The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (1996) provides that public administration in South Africa must be governed by the democratic values [s1(a-d)] and principles enshrined in the Constitution [Chapter 2], including the principles outlined in Chapter 10 [s195(1)(a-i)], which includes the principle requiring that the efficient, economic and effective use of public resources must be promoted [s195(1)(b)].
It is therefore a constitutional imperative that the total public administration system of the Republic must be geared towards higher productivity.
To ensure that the Public Service is productive through promoting the efficient and effective functioning of the Public Service, the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) has:
The application of the Public Service productivity assessment tool is basic and uncomplicated in that the tool uses three (3) dimensions, namely Labour, Operations and Performance to isolate key factors in government departments that impacts directly on their productivity:
When the DPSA combines the assessment scores of the three (3) dimensions, this not only generates a comprehensive picture of a department’s overall productivity, it also allows the DPSA to identify those factors that weaken the total productivity of a department. These factors could – for example – relate to vacant, funded posts not being filled in time; or poor discipline management; or poor budgetary performance; or poor investment in skills development. Whatever the contributing factor or factors to poor productivity may be, the Public Service Productivity measurement instrument will identify these factors and department-specific interventions will be proposed to address the identified blockages to higher productivity.
To date, the DPSA has assessed the productivity of over forty (40) national and provincial government departments. As a result, sound recommendations have been made to ensure that these departments achieve their maximum productivity as mandated by the Constitution of South Africa, and as expected by the citizenry of the country.
The DPSA performs the above monitoring, continually in line with the objectives of the approved Public Service Productivity Management Framework.
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