The budget of the Department has increased from R106 million in 2011/12 to R174.2 million in 2012/13 financial year. This was mainly driven by the projected increase of spending on consultants and the added mandate of managing the Presidential Hotline and evaluation. This therefore, means that the funding had to increase to take into account these additional mandates. The Department made use of consultants mainly to conduct evaluations of government performance. This was normally done to ensure that there was an independent opinion in the evaluation process of government departments. This was also done to take advantage of the capacity and expertise of evaluation in the private sector and to ensure that there was proper, efficient, effective and credible evaluation processes. According to the Department, this was also part of the cost effective measure and this was identified as one of the international best practices.