the honourable Mrs Nosimo Balindlela, Eastern Cape Legislature
22 March 2006
Madam Speaker,
Members of this House,
Members of the Executive Council,
People of the Eastern Cape,
I am privileged to stand before you today in renewal of my accountability to
this House for service delivery to the poorest of the poor in this awe
inspiring province.
Madame Speaker, I am delivering this speech at the back of the very recent
and greatly successful local government election at which again the ruling
party has received a resounding mandate from the people of our country and
province to deploy all efforts and resources to bring our people closer to the
realisation of sustainable livelihoods.
Most significant is the marked increase in the number of women elected as
councillors as a direct result of the âGet the Balance Rightâ campaign. This
makes real the consensus from the 50th session of the United Nations Commission
on the status of women (27 February â 10 March 2006), where it was affirmed
that womenâs equal participation is a necessary condition for womenâs and
girlsâ interests to be taken into account and is needed in order to strengthen
democracy and promote its proper functioning.
It is therefore imperative that in this year which marks the 50th
anniversary of the symbolic gesture of South Africaâs womenâs struggle and
resilience, we maintain a sharp and diligent focus on womenâs economic
participation and general welfare. Each of the policy speeches that will be
tabled in this house will unveil plans for amplifying governmentâs commitments
in this regard.
I need not emphasise Madame Speaker that sustainable livelihoods, economic
stability and good responsive governance leads to social cohesion, the absence
of which has been seen to have more devastating effects for women and other
vulnerable groups. We are excited and proud as a province, government and
Office of the Premier to have decisively taken our place in ensuring that all
organs of our public life contribute individually and collectively to the
principles of inclusion espoused in the Provincial Growth and Development Plan
(PGDP) and shared development as expressed in the recently conceptualised
Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA).
As such the Office of the Premier, as the department at the helm of the
provincial administration must take the lead in ensuring that well crafted and
tightly woven plans are in place to guide the spending of public resources
towards the intended expanded growth and shared development. Today I submit to
this House those plans in the knowledge that this esteemed collective will
provide guidance and counsel on how to best implement them for maximum
effect.
As you know the Office of the Premier plays a critical monitoring and
oversight role of the overall functioning and tempo of the provincial
administration of this province. We are mindful of the depth of this
responsibility as a Department and have positioned ourselves therefore as a
model for best practice and excellence. You will notice therefore that in our
quest to achieve a more cogent articulation of our mandate we have re-looked
our vision and mission plus have ensured more tightly defined strategic goals
and objectives in a way that lends them to better monitoring and client
satisfaction.
The annual performance plan of the Office of the Premier straddles six
programmes according to which the budget is allocated. These programmes have
been redefined around the realigned organisational structure. This new
organisational structure has two pillars each lead by a Deputy
Director-General, namely the institution building and transformation branch and
the policy co-ordination and monitoring branch. We believe the new structure is
already beginning to show positive trends in enabling the Office of the Premier
to support the departments and clusters to deliver on their priorities and
targets.
Each of the six programs makes a unique contribution to the five strategic
goals that are to be achieved by the department.
In line with the objectives of the Provincial Growth and Development Plan
(PGDP), these key strategic goals are:
1. To provide strategic support services to the provincial Executive Council
and the Director-General;
2. To facilitate sound, effective, appropriate and integrated provincial
policies, strategies and planning and to evaluate the impact thereof;
3. To ensure ongoing transformation of institutional capacity to improve
provincial administrative efficiency and effectiveness;
4. To establish and manage the Office of the Premier as a learning and best
practice organisation; and
5. To improve the effectiveness and efficiency of co-operative governance which
will assist in ensuring that the province of the Eastern Cape becomes a
compelling place to live, work and invest in for its entire people.
Honourable Speaker, I will now provide more detail about each of the six
budget programs.
Programme one: Management
This programme is essentially a support function to facilitate that the
political mandate of the office is fulfilled. This entails initiating
discretionary projects to address poverty; mobilising and communicating with
stakeholders; customer care and monitoring service delivery.
Community interventions are shaped by issues raised by communities during
outreach activities and by needs brought to the customer care desk. Thus the
nature of these interventions is defined by circumstances on the ground. As a
means of managing this, a mechanism has been established through which civil
society partners can apply for assistance with development initiatives from the
poverty alleviation fund. In the year ahead this assistance will be shaped as a
gearing facility with institution building support to enable partner
organisations to access longer term assistance from formal government
programmes such as the local economic development (LED) fund.
This programme will also continue to mobilise and secure commitments from
the private sector for rural development in aspects such as education, health
services and housing for the poor. Programme one is critical in ensuring that
the government departments stay alive to the needs of the people by ensuring
that the Premier is on top of the governmentâs delivery agenda. The Premierâs
discretionary fund in particular has in the past ensured that timely and
invaluable interventions are made in situations of destitution and will
continue to do so.
Programme one has a budget allocation of R12 084 000.
Programme two: Director-Generalâs office
The Director-Generalâs office has two sub-programmes, namely
Director-Generalâs Support and Cabinet Secretariat. The efficiency of these two
sub-programmes enables the co-ordination of the work of the Executive Council,
the provincial administration and the Office of the Premier.
The strategic priorities of the programme are twofold, namely:
* To provide executive and management support services to the office of the
Director-General; and
* To co-ordinate and provide secretariat and strategic services in support of
the business programme of the Executive Council.
Within the office of the Director-General in 2006/07 the focus is to ensure
efficient co-ordination, professional relationship management, high quality
intergovernmental participation and continuous pro-poor policy alignment.
Within Cabinet Secretariat the focus is to build alignment of priorities
between Cabinet Committees and clusters to design an electronic monitoring tool
for Executive Council resolutions and to develop an annual integrated Executive
Council outreach programme around the core business of government.
To enable the achievement of these objectives, a budget of R5 308 000 has
been allocated to programme two.
Programme three: Provincial Co-ordination and Monitoring
The branch aims to facilitate and co-ordinate integrated provincial policies
and planning and to evaluate the impact thereof. For this the branch consists
of the following sub-programmes:
* Provincial policy planning, monitoring and evaluation, which aims to
firstly lead, co-ordinate and support integrated provincial development
planning, policy and operations. Secondly to develop, co-ordinate and monitor
the impact of provincial macro policies and strategies.
* Provincial Information Management (PIMU), which aims to facilitate the
development of the Eastern Cape as an effective and efficient self sustaining
information society. We have been learning that another key indicator of
marginalisation of our people is their relatively poor access to
information.
* Inter-governmental Relations Unit (IGR), which aims to establish and
manage an effective intergovernmental relations system for the promotion of
co-operative governance. The recent promulgation of the IGR Framework Act has
put specific obligations to this unit to ensure that coherent, inter-sphere
governance and delivery is realised. We invite the newly appointed Executive
Mayors to participate actively in the Premierâs co-ordinating forum to ensure
the realisation of integrated governance of our province and to shape the
support from the Office of the Premier towards strengthening local
government.
* Special Programmes Unit (SPU) which aims to facilitate, co-ordinate and
monitor the effective implementation of constitutional, regional and
international mandates with regards to gender, disability, children and the
elderly. Our continuing special focus on the mainstreaming and acceleration of
service delivery will see much focus placed on this subprogram. The womenâs
leadership development programmes as well as the envisaged women economic
development summit are some of the initiatives aimed at empowering women both
within and beyond government. In addition, the provincial rollout of the
national youth service programme and other programs affecting youth people will
be monitored closely by this unit.
At the very heart of programme three, the Policy Monitoring and Evaluation
Unit (PCMU) is the responsibility to monitor, evaluate and report on the
implementation of the PGDP and other government priorities. In the annual
performance plan we emphasise that the province wide monitoring and evaluation
(M&E) system, which has been put in place will be rolled out in
collaboration with all departments of the province and most excitingly in the
local government sphere, through integration with the Integrated Development
Plan (IDP) nerve centre.
This system of monitoring will assist the departments to monitor in
particular the rate of government delivery on the PGDP against set targets. It
will also assist us to ensure that the PGDP intentions and outputs are more
aligned with the IDPs of municipalities. The data generated by the M&E
system will provide the essence of a knowledge management system, which will
enable evidence-based planning. This approach to planning allows for greater
accuracy in determining strategic priorities and consequent resource
allocation. Interpreting this knowledge with the assistance of information
technology (IT) tools such as geographic information systems (GIS), will
provide a spatially referenced overview of provincial service delivery at the
touch of a button. Through this government accountability to citizens will be
able to be more immediate and factually driven which in turn should enable
greater ease of participation in the governance processes, lending cohesion to
our national democracy.
In support of this the provincial information and communication technology
(ICT) priorities identified for the year ahead are to improve the extent of
connectivity throughout the province, thereby ensuring that communities are
able to receive electronic government services and to access general
information to improve their quality of life. The budget allocation to enable
this more comprehensive e-government approach by the Provincial Information
Management Unit (PIMU) is R49 901 000.
In the current year the Office of the Premier will further strengthen and
enhance co-ordination and intergovernmental cohesion at district level
including ensuring that the cluster approach of government does not only happen
at the level of management, but at service delivery levels as well. As
showcased during the inaugural provincial learning academy last year, lessons
from the work of intergovernmental coordinators who are placed at district
level have shown that with better co-ordination, service delivery improves and
peopleâs access to information is enhanced. We will continue to strengthen this
side of our work with a reinforced team of service delivery mediators at that
level. As I stand before you today mediators are in place in four of the six
provincial districts, with the remaining two appointments due in the very near
future. In the year ahead the productivity of IGR structures will be scaled up,
driven by a knowledge management approach that draws from the monitoring and
evaluation system and the service mediator reports. The budget allocation to
the IGRU to ensure an effective intergovernmental relations system that
facilitates the alignment of planning processes in all spheres of government is
R2 993 000.
Broadening the base of social inclusion is the responsibility of the special
programmes unit which co-ordinates this aspect within line departments. In the
year ahead this unit will be working to ensure that inclusion issues are policy
driven. This is intended to institutionalise a caring approach to vulnerable
groups such as women; people with disabilities; children and the elderly and
thus an amount of R6 548 000 is allocated to the special programmes to ensure
that all spheres of government in the province mainstream gender issues and
protect and promote the rights of children and the elderly in annual planning,
programmes and strategies.
Ongoing management and reviews of the three public entities in accordance
with standard service level agreements and relevant legislation will ensure
that each entity adds value to policy co-ordination and service delivery. The
three entities attached to the Office of the Premier are the Youth Commission;
the Eastern Cape Appropriate Technology Unit (ECATU) and the Eastern Cape
Socio-Economic Consultative Council (ECSECC). Each entity contributes to the
broader research and development strategy that more and more informs the policy
direction of government.
In the year ahead the uniting focus of the planning, co-ordination and
monitoring unit (PCMU) will be to bring together the various aspects of
research and development such as M&E trends; case study lessons from the
innovation unit; expertise from sector specialists; analysis from
intergovernmental service mediators and the research undertaken by the
entities, into a comprehensive baseline for evidence-based planning. We are
determined to build on the progress and momentum and progress of the past two
years so that integrated development planning is instilled as provincial
practice.
Programme four: Institution Building and Transformation
This programme is responsible for ensuring co-ordination and facilitation of
the provincial administrationâs institutional development and transformation
towards upholding good governance principles. Thus it embraces issues that
build institutional capacity so as to realise organisational self renewal. For
this the branch consists of the following sub-programmes:
* Transversal Organisational Development and Consultancy Services (TODCOS),
which aims to facilitate and co-ordinate public sector transformation and
institution building.
* Shared Legal Services, which aims to provide an efficient and effective
legal advisory service to the provincial administration and its constituent
provincial departments.
* Provincial Communication, which aims to provide an effective, efficient
and integrated communication system to the provincial administration and sector
departments. As I had pronounced in the House this time last year, the
provincial communication component started the rollout of provincial branding
with the assistance of the International Marketing Council. We invite all our
stakeholders, particularly business to work alongside us as we accelerate this
campaign of branding our province.
* Provincial Security and Anti-corruption, which aims to facilitate
implementation of the provincial public service anti-corruption strategy and
security management. Among its key focus areas in the coming year and in the
Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTEF) is to ensure that all departments
have minimum anti corruption capacity and that government therefore responds
appropriately and decisively to instances of corruption. The work of the
multi-stakeholder advisory structures the provincial anti-corruption forum and
the provincial anti-corruption council has been worthwhile in guiding
anti-corruption initiatives in the province.
In the 2006/07 financial year the Department will be rolling out three very
exciting projects, which will ensure that the quality of delivery is reoriented
to address the expectations of the people of our province more directly.
Firstly, the Eastern Cape though the Office of the Premier is leading the
development of service standards project. This is a country wide effort by
provincial administrations to develop coherent sector specific service
standards, which will be published in the next few months as citizen
charters.
Secondly, the Premierâs Balasela Excellence Programme (BEP), which seeks to
promote and reward excellence in the public administration will be rolled out
this year. This programme integrally linked to the performance management and
development system, will ensure that the provincial administration achieves
excellence through continuous improvement.
Thirdly the âKhaedu Projectâ introduced by the Minister of Public Service
and Administration (MPSA) is being led in our province by the office of the
Premier. This project requires that senior managers spend at least 10 days of
their working year at the coalface of service delivery, solving problems and
handling queries with line function personnel.
These three initiatives will ensure deeper internalisation of the Batho Pele
principles and are within the custodianship of the Transversal Organisational
Development Consultancy Services Unit (TODCOS). TODCOS will also be playing
midwife to an innovation unit which will promote, replicate, expand and
institutionalise a culture of innovative and creative ways of working in
government. The additional transversal responsibilities that are housed within
TODCOS include human resource development; occupational health and safety,
integrated employee wellness; sound employer to employee relations; grievance
and discipline management; performance management and development and staff
attraction and retention.
I am pleased to report that the Office of the Premier through this branch
has begun a process of diversifying resource allocation for skills so that this
year and in the MTEF, some of the allocations are being made to students at
Further Education and Training Institutions (FETs). It is important that in
deploying the skills funds we are cognisant of the skills needed for the
development of our province particularly technical skills that are relevant for
key initiatives such as Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South
Africa (AsgiSA) infrastructure projects.
The skills re-tooling strategy is multi-pronged comprising firstly,
financing options available to students in the tertiary sector, particularly
for scarce skills courses. Secondly an internship and learnership programme to
enhance readiness for work and thirdly the skilling-up of employees. In the
2006/07 financial year, the agency agreements which provide for skills
training, such as the transversal training management agency will be assessed
to ensure that the training packages on offer speak to the human resource
requirements of AsgiSA.
AsgiSA also requires institutional arrangements that will activate delivery
on economic development initiatives. In this regard, the Office of the Premier
has set up a think tank to scope options for a special purpose vehicle to
enable this.
The institution building support to departments is crucial for the
performance turn around of the entire provincial administration, which must
then translate into service delivery capability. Thus this basket support
services provided by TODCOS has been allocated a budget of R55 478 000.
Honourable Speaker,
This House is aware that the Office of the Premier co-ordinates a shared
legal service for all provincial departments, which has shown demonstrable
efficiency gains for the administration. In addition to the legal advisory
services located within departments shared legal services offers three core
cross cutting functions namely legislation; litigation and contracts and
agreements. I am acutely aware of the consequences of litigation failure and
thus this sub-programme has designed a three pronged strategy to firstly reduce
litigation costs being incurred to secondly reduce and eliminate the incidence
of contempt of court and to thirdly recover all favourable costs orders. We no
longer want to meet our service delivery beneficiaries in the court room. This
is in stark contradiction to our firm commitment to customer care.
I know it will further please this House that translation capability is to
be expanded to enable full compliance with the language requirements for
tabling legislation, as set out in the legislature rules of procedure. This is
important for the dignity of communities in our province. The total budget
allocation for the shared legal services programme is R14 716 000.
Madam Speaker,
To further reach out to our communities, the provincial communications unit
seeks to ensure that the voice of provincial government is heard by promoting
positive and interactive communication with the public. As honourable members
are aware many people who were born and bred in the Eastern Cape now lead
productive lives in other parts of the country, yet still hold the interest of
the province in their hearts. In the financial year ahead, my Department will
be initiating dialogue with these sisters and brothers by hosting izimbizo
outside the province. I am further inviting people who have left the province
and built successful enterprises to express their loyalty towards their
heritage by exploring opportunities for re-vesting this social capital for
accelerated and shared growth and development in the communities from whence
they have risen. I believe that these interactions will cultivate a proud core
of people whose âfeel goodâ stories will strengthen the branding of the
province as a compelling place in which to live, work and invest. The budget
allocation for the comprehensive provincial communications strategy is R14 114
000.
Definitive hallmarks of a transformed public service must include a value
set that is grounded in a resilient ethical fibre and that speaks to social
inclusion. In pursuit of this, the anti-corruption unit has mobilised
provincial stakeholders to unite around a plan that will mould an
anti-corruption morality across the province. In the forthcoming year this will
be re-enforced through a collective analysis by the anti-corruption council of
trends that emerge from the provincial anti-corruption data base and through
better tracking and consistent follow up by state agencies responsible for
investigation and prosecution. The anti-corruption strategy is embedded within
the overarching provincial risk management strategy and is thus positioned to
enhance better accountability across government as a whole. In order to
undertake this work, the anti-corruption unit has received a budget allocation
of R2 841 000.
It is my belief that the Office of the Premier has a critical role to play
in creating a conducive environment for service delivery to happen efficiently
as well as in creating facilitative conditions for stakeholder engagement,
particularly those interested in the development of the province. This is what
the institution building and transformation branch will strive to ensure into
the future.
Programme five: Shared Internal Audit Services
Shared Internal Audit Services (SIAS) services the Director-General,
accounting officers of different departments (excluding Health, Education,
Social Development and Public Works) and all levels of management by providing
an independent, management oriented assurance and consulting service on
provincial internal control systems, operational performance, governance issues
and risk management with a view to adding value and improving performance,
accountability and service delivery.
Risk management is essential because it gives provincial government the
assurance that the government systems of internal control, risk management and
governance processes are effective, efficient and economic. The SIAS is now
poised to assume fully fledged functionality. Central to this is providing
cutting edge value added audit services, namely performance audits, IT audits,
and assistance with fraud and risk management which were never pursued in the
past. The upcoming performance audits will focus on Provincial Growth and
Development Plan (PGDP) projects and impact analysis thereof on the economy of
the Eastern Cape Province with special emphasis on service delivery matters. A
number of interns have been intentionally recruited to purposefully build this
skills capacity in the province, in alignment with the PGDP human resources
strategy.
Assistance to departments will ensure that risk management policies and
strategies are in place across the board. I invite you to join me in welcoming
the appointment of the new provincial audit committee, who will play a vital
role in carrying out the internal audit strategy of the provincial government.
Given the centrality of internal audit to good governance and performance
efficacy, the budget allocation for this function has increased from R15,265
million in 2005/06 to R16 674 000 in the 2006/07 financial year.
Programme six: Corporate Services
Inherent in the co-ordination role of the Office of the Premier is a strong
outward focus driving implementation external to the department itself. The
success of these departmental outreach and stakeholder engagement activities is
dependent on a healthy and robust organisational core comprising financial
management, supply chain management, asset management and critically, human
resource management. These internal corporate services responsibilities are
co-ordinated from the office of the Chief Financial Officer with the mandate to
ensure the integrity, credibility and efficacy of these internal systems and
the relevance and productivity of our human capital, particularly in view of
the strategic objective to fully populate the approved organogram in the
2006/07 financial year. The budget allocation for corporate services is thus
R46 289 000.
Honourable Speaker,
My Department has crafted a farsighted strategic plan and an annual
performance plan as a blue print against which to monitor how the total
departmental budget allocation of R297 038 000 will be spent. These plans must
be sufficiently responsive to the new range of pro-poor service delivery
imperatives as public policy and governance becomes more complex and
contested.
I look to this House to engage with these plans to re-affirm their validity
for ensuring a better life for the people of the Eastern Cape.
Committing my Department to diligent and transparent deployment of resources
allocated to us by this House, I hereby table the strategic and annual
performance plan for the Office of the Premier for 2006/07. I also table the
strategic and performance plans of the three public entities attached to the
office of the Premier.
I thank you.
Issued by: Office of the Premier, Eastern Cape Provincial Government
22 March 2006
Source: Eastern Cape Provincial Government (http://www.ecprov.gov.za/)
