from DRC officials. He responded on conferences attended. The United Nations had innovation awards, and South Africa had won such awards in various categories in the past. The challenge was to internalise within the public service the values reflected by such achievements. The DPSA had identified excellent innovations in the public service.

Prof Levin said that the DPSA did not have funding for all its vacancies, while its structure, as captured on Persal, did not match the DPSA’s resources. So the vacancies were not real vacancies. He admitted that weaknesses in management were substantially to blame. There were several Government departments like DPSA that lacked the budget to fill all the posts in their staff establishments. With regard to monitoring and evaluation, the DPSA on a quarterly basis examined key human resource indicators. In this quarterly report it incorporated National Treasury information. He offered to share one of these quarterly reports with the Committee. The DPSA was establishing a compliance monitoring system.

Prof Levin said that the Thusong Service Centres were currently under the stewardship of the Government Communication and Information Services. The DPSA had made a major contribution in establishing connectivity at 42 Centres in co-operation with SITA.

Prof Levin said that DPSA had carried out training on service delivery plans. Strictly speaking, the service delivery improvement plans had derived from the White paper on Batho Pele, which had focused on national and provincial Government. However, in the interest of moving towards a single public service, the DPSA had advocated service delivery plans across all spheres of Government, and had evaluated them across the spheres, and was conducted an impact assessment. However, the DPSA’s mandate in regard to local government was still evolving: local government was mainly the responsibility of the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs and the South African Local Government Association. With regard to anti-corruption, South Africa had acceded to a number of international conventions whereby it was committed to self-assessment according to international frameworks. A conference in Qatar would take place soon.

Mr Kenny Govender, Deputy Director-General: Management of Compensation, replied that the DPSA had conducted a review of salaries, benefits and bonuses across the three spheres of Government. The research had given the DPSA a number of options. The DPSA had consolidated the information into a remuneration framework for the single public service.

Ms Colette Clark, Deputy Director-General: Human Resources Management and Development, responded that the DPSA had jurisdiction only of the 146 departments that were covered by the Public Service Act. It did not have jurisdiction over municipalities. However, the DPSA did have a working relationship with the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs. The DPSA sought to link individual performance with organisational performance.

Prof Levin replied that there had been no terminations in the period under review, hence the zeros in the figures. The DPSA monitored its expenditure very closely. When a department overspent it was not forgiven; when it under-spent it was heavily criticised. Close monitoring was essential to controlling expenditure.

The Chairperson, thanking the Deputy Minister, Prof Levin, and colleagues from the DPSA, said that Parliament was moving in the direction of the cluster approach.

The Deputy Minister, in his remarks closing the first part of the meeting, said that the DPSA’s responsibility to the Thusong Service Centres was confined to establishing connectivity. The responsibility for the actual operation and management was with Government Communications and Information Services (GCIS). As per the recommendations of the review of Thusong Service Centres the DPSA had been told, although it was not policy yet, that the Thusong Service Centres would be handed over to the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs. On the CDWs, he said that the DPSA had agreed that it was important to have a full session with the Committee on this important subject.

The Deputy Minister continued that a central concern about Government as a whole was that across the three spheres of Government, across the country, it was apparent that the whole governmental system was being destabilised, more especially by what was happening in local government than in the other two spheres. A large measure of the protests that communities had been engaged in were focused at the municipalities and at service delivery challenges at the municipal level. This was to the extent that the previous day the President had convened a special meeting with all the executive mayors and mayors of every single municipality in the country, all the chief financial officers, all the Members of Executive Council (MECs), all the premiers and every single cabinet minister to an indaba in Khayelitsha. The focal point had been what to do to reverse the situation. Deliberations lasted over four hours. A great variety of issues were identified as the core of what was happening in the country. One of the major thrusts of the conversation was to examine the remodelling of local government and accelerate the pace of implementation of the single public service. In the previous meeting on the DPSA’s strategic planning, the DPSA had been said that one should interrogate the notion of service delivery and protests. It should be included again in the Committee programme as a full session; it had to do with much more than just the changes of attitudes. In some cases it had little to do with the attitude of public servants but more to do with corruption in certain municipalities. It was a complicated issue that required a totality of effort. This Committee would do itself a great service if it interrogated service delivery more closely to understand better the challenges of service delivery in order to make a more effective contribution in the Cluster.

State Information Technology Agency (SITA) Annual Report and presentation on SITA’s provision of integrated computer technology services to departments
Ms Ramabele Magoma-Nthite, Acting Chief Executive Officer, SITA, reported that SITA managed to achieve 19 of its strategic objectives in the 2008/2009 financial year including: growth of revenue base; development and implementation of an integrated, consistent and robust planning cycle regime; development of a detailed service catalogue and service metrics; a quality of service sample; development and implementation of the service offerings to local government using the shared services model; improvement of the quality of revenue and reduced costs to customers for agency transactions; an integrated financial management system (IFMS); the development and implementation of the information and communications technology (ICT) planning governance framework; e-Government; government wide enterprise architecture (GWEA); quality improvement – including implementation of an information technology (IT) service management framework; improvement in business processes; development of skills including identified core and critical skills; a focus on embedding SITA organizational values to ensure they were instilled in the way SITA worked; attracting and retaining critical skills and best performers; development and implementation of an integrated talent management strategy; attainment of employment equity in regard to persons with disabilities (slides 6 and 7).

SITA reported failure to achieve eight strategic objectives including: achievement of working capital and cash flow targets; development, implement and maintain competitive costing and sustainable pricing strategies (commercial models); conversion of all licensed software with a significant share of total government ownership to a single enterprise license; signing of service level agreements; a clean audit report; implementation of procurement-specific interventions to improve operational excellence; and attainment of employment equity targets with regard to gender. These objectives were now receiving priority.

Achievements emphasised included the consistent and robust planning cycle regime, information and communications technology (ICT) planning and development, the development of skills including identification of core and critical skills, a focus on embedding SITA organisational values to ensure that they were instilled in the way SITA worked, and attainment of employment equity (EE) in regard to persons with disabilities.

SITA also reported on its Key Integrated Service Provision Programmes. The Local Government Support programme (Municipal ICT blueprint) was an initiative designed to identify solutions and test the concepts applicable to local government requirements with the intention of implementing those solutions in municipalities.

The objective of the Electronic Health Record project (e-HR.Za) was to design and develop a solution for an electronic health record for South Africa that will allow the Department of Health (DoH) to have a single view of patient information across the country.

SITA managed outsourced ICT accounts on behalf of the South African Police Service (SAPS) and Department of Defence (DoD) as its clients.

The national Department of Education (DoE) had identified the need to design and implement a national learner unit record information and tracking system (LURITS). The LURITS was a web-based system that would enable the DoE to store the unit record level data of learners and educators in a central national database and would enable the DoE to track the movement of learners from school to school throughout their school career.

The poverty index was an initiative intended to help in the validation of information of people applying for indigent grants.

The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) Call Centre and the Presidential Hotline were initiatives that showcased how optimisation of existing ICT infrastructure could reduce the life cycle costs of solutions to Government.

SITA sought to establish an e-Government platform that was central, scalable, flexible, extensible, reliable, customisable, and integrated on which online services could be delivered to citizens, foreigners and business. It also sought the implementation of Free Open Source Software (FOSS). This initiative was intended to deliver numerous outcomes such as to develop skills for FOSS - research had showed this to be the key problem – and to promote open standards and open source, while facilitating migrations to FOSS by Government departments. Such migrations could be application, desktop, back-end, or enterprise systems.

SITA reported on its youth internship programme, which offered unemployed graduates and holders of diplomas an opportunity to enter into the world of ICT world through a year long internship programme.

With regard to financial performance, Mr Andre Pretorius, Chief Financial Officer, SITA reported that revenue increased by 10% in line with the budget. Tariffs within the mainframe environment were lowered resulting in R225m less revenue than budgeted. Suppliers were paid more promptly, but challenges were experienced collecting debts on time. This impacted negatively on working capital and the organisation generated less cash from operations than budgeted. This impacted on its capital expenditure programme. Notwithstanding the above challenges and strategies established to address these problems, SITA’s solvency ratio at the end of the year was 2.41:1 and its liquidity ratio was 1.98:1, leaving the company healthy and the financial structure sound.

SITA reported a strong internal audit, and an anti-fraud hotline in which all issues reported were investigated and appropriate action taken.

SITA reported an unqualified audit report with no emphasis of matter. However, other matters included: non-compliance with the Public Finance Management Act; a contract management system not established; approval to retain surpluses not requested from National Treasury; non-compliance with the State Information Technology Act; service level agreements not signed; and the prescribed director positions of managing director and legal representative were vacant.

Discussion
The Chairperson complained that the Committee had specifically requested that SITA brief the Committee on its Annual Report for 2008/2009 on the provision of integrated computer technology to Government Departments. It was very unfair that SITA had been late in providing documentation to the Committee so that it could prepare itself for the meeting. The perception given by this neglect was that Members of Parliament did not read. The situation was aggravated by SITA’s failure to provide the specifically requested information at all. She sought guidance from the Members; she had hoped to compromise, but as the presentation had unfolded, she had despaired of being able to do so.

Members agreed, saying that what had been presented was not acceptable, and did not give enough information, for the Committee to perform its oversight role. The financial information given was in a form that was of practical use for the Committee, which also needed information about SITA’s supply chain and companies doing business with Government. The Committee required information about SITA’s progress in integrating information technology systems with Government. All those issues did not appear in the report. Another day should be scheduled for such a report. The document could be improved; it was not clear from the presentation what SITA had achieved. The Committee wanted to know the milestones of its achievements, but this was not apparent in the presentation, as if SITA was not confident.

Mr Williams requested SITA to provide contact details of its customers mentioned on page 9. The report given had emphasised the surplus, like that of a company, not the delivery of services, as a state entity should emphasise. He needed to remind SITA that surpluses were a bad thing in Government.

Mr J Mcgluwa (ID) requested details of investigations mentioned on pages 75-76 of the Annual Report.

The Chairperson requested the Deputy Minister and SITA to take note of the Committee’s observations, and concluded the discussion.

The meeting was adjourned.