Let me assist the Whip. The money for the NYDA comes from Budget Vote No 1 and is then taken by Budget Vote No 6, and that is why we are here. She says she's the Whip, but that tells you the serious problem we have in terms of accountability in this House ... [Interjections.][Applause.] ... when the Whip of the committee does not even know what we are talking about.
In all of this, it is young people who continue to be troubled, because their lawmakers are just as confused. I think we must take radical steps, radical in the true sense of the word, and overhaul the NYDA so that at the end of the day young people are better off today than they were yesterday. Thank you very much, Chairperson. [Time expired.] [Applause.]
The DEPUTY MINISTER IN THE PRESIDENCY - PERFORMANCE MONITORING AND EVALUATION, AS WELL AS ADMINISTRATION IN THE PRESIDENCY: Hon House Chairperson; Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Public Service and Administration as well as Performance Monitoring and Evaluation; hon members; Minister in The Presidency, hon Jeff Radebe; distinguished guests; members of the department's management and staff present; members of the media; comrades and friends; ladies and gentlemen, I must first start by indicating that we, both I and the Minister, take the work that the portfolio committee does very seriously. [Applause.]
It was quite unfortunate that on the day when the department was to present the report - the plan and everything else to the portfolio committee - the Minister's and the DG's presence were requested by the President, and I was in school. Now my mother always punished me if I missed school, so unfortunately I couldn't attend the meeting of the portfolio committee.
However, it does not mean that we do not take your work seriously. Also, it is quite surprising that the members of the portfolio committee who were present accepted our apologies in the portfolio committee meeting, but then come here to grandstand, because there are TVs, screens and all of that. We are so disappointed that in the prepared speeches it was pre-empted that the National Youth Development Agency, NYDA, budget would be mentioned in the Minister's speech, even if the Minister did not mention the fact that the NYDA's budget had already been transferred from Budget Vote No 1 to Budget Vote No 6. So, because you have prepared speeches to object to the Budget Vote, you continued to read that part of the speech without aligning it to developments which have been made. I think that it says more about who is confused, hon member of the IFP, and unfortunately in this regard, you are the one who is confused.
We have now entered the second phase of our democratic transition. This phase will be characterised by robust implementation of government policies and programmes geared towards the achievement of our long-term goal of the National Development Plan: Vision for 2030.
Government has purposefully declared its intention to mobilise society in radically transforming the economy to serve the needs, interests and aspirations of our people. This means that the political power and authority that was given to the ANC by the people in the last elections will be used to radically transform our society and alter the ownership and control of the economy.
Our Twenty Year Review comprehensively identified the substantial progress that has been made since 1994 as well as the challenges that confront us. Numbers confirm that most of our people have access to houses, electricity, water and sanitation and social assistance programmes. [Applause.]
This reaffirms government's insistence that the quality of life of our people - since the ANC under Nelson Mandela took over - has radically changed for the better, but more still needs to be done to reverse the damage done over three centuries of colonialism and apartheid.
Every year since 1994, our people continue to enjoy a better life for all. We will build on that course to move the country forward.
Hon members, one of the key goals of the NDP is to build a capable developmental state and to forge a disciplined, people-centred and professional Public Service.
Our role as a department is to monitor and evaluate whether our schools have learners who learn and teachers who teach; whether hospitals tend to patients through the capable hands of qualified and committed nurses and doctors; whether municipalities deliver water, electricity and sanitation; whether our people are humanely settled with adequate basic services and recreational facilities for the youth; whether the programme for land restitution and redistribution is adequately implemented in an accelerated fashion; whether women and children feel safe and secure from all sorts of abuse by an adequate policing service and system; whether graduates are of the highest quality to serve our country for the better; and whether all economic functions and systems of the state are capable of yielding more jobs and ensuring the collective prosperity of our nation.
This is by no means a small task. Minister Radebe has been asked to ensure that government works, and works for the people of our country.
We have to continue with the construction of a capable and professional Public Service characterised by high-quality management and practices free of corruption and dedicated to ensure a better livelihood for all our people.
Since 2011, in partnership with the Offices of Premiers and transversal policy departments, such as National Treasury and the Department of Public Service and Administration, DPSA, our department has been monitoring the quality of management practices in national and provincial governments.
This is done by carrying out annual assessments of the state of management practices in departments against a set of 30 management standards, covering human resource development, financial management and supply chain management, internal governance of the departments, planning, monitoring and evaluation and the management of information.
The process involves self-assessment by the senior management of the department in order for the managers to reflect on their management practices and identify areas where their department is doing well and areas where it needs to improve. This is followed by internal audit validation and external peer moderation by policy experts drawn internally from government.
The assessment results are presented to Cabinet and also to the President's Co-ordinating Council with the provinces. Our department has also been presenting the results to the portfolio committee and to Parliament, when invited to do so.
For the last two financial years, all national and provincial departments have participated in the assessments. There were some improvements in the results over the past two years, and we look forward to further improvements in this year's assessment.
The aim of this monitoring initiative is to drive a process of continuous improvement in the quality of management practices in the departments. Accounting officers are guided through improvement plans to address management weaknesses identified in the assessment.
We have found that for each of the 30 management standards, there are at least some departments that are performing well. The department has, in collaboration with Wits University School of Governance, documented case studies for selected standards where departments have performed very well. To date, we have developed 35 case studies and we hope that our departments will be sharing these cases of good practice amongst one another.
Our department will also continue to monitor a range of indicators of management performance on behalf of the Forum of South African Directors- General. These relate to management areas over which the directors-general have control and which are of concern to citizens, labour, business and Parliament.
They include reducing waiting times and turnaround times for a range of services; reducing the time taken to finalise disciplinary cases in the Public Service; the filling of funded vacancies; and the payment of suppliers within 30 days of submission of a valid invoice, a commitment that the President has made.
Through this, we believe that we are on course to make government work for its people.
As with the assessment of the management practices of national and provincial departments, we have developed a similar model for application in municipalities. The model is called the Local Government Management Improvement Model, LGMIM, which was developed in collaboration with the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Cogta; National Treasury; the SA Local Government Association, Salga; the Attorney General's Office; provincial departments responsible for local government; and key sector departments such as the Department of Water and Sanitation and the Department of Energy.
The aim of our municipal assessments is to measure, monitor and support improvement management practices in municipalities for quality service delivery. We are assessing municipalities against six standards that include integrated development and planning, human resource management, financial management, community relations, governance, and the capacity of local government to deliver on water, sanitation, electricity, and refuse removal.
During the past financial year, the model was piloted and tested in 12 municipalities and we are happy with the results. We will be expanding this system to 20 more municipalities and we will be building capacity for provincial governments to expand this model to all the municipalities in the country.
Hon members, one of the aspects of government performance which needs to improve is the quality of service delivery experienced by citizens. In this regard, in 2011 our department started a programme with the Offices of the Premiers to carry out unannounced monitoring visits to frontline service delivery facilities such as social grant distribution sites, schools, clinics, police stations, courts, drivers' licence centres, municipal customer care centres and Home Affairs offices. And some of the things that we found out have resulted in the improvement in the quality of the delivery of services.
The focus is on assessing aspects of service delivery such as queue management, waiting times, dignified treatment, cleanliness and comfort by using structured monitoring tools implemented by trained monitors from our department and the Offices of the Premiers.
The results of the monitoring visits are reported to the management of the responsible department as well as to the Cabinet and the President's Co- ordinating Council with the provinces. The responsible departments are requested to put in place improvement plans to address problems identified during these visits.
The aim of this initiative is to show service delivery departments the potential benefits of monitoring the quality of frontline service delivery and to encourage and support departments to start monitoring the quality of their service delivery themselves.
To date, we have visited and monitored 550 facilities. This initiative has given us valuable insight into the quality of services that our citizens are experiencing. We also go back to some of the facilities that were found to be performing poorly and 79% of those facilities which were revisited in the past financial year showed greater improvements.
I would like to thank the provincial premiers, the Offices of the Premiers, and the relevant Ministers for the support that they have given to our department in this regard.
This financial year we plan to visit 90 new facilities, and we will also revisit 120 more facilities to check if the agreed-upon improvements have been implemented.
We encourage our people to let us know which facilities they wish us to prioritise for surprise visits through the Ministry or the Presidential Hotline.
Hon members, our people have a key role to play in assisting government to improve its performance and the quality of service delivery. The National Development Plan, NDP, calls on our people to be active participants in building a better society.
It states that all spheres of government -
... can enhance citizens' participation through a variety of two-way information gathering and sharing forums and platforms between citizens and government. Last August Cabinet demonstrated its commitment to strengthening the voice of our people in the monitoring of service delivery with the approval of the Framework for Strengthening Citizen-Government Partnerships for Monitoring Frontline Service Delivery.
Since then, the department has been hard at work supporting the institutionalisation of people-based monitoring in government. With the commitment of the senior leadership of the SA Police Service, SAPS, the SA Social Security Agency, Sassa, and the Departments of Health and of Social Development over the past year, we have been piloting an approach to people- based monitoring of police stations, clinics, Sassa and the Department of Social Development.
The piloting focused on Tugela Ferry in the Msinga Local Municipality in KwaZulu-Natal and also in Phuthaditjhaba in Maluti, a Phofung Local Municipality in the Free State.
With the support of 80 Community Work Programme staff, more than 5 000 people were interviewed on the performance of Tugela Ferry Police Station, the Church of Scotland Hospital in Msinga, the Phuthaditjhaba Clinic and Police Station as well as the two Sassa service centres and pay points in these areas.
We are now working with the departments and community stakeholders to ensure that the information collected from citizens leads to improvement in the quality of services provided. Before the end of this financial year, we will roll out this initiative in all the provinces in our country.
Another way in which our government is involving our people in the monitoring of service delivery is through the Presidential Hotline, which is managed by our department. The intention of the hotline, as the hon chair of the portfolio committee indicated, is to contribute to a more accessible and responsive government.
We are as excited as the chair of the committee that more than 190 000 complaints and queries have been logged and that 95% of those complaints have been resolved.
The President has actively participated in the hotline and, on behalf of the President and Minister Radebe, I want to take this opportunity to thank all the departments which have played a role in this regard. We also want to encourage our people to view the report which we have put together on the experiences that people had with this particular hotline.
In the current financial year, the department will also continue to provide the President with support for his Siyahlola Monitoring Programme, which involves visits to communities with teams of Ministers in order to assess service delivery challenges and engage with the people, as well as to monitor the progress made with addressing these challenges after the visits. Through these visits, those who are elected or appointed to serve our people should know that the President and government in its entirety will be on the go, keeping them awake and ensuring that we all justify our daily wage by truly working for our people.
In conclusion, hon members, to improve performance and inculcate a culture of excellence in the Public Service, we are looking forward to working with Parliament, and to moving our country forward. Thank you. [Applause.]