Hon Chairperson, I greet the Minister for the Public Service and Administration, Cabinet colleagues, the chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Public Service and Administration, members of the portfolio committee, chairperson of the Public Service Commission, hon members of the House, the portfolio leadership in the Ministry of Public Service and Administration, our distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen.
We are living in an interesting time in South Africa. Never in the history of our democracy have we witnessed a stronger need to hasten the manner in which we deliver services. Our democracy is at the height of its teenage years and, as with all teenagers, it is a pivotal time of questioning and rebellion. The Public Service is the institution charged with the management and redistribution of this teenager's resources, and never has there been a more opportune time for us to work with vigour in ensuring that these resources are properly redistributed.
I would like to convey my greetings to you, and thank you for affording us the opportunity to address this House on this very important day, the day of the presentation of the Budget Vote for the portfolio of Public Service and Administration.
During last year's identification of strategic priorities and the subsequent introduction of the outcomes-based approach as a manner of governance, the Ministry of Public Service and Administration was allocated the responsibility of co-ordinating the implementation and monitoring of and reporting on Outcome 12: "An efficient, effective and development oriented public service and empowered, fair and inclusive citizenship". What we do as government is premised on the ruling party's election manifesto and further enhanced and guided by the outputs of Outcome 12, the Cabinet lekgotla, the state of the nation address 2011, the recent Budget Speech 2011 of the Minister of Finance, and other imperatives arising from the assessment of the performance of the Public Service.
During our last Budget Vote address to this House in 2010 the Office of the Deputy Minister for the Public Service and Administration made the following commitments: to review the governance arrangements of the single Public Service; to harness the power of technology through e-government; to put in place measures to ensure the integrity of Persal data; to provide support to at least 80% of government departments so that they spend at least 1% of personnel budget on training; to expand Gems membership and reduce the number of uncovered employees; to roll out solutions to addressing the needs of visually impaired teachers; to refocus the Community Development Workers Programme to play a stronger role in the war against poverty; and to connect Thusong Service Centres to the Internet. A lot of these have been done.
The President has called upon the Public Service to work harder and smarter in addressing the needs of the citizens. We want to assure the House that the Ministry will continue to implement the above-mentioned programmes with renewed vigour.
With regard to our priorities, I would like to pay special attention to the following, given the time constraints: enhancement of legislative and policy review; accessibility to public services and community participation; and human resource management and compliance.
The Minister has already spoken about some of the areas of participation in the international arena. Yesterday Parliament celebrated Africa Day, and in support of all the efforts to improve the living conditions of the people on the continent, the Republic of South Africa is engaged in a number of postconflict interventions.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo we are developing and implementing an anticorruption framework, a public service census and a capacity- building programme. In Burundi we are rebuilding and strengthening its public service to run effectively, and implementing a capacity-building programme. In Rwanda we are dealing with its capacity-building programme and leadership development. And in South Sudan it is about capacity- building in the human resources sector.
For the first time we have included participation of traditional leaders as one of the sectors in the African Peer Review Mechanism process. This move was necessitated by the fact that 70% of South Africa's population is rural. Through the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD, South Africa has been requested to assist in developing a framework for civil society participation in the review of government programmes the world over.
A review of the Public Service Regulations is also currently under way. This is focusing on all the gaps for the institutionalisation of a number of service delivery mechanisms, as well as a framework for community development and public participation.
The Code of Conduct for the community development workers, CDWs, will also be reviewed in relation to the conflict between the Public Service and political activities. This year we are planning to work with more vigour in ensuring that the CDWs are linked with the existing community structures, such as school governing bodies, community policing forums, ratepayers' associations, traditional institutions, citizen assemblies, and religious bodies.
This morning I had some discussions with premiers from almost all over the country. I spoke to Premier Zille, Premier Mokonyane, Premier Hazel Jenkins, and Premier Thandi Modise. It was not deliberate that I spoke to women, but I found them quicker than I found the men. They all agreed with me in saying that we need to relocate the CDWs to the offices of the premiers. They need to be hosted there for purposes of ensuring that they work more swiftly, that they are aligned to the programmes of provinces, and that services are integrated. The Department of Public Service and Administration, DPSA, will facilitate the process of locating the CDWs in a national department, hopefully ours, and also in the offices of the premiers for funding, monitoring and evaluation purposes.
The DPSA will commence with the implementation of the process map to Parliament, which includes the review of the draft Public Administration Management Bill as part of a process to implement the single Public Service. Consultative workshops will be held within government to finalise the draft revised legislation. Further consultations will be had with the National Economic Development and Labour Council, Nedlac, but we would also like to include civil society, because that is our biggest client.
With regard to local governance, citizen participation and access to service offerings, Sita has deployed satellite connectivity to Thusong Services Centres. A process to validate equipment deployment and facilitate site sign-off is presently being undertaken. We are currently working with the Departments of Basic Education, Health and Communications to develop a blueprint for connectivity to schools and clinics. A conceptual framework for the implementation of e-government has also been developed.
We are taking into consideration what the President said in his 2011 state of the nation address, and I quote:
Since we are building a developmental and not a welfare state, the social grants will be linked to economic activity and community development, to enable short-term beneficiaries to become self-supporting in the long run.
In supporting this we will co-operate with the Minister of Social Development to ensure that, through the work of the CDWs, we identify children who have no access to early childhood programmes to be part of those development programmes. The importance of these programmes is the development of cognitive and other skills for children, which will lay the foundation for a well-rounded human being who will be capable of meeting the challenges of life in education and the social spheres without relying on social grants.
I am confident that in her budget speech the Minister of Social Development will unveil a grand plan on early childhood development. The department will also launch a campaign, which we have dubbed "Know Your CDW", so that communities are able to access this programme with ease.
The CDW programme has played a critical role in making the following positive development impacts: assisting in the elimination of government bottlenecks; advocating for an organised voice of and for the poor by supporting community-based and faith-based organisations; strengthening government-community networks through information dissemination; and assisting in bridging the gap between the first and the second economy in South Africa.
Notwithstanding the positive development impact of the CDW programme, government is aware of specific challenges facing the programme that may hamper its impact with regard to the acceleration of service delivery to citizens. One such challenge is the complex relationship between CDWs, ward committee members and ward councillors, and the discrepancies in remuneration. What we have seen to be the biggest challenge is the fact that CDWs in certain instances are unable to distinguish between their role as civil servants and that of party politics. [Interjections.] I did not say "strange".
Furthermore, the governance, management, planning and reporting functions have been inconsistent and fragmented across the different spheres of government.
The key elements of the redesigned governance and management CDW model are as follows: national co-ordination, which we would like to see as part of the DPSA; co-ordination at provincial level and we would like to see the offices of the premiers taking responsibility for this, as discussed this morning with some of them; and co-ordination at local level will have to be based at ward level, but we are looking at ensuring that it also gets hosted by the various traditional authorities in the rural areas, and also at the Thusong Service Centres.
Previous research conducted on service delivery draws attention to key challenges that encumber government's concerted attempts to achieve equitable, effective and efficient access to public services for its citizens. One of the primary concerns is that the current initiatives are being driven by individual departments and therefore result in considerable duplication and high expenses.
Accessibility of services is limited by the current structure and functioning of government, whereby the provisioning of a single service as per the mandate of the sphere of government fails to address citizens' needs in a comprehensive manner. For citizens living in areas that are remote and lack basic infrastructure, services and utilities, access to government services is severely limited. Citizens are required to incur travelling costs for long distances to reach service points in the nearest local towns.
To respond to these challenges, government must facilitate participation of citizens in the delivery of services and the packaging of information. It should intensify the task of developing a Public Service that has a strong citizen-centred culture. It should also repackage service offerings and develop new models and ways of providing services and information, firstly, to maximise the effectiveness of face-to-face service interaction and, secondly, to maximise the take-up of self-service for citizens through the use of technology. Then we also need to achieve greater collaboration within and across all three spheres of government to provide services and information to citizens in a more responsive and integrated manner.
In this respect, it is necessary that government concentrates its services in a single location and ensures greater "joined-up" services, and that this service location should be as close to the people as possible.
We recently launched the Maponya Mall Thusong Project, which is still a pilot project. The rationale for the project was that it should provide a "one-stop" interaction with government, where departments and institutions would provide professional, fast, friendly services in an integrated fashion.
To further expand on providing citizens with convenient access to services, DPSA and partner institutions will be investigating a collaborative partnership with the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa, Prasa, and institutions across government to develop government "one-stop shops", Thusong, in train stations. This is important because statistics show that the number of people using these facilities could also benefit by government providing services at particular stations for their convenience. We are looking at two areas - Johannesburg Station, which used to be called Park Station, and Cape Town Station, because we get a lot of that there. Prasa has also indicated that we should look at Queenstown, which also deals with access to train stations by rural communities.
In June we will engage with traditional leaders countrywide to request that the traditional offices host the Thusong services model in a bid to make public service products and services more accessible to rural communities that have little or no infrastructure in their areas.
In all the work we do the department will continue to monitor the implementation of gender, disability and youth frameworks by all departments through the analysis of periodic reports submitted by departments. The enhancement of skills for gender and disability focal points will be done through training in mainstreaming the implementation of the strategic frameworks.
I wish to state that there is a need to look into ways of improving the relationship between the political heads and the heads of departments. Mechanisms should be put in place to ensure that accountability in administrative responsibilities, as outlined in the Public Finance Management Act, PFMA, is not compromised based on poor working relations between the executing authority and the accounting officer. We should also be cognisant that these relationships also affect the working of government at all levels. If the political and administrative heads do not work in tandem, it creates a ripple effect of nonperformance at all levels of a department.
The Public Service needs to deal with the burden of cost to the state occasioned by indecisive and incompetent leadership in the area of human resource management and the handling of labour relations matters. The challenges in the Public Service include the management of discipline, sick leave, corruption and conflict of interest, including the management of the integrity of public servants.
There was a Cabinet decision to introduce multiple administrators for the Government Employees Medical Scheme. We are lagging behind in the implementation of that Cabinet decision, but we have undertaken in the approved procurement plan for 20ll to issue a tender for the appointment of two more administrators.
The Gems membership currently stands at 556 000 and it's set to grow in this financial year to 620 000. As a department, we can proudly say that this is one of the best performing Public Service entities and it will continue to enhance its product offering so that it becomes the medical scheme of choice. I thank you. [Time expired.] [Applause.]