Background
The Public Service Commission (PSC) is pleased to release its ninth Standard Operations Procedures (SOPS) report, which provides an impartial overview of trends in the public service. The report assesses the performance of departments against the nine principles in section 195 of the Constitution, in relation to a theme. Whilst the 2009 SOPS focused on the state of readiness of the public service for 2010 and beyond, the theme for the 2010 sops is integration, coordination and effective public service delivery. Since invariably several departments contribute to a particular outcome that government wants to achieve, coordination and integration is vaunted as a critical element for heightened impact of government policies and programmes. The 2010 SOPS analyses this issue.
Key findings
First principle: A high standard of Professional Ethics must be maintained
Corruption transcends institutional boundaries, and it is, therefore, crucial for different departments and sectors of society to collaborate to fight it. The report notes that structures have been established to promote the coordination of anti-corruption efforts among government departments, and between government, business and civil society. However, the PSC found that, though important work has been done under the auspices of these structures, coordination has not been optimal. The report also notes that in South Africa most of the elements of an integrity system have been put in place. However, compliance with the requirements of various elements of this system is moderate and there is little evidence that the various elements function as an integrated whole.
Principle two: Efficient, economic and effective use of resources must be promoted
The assignment of different parts of service delivery processes to different tiers of government requires strong intergovernmental coordination. Working toward this end means that particular institutional weaknesses need to be dealt with, or they may be replicated at the next level when government seeks to promote integrated, outcomes-based service delivery.
The report notes that despite efforts by government to achieve this by putting in place planning frameworks that seek to advance better coordination and effective service delivery, planning still happens along functional and departmental lines. One of the examples that best illustrate this is the housing process where land acquisition, town planning, township establishment, infrastructure provision and the building of houses involves a chain of interconnected steps.
The assignment of different parts of this process to municipal and provincial departments creates potentially excessive demands for intergovernmental coordination. Housing delivery is also funded by different funding mechanisms, namely, the infrastructure by the Municipal Infrastructure Grant and the houses by the integrated housing and human settlement development grant. The PSC found that coordination and integration requires mature institutional capacity which in many cases does not exist.
Principle three: Public administration must be development oriented
Development interventions need to be implemented as an integrated package. Invariably, several factors determine a development outcome. These factors need to be considered together and the optimal combination of strategies should then be implemented to ensure the greatest impact. The PSC has noted that government’s development programmes have achieved successes in some areas. A notable success cited by the Report is the improved access to social grants. However, a persistent challenge is the inability of the economy to create jobs on a significant scale. Furthermore, the report reveals that universal access to primary school education has been achieved, but education outcomes remain poor.
The PSC is of the view that improvements in all these areas will require an integrated approach, which implies that departments must shift from their functional approaches, and work in support of sectors and the attainment of outcomes. For example, the provision of quality education would require an integrated approach involving safety and security (safer schools), health (nutrition, immunisation), and parental involvement, amongst others. Furthermore, a factor like discipline in schools, which has a big impact on the learning environment in schools, cannot be instilled by the school alone, because it is dependent on the culture of discipline that is inculcated at home as well.
Principle four: Services must be provided impartially, fairly, equitably and without bias
There is still a need to improve the manner in which policy implementation takes place in government, in order to address perceptions as well as incidents of unfairness and inequity. Poor coordination in the implementation of government policies has in certain instances compromised fairness. A prime example in this regard is housing. Houses are ostensibly allocated on a first-come-first-serve basis to all who meet the eligibility criteria. However, in practice several considerations influence how soon a prospective beneficiary will get a house. Depending on these factors and how they are applied, prospective beneficiaries may spend a long time on the waiting list, and this may easily be perceived as unfair, especially if the whole process is not very transparent or when queue jumping occurs.
The main factor determining whether somebody will get a house is whether a project is undertaken in the area where the beneficiary lives. In this regard, the PSC has found that there is poor coordination between spatial planning and housing development with projects many times undertaken in areas of low development potential as well as low housing need. Other factors that determine the allocation of Houses include the time the prospective beneficiary has spent on the waiting list, as well as the vulnerability of the prospective beneficiary, that is, whether the beneficiary is old, disabled or female (a female headed household). The PSC found that the administrative responsibility to apply the mentioned criteria mostly rests with municipalities. Given the capacity challenges of municipalities and the risk of corruption, the criteria are many times not applied evenly, fairly and transparently. Thus, the system is then seen as uncoordinated and the allocation process has many times become the subject of service delivery protests.
Principle five: People’s needs must be responded to and the public must be encouraged to participate in policy-making
The effectiveness of public participation mechanisms, which could result in a more coordinated response to real needs, is at best mixed. The participation mechanisms at local government level, i.e. ward committees are not working effectively. The report notes that a key consideration in making service delivery responsive to the needs of people is sustaining meaningful channels of public participation in governance so that the voice of citizens can be heard. Since local government is the nearest to citizens, it is often seen as the ideal level for government’s interface with citizens, and also the ideal channel for citizens to communicate their needs and concerns. However, currently local government does not necessarily play an intermediary and integrating role between citizens and other levels of government. It is also notable that municipalities do not necessarily have the mandate to coordinate participatory processes for government functions other than municipal functions.
Government has also started to implement new approaches to community participation in important programmes like the Comprehensive Rural Development Programme (CRDP). The CRDP will use household and community profiling methods to collect baseline information about the community’s development needs and participatory planning approaches will then be used to develop interventions and projects. Another initiative to integrate service delivery at community level is the Thusong Centres, which were introduced by government in 1999. One of the explicit objectives of the Thusong Centres was to integrate service delivery, though the PSC found in a recent study that government officials involved in the programme had a very limited understanding of what this means. The PSC found that Thusong Centres have increased access to services but only for people who live near the centres. The PSC also found that within Thusong Centres, departments continue to operate in silos.
Principle six: Public administration must be accountable
A key coordination question is how to promote accountability for outcomes in an environment where formal accountability is restricted to the mandate of a specific department or a specific budget vote, which cannot achieve an outcome on its own. The Public Service has over the years put in place enabling mechanisms to promote accountability for performance at the level of officials. An important development towards the improvement of accountability in government has been the recent introduction of a performance agreement system for Members of the Executive at national level.
The President has signed performance agreements with all ministers wherein the actual deliverables and timeframes are stipulated for accountability purposes. In the case of provinces, it is expected that the President will sign Intergovernmental Protocols with Premiers, which will be guided by the 12 outcomes as well. The PSC is concerned that many elements of the performance agreement process are not in place as yet, key among which is how Premiers would practically cascade the system down to the provincial sphere of government in order to hold Members of the Executive Council (MECs) accountable for performance. This is clearly a critical leg of the process to address given the central role of provinces in the delivery of public services.
The PSC’s experience with the PAs for HoDs and evaluation of the performance of HoDs should be used at the introductory stages of Performance Agreements (PAs) for Ministers. The PSC is still concerned that the right tone is not being set at the level of HoDs regarding the importance of concluding PAs. Furthermore, the content of the PAs of senior managers also needs attention to ensure improved soundness. Similarly, the PSC found that using PAs to manage performance is even a bigger challenge. The evaluation of performance has continued to be highly unsatisfactory. The report reveals that as at 31 March 2010, only 51 percent of the qualifying HoDs had been evaluated, representing a slight decline from 56 percent compliance rate recorded by the end of March 2009.
Principle seven: Transparency must be fostered by providing the public with timely, accessible, and accurate information
As government intensifies the collaborative implementation of its 12 outcomes, the integration of information systems and the manner in which information is handled and managed would need attention to ensure greater coherence and consistency. Over the years, the PSC has reported that despite some remaining gaps in terms of reporting comprehensively against pre-determined objectives, departments have generally improved the quality of information covered in their annual reports. This is critically important for the promotion of transparency in so far as the activities of departments are concerned. With the advent of the coordinated approach required by the twelve outcomes, annual reporting will also be expected to improve to reflect the cross-cutting nature of the work done and the progress made. Unless there is sound coordination of the nature and extent of information generated and provided, one cannot rule out the possibility of different departments reporting potentially contradictory things about the same outcomes.
Principle eight: Good human resource management and career development practices, to maximize human potential, must be cultivated
Coordinated and integrated service delivery requires particular sets of skills among public servants, including the ability to think and see outside functional silos (an analytical and reflective orientation) and an ability to collaborate across teams. Human Resource Practices generally did not respond to this challenge.
An important practice that can benefit from a coordinated approach is HR planning. A review by the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) found that HR planning in the Public Service is not responsive to strategic needs and that there was consequently no alignment between departments’ workforces and government priorities, strategic plans and budgets. It further found that HR plans lacked credible strategies to attract and retain a competent workforce, and that the required number of staff was not necessarily based on credible staffing norms. Following the review, in 2009 the DPSA developed and published an HR Planning Strategic Framework for the Public Service. Through the framework, the DPSA seeks to help departments to better understand their role in human resource planning and to guide them on how to go about the process.
The DPSA has, in the meantime, also monitored compliance with this framework and published a report. The report found that departments still cannot do the modeling, forecasting and scenario planning required for credible human resource planning, hence the misalignment between HR planning and strategic planning.
Principle nine: Public administration must be broadly representative of the South African people, with employment and personnel management practices based on ability, objectivity, fairness and the need to redress the imbalances of the past to achieve broad representation
To achieve a representative Public Service, an integrated and well coordinated approach is necessary to ensure that the whole process does not deteriorate into a ‘target-chasing’ activity. Otherwise Public Institutions will simply poach the designated employees from each other, a practice which may make their own departmental profiles look good, but without adding any lasting value to the objective of building a representative Public Service. Broader labour market concerns, such as a limited pool of skills and the uneven quality of school leavers and graduates, will also have to be addressed in an integrated manner before the Public Service can meaningful become adequately representative of the South African people.
The performance of the Public Service with regard to representivity remained much the same as reported in the previous edition of the State of the Public Service Report. The Public Service has met (and in fact even exceeded) the representivity target for black people (including African, Coloured and Indian), which stated that 75 percent of members of the Senior Management Service should comprise black people by 2005. However, the PSC is concerned that the Public Service continues to lag behind with regard to the targets for women and people with disabilities (50 percent of members of the Senior Management Service should have comprised women by 31 March 2009, and 2 percent of the Public Service should have comprised people with disabilities by 31 March 2010).
In order to address slow progress with achieving representivity of especially women and people with disabilities, the DPSA launched a gender equality strategic framework in 2008 and a job access strategy for people with disabilities in 2009. These strategies are comprehensive in that they provide for an enabling workplace environment, equality of opportunities, mainstreaming of women and disability issues and creating a barrier-free workplace.
The strategies proposed by these frameworks include removing stigma and discrimination, differential treatment to take account of the special needs of people with disabilities and women, education of staff and removing physical and attitudinal barriers. It is too soon to assess the success of these strategies. Initial quick assessments by the DPSA, however, identified the following barriers to achieving representivity targets: lack of HR plans, HR and Employment Equity plans that are not aligned (departments do not even coordinate plans internally), lack of targeted recruitment strategies, and training that is not targeted at these groups. There is also not enough information on the number of economically active disabled people, raising some doubts about the correctness of the set targets.
C. Conclusion
South Africa has now embarked on a path to promote outcomes-driven public administration, and this approach inherently requires more coordination and collaboration around the achievement of defined outcomes. As more actors become involved in the achievement of an outcome, it can be expected that the challenges associated with ‘joined-up’ government will also come to the fore. Outcomes tend to be long-term in nature, and they often depend on the actions of multiple actors. Government’s outcomes approach is a bold initiative and the institutional capacity of the Public Service is probably not fully up to the task. However, it is important to appreciate that this process may not be perfect the first time around, and to build on the capacity of the Public Service to adopt this new approach.
Enquiries:
Humphrey Ramafoko
Tel: 012 352 1196
Cell: 082 782 1730
Ricardo Mahlakanya
Tel: 012 352 1070
Cell: 073 483 7846
Source: Public Service Commission
