PERFORMANCE MONITORING, EVALUATION AND ADMINISTRATION: Speaker, hon President, hon Deputy President, hon members and dear guests, during the 2009 fourth democratic elections, the ANC promised the people of South Africa that it would deliver services better, faster and smarter. [Laughter.] After the elections, we made the commitment through President Jacob Zuma that we will build a performance-oriented state.
Guided by these two important imperatives, government has put in place a range of initiatives to ensure that we have a Public Service delivery that is effective and efficient in order to respond to the overwhelming mandate we received from our people.
One of the first steps we took was to reconfigure the macro-organisation of the national government, with the aim of increasing the effectiveness of government operations. This reconfiguration process has been successfully completed on time, and the reconfigured departments are now fully focused on delivering on their mandates.
Amongst these changes was the rationalisation of the education and training functions through the creation of the Departments of Basic Education, and Higher Education and Training. This change has already had a marked, positive impact on the effectiveness of the education and skills development functions of government, as the Minister of Higher Education and Training has said.
The changes also involved the creation of the Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation and the National Planning Commission in the Presidency, with the aim of addressing gaps in co-ordination, planning, monitoring and evaluation. The two institutions are now well established.
The National Planning Commission in the Presidency is on course to meet its target of producing a draft long-term plan by November this year. In this address, I will speak to a number of initiatives that government is engaged in to improve performance of the Public Service.
Informed by the five priorities we chose to guide our work, namely education, health, the fight against crime and corruption, the creation of decent work and rural development, we introduced the outcomes approach to improve the performance of the state.
The outcomes approach is aimed at addressing various weaknesses, including the lack of a strategic focus in government; difficulties with interdepartmental and intergovernmental co-ordination; the tendency towards working in silos; a lack of rigour in planning; and weaknesses in implementation.
The outcomes approach is not a short-term programme. It is part of the process of the transformation of the state into result-oriented machinery, capable of delivering on the electoral mandate. It is about introducing improved short-, medium- and long-term planning, co-ordination and management practices in government.
We have developed detailed implementation plans or delivery agreements for the 12 outcomes, and departments are now focused on their implementation. They are also in the process of ensuring that their departmental strategic plans reflect their commitments in the delivery agreements.
The delivery agreements themselves are a major achievement. This is the first time that we have had outcome-oriented implementation plans, which cut across departments and other spheres of government. However, we are fully aware that the delivery agreements are just the first step in the process. The difference will be in the implementation; and for this reason, we have elevated monitoring to the highest level.
Starting from this month of February, on a quarterly basis, Cabinet will be paying attention to reviewing progress reports. This process will result in an improved strategic focus of the work of government and should assist with addressing some of the implementation challenges that we might have experienced. These reports will be made public for our people to monitor progress.
We are of the view that political accountability must cascade down into implementation and administrative accountability systems after the signing of performance agreements between the President and the Ministers. In this regard, the Department of the Public Service and Administration, DPSA, is leading a process of reviewing the performance management system for officials to make it more effective and results-oriented. This must include ensuring that there is greater accountability for poor performance.
In order to ensure that our limited resources are focused on achieving our desired outcomes, the government will be instituting comprehensive expenditure reviews. These reviews will be aimed at evaluating expenditure programmes to identify ways of increasing value for money and reducing spending on noncore activities. We will co-ordinate these comprehensive expenditure reviews with National Treasury.
The House is acutely aware of the challenges that government is experiencing with regard to financial management, as illustrated by the ongoing challenge of qualified audit reports. In this regard, National Treasury is assisting departments to improve their financial management practices. For example, it has been working closely with the national and provincial Departments of Health to assist them with addressing the financial management challenges in this sector.
We expect improvement in this priority area. Efficient and effective administration machinery is a prerequisite for a developmental state and the achievement of the outcomes.
To ensure that the public interface with government is hassle-free, we have undertaken to monitor our frontline service to our people. We are in collaboration with the Department of the Public Service and Administration and the offices of the premiers in putting in place various mechanisms, including citizen-based monitoring, citizen satisfaction surveys and visits to service delivery sites by members of the executive, to systematically measure key frontline service delivery indicators and physical verification.
This work has started to bear fruit. An illustration of this is the remarkable success of the Department of Home Affairs project to improve the turnaround time for processing applications for ID books. The average waiting period for ID books has dropped from 130 days to 40 days. This remarkable turnaround is also being applied to passport applications. We must take this opportunity to congratulate the department for this sterling work. [Applause.]
In addition to monitoring frontline service delivery, we have to ensure that the backroom of government is fully functional. The Presidency and the offices of the premiers will also be monitoring the performance of individual departments. The intention is for performance monitoring of departments to become a mechanism for improving management practices and operations in government.
We are working on a performance assessment tool, which will include an assessment of departments' performance against their strategic plans. The tool also looks at governance processes; supply chain management; financial management; human resources management; organisational design; programme and project management; communication and stakeholder management; and risk management.
In developing a comprehensive tool to assess the performance of departments, we are building on the work already done by the Department of the Public Service and Administration, DPSA, and National Treasury to ensure that we have a comprehensive view of the department's strength and weaknesses. This will ensure that national departments are better able to identify and implement support interventions where necessary.
In particular, the National Treasury's Financial Management Maturity and Capability Model is an example of a tool that provides us with a basis for determining the levels of financial maturity and capability of a government department. This analysis sets a benchmark for existing capacity and identifies areas of weakness where targeted support and interventions from the centre of government can be directed. This important work will be undertaken with the DPSA, National Treasury, the Auditor-General and the office of the Public Service Commission.
We are also paying particular attention to getting basic administration right, right across government, particularly in areas such as the efficient location of decision-making powers; ensuring clarity regarding mandates and roles, and responsibilities; and improving human resources management and development.
We have begun with an assessment of the management practices in the Presidency itself as a pilot project. This assessment has revealed a number of weaknesses in human resources management and supply chain management, including frequent noncompliance with the Public Finance Management Act, PFMA, requirement to pay suppliers within 30 days. The results are assisting us to put in place plans to address these weaknesses and lead by example.
As the President said in the state of the nation address, we will be monitoring the process of filling vacant posts in government. We have already identified some of the challenges with regard to human resources development, which include inappropriate service delivery models, organisation designs, high vacancy rates and poor management of performance and discipline.
There are also challenges in the inability to recruit and retain sufficient numbers of skilled personnel in key positions and inadequate training and development of employees. We need to improve the management of the Persal information management system within departments, and use this information as strategic management information.
The drive to clean up Persal is being coupled with that of reducing the turnaround time to fill funded vacant posts from nine to four months, and the vacancy rate from 19,2% to 10% within a short period.
In his state of the nation address, the President declared 2011 a year of job creation, given our unacceptably high unemployment and persistent poverty, despite recording reasonable economic growth.
Our department will co-ordinate and monitor the job creation efforts within government, and will also be working with this House to ensure that the identified targets are met as it does its oversight.
In the area of discipline, the Department of the Public Service and Administration, DPSA, is in the process of reviewing the disciplinary and incapacity codes with the view of increasing their effectiveness as tools for managing discipline.
The Department is also providing much more proactive support to departments to manage disciplinary processes more effectively, with the aim of ensuring that 80% of disciplinary cases are finalised within 90 days of the initiation of the disciplinary process by 2014.
As mentioned by the President, the DPSA has set up a new unit to enable us to provide this proactive support with a particular focus on improving disciplinary processes related to the cases of corruption. This is being coupled to a strong focus, by the various law enforcement agencies, on criminal investigations and prosecutions related to corruption in the Public Service; and a strong focus by the National Treasury and provincial treasuries on stamping out corruption in government procurement processes.
In conclusion, all the initiatives that I have described are part of a bigger process of changing the culture of the Public Service. We need to change from an inward bureaucratic culture to one which is focused on improving service delivery to citizens.
While we will be putting more energy into the Batho Pele programme to improve the attitudes of public servants, I have no doubt that most of the public servants at the coalface of service delivery want to serve the people well and be proud of their work.
We are, therefore, also focusing on the practical measures to improve the way in which government works in order to create an enabling environment for public servants to perform better, faster and smarter. We are indeed building a performance-oriented developmental state.
For those of you who have not been listening, let me come to you now. [Laughter.] I understand the difficulty that hon Lekota is having. It is very difficult to be a member of the opposition and when the government is performing well, you might not know what to say. It is better to support where necessary.
I also understand his incapacity because he is handling a lot of problems. These problems are so immense that he couldn't even listen to the speech of the President to understand what he was saying. [Applause.]
With regard to the issue of corruption, which is constantly raised, it is our humble appeal to hon members that they should use the same vigour when identifying them to report them to the relevant authorities so that action can be taken. [Interjections.]
It is very interesting that members of the House sometimes choose when to believe in the state institutions and when not to. When it suits them, they will say that the state institutions were doing nothing and also that they were not doing well. It is important for this House to give confidence to the institutions which we have created to fight corruption and crime in the country.
Therefore, as members of the House, if you see anything which is corruption- related, we are asking you to refer it to the relevant authorities for action. [Applause.] [Interjections.] I can lend you my minutes, don't worry! We are proud to say that we are on course. With the support of the House, we believe we will do more. I thank you. [Applause.]