Minister for Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Sicelo Shiceka, leaves on Saturday, 30 January to lead a primarily local government delegation on a study tour to Belgium to investigate how information communication technology solutions can be leveraged to improve service delivery and accountability at local government.
The study tour takes place as teams of officials from the national office have fanned out into the provinces to support the roll-out of the municipal turnaround strategy process, which is the next step on the process following the Cabinet approval of the national local government turnaround strategy on 2 December 2009.
The delegation with the minister includes local government MECs, the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) representatives, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and senior government officials to gather lessons and best practice on how the use of ICT as a tool that can drive integrated service delivery, increase efficiencies and support the implementation of monitoring and evaluation systems.
Driving the local government turnaround strategy implementation as it moves to the 283 municipalities in the country is the principle that a “one size fits all” approach to municipalities is neither useful nor acceptable, as each municipality faces different social and economic conditions and has different performance levels and support needs.
In supporting municipalities developing their own strategies, provinces are therefore expected to adopt a more segmented and differentiated approach to address the various challenges of municipalities.
The objectives of the local government turnaround strategy are to:
* Ensure that municipalities meet basic needs of communities. This implies that an environment is created, support provided and systems built to accelerate quality service delivery within the context of each municipality’s conditions and needs
* Build clean, responsive and accountable local government, making sure that systems, structures and procedures are developed and enforced to deal with corruption, maladministration while at the same time making sure that municipalities communicate and account more to communities
* Improve functionality, performance and professionalism in municipalities. Ensure that the core administrative and institutional systems are in place and are operational to improve performance
* Improve national and provincial policy, support and oversight to local government, while also strengthening partnerships between local government, communities and civil society
* Ensure that communities and other development partners are mobilised to partner with municipalities in service delivery and development.
Lessons and information gathered on the tour will help the department in refining the ICT solution that can be applicable within the South African context for e-government applications to improve service delivery, monitoring, accountability and organisational efficiency.
Minister Shiceka has led the process from March 2009 when he was part of the teams that went to the provinces to undertake a comprehensive assessment of all 283 municipalities in the country.
For all media queries and requests for interviews with the Minister, please contact:
Abigail Plaatjie
Cell: 082 449 3051
E-mail: Abigailt@cogta.gov.za
Issued by: Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs
28 January 2010
Source: Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (http://www.cogta.gov.za/)
