During the state of the province address the premier announced the restructuring of the provincial government departments; this process has led to the reconfiguration of the Department of Finance, incorporating the previous Gauteng Treasury, Gauteng Shared Services Centre, Gauteng Partnership Fund and Gauteng Fund Project office.
The Department of Finance is reconfigured to ensure that its functional units fully support the 2009 to 2014 provincial priorities, and that resources are allocated to areas that support inclusive economic growth and development job creation, and accelerated service delivery in the province.
The Department of Finance’s strategic objective for the next five years is focussed intensely on ensuring fiscal discipline in the province and providing a strategic and operational support function that is results driven, transparent, and efficient and customer focussed.
Given the role of the Department of Finance in contributing towards delivering on the provincial priorities, we have a direct and clear mandate. We are committed to working towards strengthening the developmental state through building a strategic, developmental and activist Department of Finance. While ensuring compliance to all financial management and accounting policies, regulations, guidelines, etc. we also have a responsibility of ensuring that the budget and financial resources of the Province are utilised towards achieving its priorities and objectives.
In responding to the new provincial government mandate and the spirit of renewal in general, the department in June tabled the amended 2009 Appropriation Bill in the legislature to cater for new priorities.
In support of the provincial priorities and being cognisant of the financial challenges arising from the current economic climate, Department of Finance has developed guidelines to departments, on how to identifying efficiency gains, leakages and curbing unnecessary expenditure, doing more with less.
Some of these efficiency gains will be realised through cutting down on items such as the use of consultants, venues and facilities, catering, printing travel and subsistence and advertising and promotional items. Department of Finance will be closely monitoring the implementation of these cost containment measures. This exercise is seen as an integral part of ongoing work of improving budgeting and expenditure management in the province. Departments led by their MECs must implement these reprioritised plans to ensure that Gauteng takes the lead in doing more with less.
We are pleased to announce that various provincial departments have responded positively to our call of minimising cost within their individual departments, this was evident during the tabling of budget votes where 100 percent of departments budgets went to essential services, and none of the departments had budget dinner as per the norm. But further details on cost cutting will be announced later this year during the budget adjustment.
The provincial priorities of the Gauteng government demand that we create a growing and inclusive economy. Infrastructure projects will be priority in delivering on this objective. The Department of Finance is required to ensure Gauteng Provincial Government derives value for money in implementing of public expenditure especially infrastructure delivery.
As such the office of the MEC will launch an executive infrastructure management committee. This committee will consist of the MECs for Education, Health and Social Development, Infrastructure Development, Housing and Local Government, and Roads and Transport; these being departments which have major infrastructure programmes. The main focus of this coordinated approach is to improve on infrastructure delivery in the province by ensuring that there is proper planning, multi-year budgeting for infrastructure projects. Finally, it will ensure take we keep a firm grip on the operational costs of infrastructure delivery and contract management. We will also identify appropriate funding mechanisms for delivery of infrastructure e.g. PPP.
Operation Bhadala
Operation Bhadala is the provincial government’s initiative to ensure that all outstanding invoices for goods and services rendered and delivered are paid by the end of September this year.
The Executive Council took a decision to establish a war room representative of all the departments, located at the Gauteng Shared Services Centre (GSSC), to ensure that all necessary processes are put in place to deal with this task.
Part of the task of the team would be to assist suppliers update information on the system. It has emerged that some of the payments we process get rejected because in certain cases banking or other material supplier details may have changed or documents may not be matching each other and therefore not recognised by the system.
We have made a call to all our suppliers to ensure that they submit invoices accompanied by documents such as the purchase order, instructions to perform work (IPW) or statements of account to the department where they rendered service or delivered goods. These should be for work done for the period spanning the financial year 2008/09 (April 2008 to March 2009) up to 30 June 2009.
As reported by the premier, estimates indicate that there is currently R1,7 billion in outstanding payments. During the past three weeks of the operation, we successfully processed R324 million of this in payment. We are steadfast in our commitment of ensuring that we complete this task within the set time frame. Whilst doing so, we will continue to implement stringent internal controls to ensure that the prescribed rules are not flouted.
It is our firm belief that the operation will bring some much needed relief in the effort to contribute to the sustainability of the small, medium and micro enterprises (SMME) sector. In the same vein, it is important that those who have contracts with the provincial government pay their sub contractors. It cannot be that contractors perpetuate the demise of the small enterprises by not honouring their commitments to them.
Improving Procurement in the Gauteng Provincial Government
As the premier indicated in her state of the province address, one critical area of service delivery improvement is the streamlining of procurement in the province. First is the improvement of turnaround times through the implementation of the tracking of cycle times, from the procurement of goods and payment of suppliers.
Secondly is the localisation of procurement services. A call to all SMMEs, Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and cooperatives will be issued (in the next two weeks) to create a database of suppliers who’ll provide services at the locality were they are required. For example, through the automation processes, functions like the processing of Home Deliveries will be done at hospital sites.
In the meantime the province is implementing contracts review process. Current contracts are being reviewed with a view creating efficiencies and cost savings. A contracts management framework is finalised and will be rolled out to two department (phase one) by end September, the targeted departments are Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) and Gauteng Department of Finance (GDF) (Treasury and GSSC).
Gauteng Online schools programme
The Gauteng online schools programme is making good progress. As part of taking the interventionist and activist approach to our work, we have deployed senior managers of the GSSC to all schools to establish firsthand what the challenges are. It is important to note that the challenges that are experienced by schools are not insurmountable. Moving forward, it is important that we better manage the change management process to ensure that all stakeholders are brought on board as active participants, to ensure the successful implementation of the project. More importantly we must ensure that the direct beneficiaries; the learners, reap the benefits.
Amongst others, we are moving with greater speed with the training of educators who will deliver the project in the classroom. We are now aligning the deployment of the laboratories with the completion of the training. This will ensure that the infrastructure is not turned into a white elephant.
During the GSSC budget vote, we had reported that 980 labs had been delivered and 600 of these were connected. We are pleased to report that during this 100 days of government, we have delivered an additional 37 schools bringing the total number of labs to 1 017 and of this total, 989 have been quality assured to be in good working order.
Recognising the strategic and imperative nature of this project and the problems that have been reported on it, the GSSC has:
* placed the contractor, SMMT Online, on terms on the basis of non-compliance with the conditions of the contract
* implemented a revised and comprehensive governance framework and structure; including roles, responsibilities, rights and obligations of each party of the project administration and management so as to hold all parties involved accountable.
We are once again making a call to community members, ward committees, Community Policing Forums to partner with us to eradicate the incidence of theft and acts of vandalism on the laboratories.
In November, we will provide a detailed report on further progress made with the deployment of the Gauteng Online laboratories. Our specific focus will be on those schools that are referred to as green fields. These are schools that do not or did not have physical infrastructure to accommodate the laboratories.
For more information contact
Lebogang Seabelo
Cell: 083 382 1579
Issued by: Department of Finance, Gauteng provincial Government
8 September 2009
