Madam Chair, hon Chairperson of the National Council of Provinces, hon Ministers, hon members of the House, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, I must take note of the comments made by the hon T D Harris directed to my colleague, the Minister of Finance. I must say that I was rather disappointed, though, with what he had to say, because I thought that the debate was giving him the opportunity to make a constructive contribution to what is an important topic: to promote intergovernmental relations; but he rather sought the opportunity to wave his party's flag, which I thought was unnecessary. I wish he had been at a meeting that was held in the Western Cape last weekend at which the Deputy President and the delegation from the national government visited Plettenberg Bay on an antipoverty campaign. Present at that particular meeting was his leader - the DA leader and Premier of the Western Cape. I wish he had been there to hear what she had to say about intergovernmental relations when she aligned herself completely with the strategic outcomes that the national government is driving towards in the antipoverty campaign and said that the only difference between the Western Cape and the national government in the way in which they conduct their affairs is that we sought the same outcomes to eradicate poverty.
The Deputy President said, "One of the things we have to do in promoting intergovernmental relations is not to bother with the fact that we have different parties governing at different levels, but that we need to discover how to work with each other so that the national goals of this country could be achieved." The eradication of poverty, hon Harris, is such a common goal that it should inspire all of us.
This particular debate needs to ensure that strategic alignment and harmonisation of government institutions within the three spheres of government remains a strategic priority of the ANC-led government. We are confident that the creation of a single, integrated and seamless Public Service will unlock the bottlenecks in providing quality public services to our various communities. A single system of public administration, management and governance that covers the three spheres of government is a strategic intervention to further enhance the attainment of South Africa's developmental goals. For the state to intervene effectively and in a coherent way to address social and economic developmental goals, the Public Service must be seen as one and must function harmoniously. Resources must be utilised effectively and efficiently and national norms and minimum standards must be established through the appropriate legislation and regulatory framework.
The Chair of the NCOP in his address reminded us that the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa requires co-operative and effective government, while recognising that government in the national, provincial and local spheres is distinctive, interdependent, and interrelated. Together, the three spheres of government are required to provide an effective, transparent, accountable and coherent government for the entire country. This requires that the spheres respect each other's territories, powers and functions while striving to work together in a meaningful way to maximise service delivery and its impact for the citizens.
My contribution in this debate is to focus on how the single Public Service strategic project could enhance leadership roles for the NCOP in achieving the outcomes that we seek. The single Public Service initiative has been identified as the vehicle that will integrate, harmonise, and align the system of governance, administration, management, accountability, and planning across the spheres of government to fulfil the following objective: To deepen integrated service delivery by creating service delivery points from which the citizen can access a basket of public services. Multiple institutions are to collaborate on creating a single window from which citizens can access a range of services, be it the service delivered at the local, provincial or national spheres.
It also has the objectives of strategically aligning the institutions that comprise the machinery of government to complement one another; to ensure a common culture of service delivery, based on the precepts of Batho Pele in order to ensure consistently high standards of service from the public service; to stabilise and strengthen intergovernmental relations, recognising the distinctiveness of the spheres while emphasising their interdependence and interrelatedness; to achieve more coherent, integrated planning, budgeting, implementation, monitoring and evaluation within a single or integrated Public Service; to create a single senior management service cadre, where appointments will be to the service rather than to the post, facilitating the mobility of these managers within the integrated Public Service; and to provide a uniform framework of remuneration and conditions of service for the single Public Service.
It also seeks to establish uniform norms and standards for employment in the single Public Service, including employment practices and employee relations frameworks and mandating arrangements; to provide for a mechanism for the approval of deviations from the norm in exceptional circumstances; and to provide a mechanism for the transfer of functions and staff between institutions or spheres of government within the framework provided by the Constitution and the Labour Relations Act.
It also seeks to provide for a human resource development strategy and the development of an integrated skills database to support our human resource planning; it seeks to provide for an anticorruption strategy that must prevail across all three spheres; and to ensure that e-governance, information, communication and technology regulations, norms and standards are adhered to within the single Public Service.
Government has made inroads in achieving integrated and accessible service delivery through the usage of platforms such as Thusong centres, the Batho Pele Gateway, call centres, mobile units and community development centres, but it is recognised that much more needs to done to strengthen our current initiatives, to capitalise on new technology and to expand on existing access initiatives through creative, innovative and cost-effective means, to increase the number of services delivered to the citizens via these various channels, to focus on human resource-related matters such as capacity-building, remuneration and conditions of service, and to inculcate an ethos of Batho Pele as central to each of these access initiatives.
In July 2007 Cabinet approved the establishment of the Geographic Information System for the single Public Service to assist in consolidating the abundance of special data pertaining to the delivery of services across the three spheres of government. The aims of the Geographic Information System include support for service delivery planning across the Public Service; support for the improvement of the utilisation of resources across the spheres; and support for collective efforts in monitoring and evaluation.
One of the strongest arguments for a single Public Service is the facilitation of mobility between the institutions of government. The challenge here is to create a more cohesive workforce consisting of all spheres of government and, most importantly, a multiskilled and mobile cadre of public servants to deliver integrated services.
It is therefore imperative that urgent attention be paid to the harmonisation of remuneration, conditions of service and benefits in all spheres of government. The harmonisation of conditions of service requires initially that local government rationalises its conditions of service. This process has already commenced and there have been positive developments in this regard.
Local government is now working towards a single medical aid and a single pension fund. In the Public Service there is a single pension fund and there is a substantial shift of employees from open medical aid schemes to the Government Employees Medical Scheme, known as Gems. The membership of Gems now stands at 500 000 principal members.
The SA Local Government Association, Salga, instituted 10 categories of municipalities, limiting the number of pay scales, and instituted a common job evaluation system. Despite these efforts, Public Service and local government conditions are indeed still very disparate.
Through the single Public Service overarching legislation should define all spheres of government as being part of the single employer for the purposes of the transfer of functions and personnel. The overarching legislation should also enable the transfer of staff to and from the national and provincial level and from other organs of state.
Experience has shown that institutions in all spheres and public entities have human resource capacity problems which impact on their ability to deliver services on the ground. Under the single Public Service it will be critical that resources are allocated to areas where they are needed. To achieve this goal it is imperative that the existing human resource framework be aligned. To realise this it will be critical to establish whether current human resource management practices across the three spheres of government will support this vision; and, if not, what should be done to ensure the required degree of alignments.
As indicated, human resource management and development, conditions of service, remuneration, and fringe benefits in the Public Service and local government are indeed significantly different. This is informed by a comprehensive study conducted in 2008 on remuneration, grading, conditions of service, policies and practices in the public service and municipalities. In the Public Service a salary is determined in terms of job weight, whilst in municipalities affordability determines the salary level. There are also glaring disparities within municipalities in the provision of benefits, which also makes transfers within the local government level even more difficult and thus fails to support effective service delivery across the spheres.
Noting that there are different approaches currently adopted by institutions within the three spheres of government and the need to ensure that there is ease of mobility between the spheres, there is a need for a clear policy on remuneration that allows for the determination of a key salary structure and flexibility in respect of major occupational groups in the three spheres of government. The envisaged overarching legislation should provide for a national framework to set norms and standards in respect of all aspects of human resource management and development remuneration on related issues.
The overarching legislation should make provision for the development of a regulatory framework to foster the institution of appropriate human resource management systems and the development of relevant policies to facilitate: the identification and adoption of a common human resource, HR, information system in all institutions; the development of a comprehensive human resource strategy; the determination of recruitment and selection procedures to facilitate the attraction and recruitment of staff with the necessary and appropriate skills; and the development and implementation of career planning development and advancement programmes across the three separate spheres.
A major challenge in all spheres of government is the inability of public sector institutions to attract, develop, retain, and deploy competent managers and professionals to fulfil service delivery commitments.
Noting these challenges, it is envisaged that senior managers in the various spheres of government would constitute the Senior Management Service, SMS, under this overarching legislation. Uniformity in the following areas should be achieved for this management service: the recruitment and selection of personnel; remuneration and conditions of service; performance management and development; competency framework; ethics and conduct; misconduct and incapacity; financial disclosures; and transfers on secondment and deployment.
The introduction of a single Public Service has implications for the current bargaining arrangements. The three spheres of government currently have separate collective bargaining systems and labour relations arrangements. A move towards the realisation of a single Public Service calls for the integration and alignment of relevant arrangements and procedures for the existing labour relations issues.
In conclusion, let me say that the NCOP has a distinctly important role to play in the realisation of appropriate and improved constitutionally aligned intergovernmental relations through the mechanism of a single Public Service. The opportunity to discuss this and to take this matter forward when the Bill is reintroduced in Parliament will present itself again at the end of this year. Thank you very much. [Applause.]