Chairperson of the Committee
Honourable Members
Minister Collins Chabane
Distinguished guests
I am pleased and honoured to be a part of the first budget since the inception of the Department for Performance Monitoring and Evaluation as well as Administration in The Presidency in 2009.
Honourable members, President Jacob Zuma has commanded us to be the engine in his endeavour to change how government works. Indeed as a ministry and department we have taken this mandate very seriously. I have in the past few months been visiting different provinces and state institutions to brief and explain to them our mandate and solicit their support in building a better society.
I must say the support and enthusiasm has been overwhelming. I will deal with the outcomes of my visits in detail later in my address.
As the Minister said, June has been declared Youth Month and it is very significant for us to present our budget vote during this month as a ministry which is also responsible for youth affairs.
This year’s Youth Month is held under the theme “Youth in Action for Economic Freedom in our Lifetime”. June 16, 1976 remains an unforgettable milestone in our country’ struggle for national liberation because the youth of that time unequivocally expressed their preparedness to dedicate their lives to the liberation of South Africa.
The youth of our country took to the streets against the unjust policies of the past, and most importantly, they were “struggling for a single, free and compulsory education for all.” The youth of 1976 filled with the conviction to build a democratic, non-racist, non-sexist South Africa belonging to all who live in it, protested against white apartheid regime and the then status quo. This year marks the 35th anniversary of the June 16 1976 Soweto and other related uprisings.
Today’s youth activism is directed towards successfully combating poverty, unemployment, under development and HIV and AIDS.While the youth of 1976 fought for freedom and the creation of a democratic state, today’s youth is focused on personal and the country’s economic development.
Honourable members,
As Minister Chabane earlier mentioned that we have received quarterly reports on key results and challenges that require changes and interventions. This is based on our successful implementation of the outcomes approach. We are indeed confident that we are making good progress and challenges we face are not insurmountable. Cabinet has considered the first set of reports on the outcomes.
Frontline service delivery monitoring
Honourable members and fellow South Africans, allow me to focus on the key mandate of our government, which is service delivery with special attention to front line service delivery monitoring. For the past year we have largely been focused on the outcomes approach, but we have recently started to put more focus on frontline service delivery monitoring.
The aim of frontline service delivery monitoring is to both affirm good performance and assist departments, municipalities and entities to improve service delivery points which are performing poorly. Collecting information directly from users of government services and from service delivery points is critical for government to continuously verify if it is meeting the expectations of citizens and to identify where government is doing well and where improvements are required.
Again, we are implementing this mandate in close cooperation with the Offices of the Premiers, which monitor frontline service delivery at provincial level and the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, which monitors municipalities.We are also collaborating with the Department of Public Service Administration, which is also involved in improving frontline service delivery through the Batho Pele programme.
Our frontline service delivery monitoring programme has two elements: visits by government officials to service delivery points to assess the state of delivery and engage with civil society to develop a structured approach for citizen-based monitoring of frontline service delivery.
Although these take the form of surprise visits, we also engage with the management of the service delivery points both before and after the visits. The aim is to provide them with useful toolkits to monitor and improve service delivery.
Our aim with the monitoring is not to produce a comprehensive and representative sample of the state of frontline service delivery. Rather, the monitoring is intended to result in interactions between the monitors and those being monitored. This is also to gauge if basic minimum management systems and practices are in place to enable officials to improve the quality of service.
Examples of services to be monitored include home affairs, social grants, municipal services, vehicles licensing, police and health services. The focus of the monitoring is on the targets relating to service delivery quality in the outcome 12 Delivery Agreement, namely customer satisfaction, unit costs of services and other key customer oriented indicators, such as waiting times in queues and response times.
Both in our Department and Premiers offices, we are currently training officials to carry out these assessments. In this regard, we have developed a number of assessment tools to be used by the monitors, including questionnaires and checklists, which we are currently piloting in provinces and in national departments.In terms of the Public Service Regulations, service delivery departments are required to have service delivery standards and service delivery improvement plans in place. The existence and effectiveness of these instruments is one of the indicators which we are monitoring. The President and various Ministers have been visiting and will continue to visit institutions such as hospitals, schools and police stations on an ongoing basis.
Since my appointment to this portfolio, I have started to undertake unannounced visits to service delivery sites such as hospitals, early childhood development facilities, Thusong Service Centres and municipalities. The visits include interactions with political leadership, officials and citizens at service delivery points. When we visited KwaZulu-Natal we were impressed to find that there is a nerve centre that tracks service delivery in the province. The centre has a dashboard which indicates where there is progress and challenges.
We also made an unannounced visit to Northdale hospital in Pietermaritzburg. Patients and staff shared their frustrations and experiences with service rendered. However, what was heartening was that our people understood that government is now working harder and faster. Patients even had suggestions on how we can improve service delivery which confirms the ANC’s slogan “Working together we can build better communities”. So far we have visited six provinces. The commitment shown by the provincial leadership in ensuring that the PME becomes a systemic culture of this ANC government is indeed encouraging. In this regard, the department is supporting the President with his hands-on monitoring programme and interactive approach.
Turning to citizen-based monitoring, citizens have a right to decent standard of service and have a responsibility to hold government accountable, through providing credible information about the quality of the service, both good and bad. This information should be fed back to the service delivery departments to both affirm good practice and to advocate for improved service.
In many countries governments have worked with Non-governmental organisations (NGO) and community based organisations (CBO) to facilitate citizen-based monitoring, which involves developing the monitoring instruments to be implemented by citizens employed by the NGOs and CBOs. We have recently initiated discussions with the Community Advocacy and Monitoring project of the South African Social Security Agency and the Black Sash regarding the expansion of similar citizen-based service delivery monitoring initiatives in South Africa and we intend to take this work forward over the coming year.
Honourable members,
Our department is currently working with other departments and spheres of government to address issues raised with the President by citizens through the Presidential Hotline, Facebook, Twitter and face to face in Balfour, Bekkersdal, Umzimkhulu, Sweetwaters, Madelakufa, Umthatha, Libode, Bethlehem, Mossel Bay and Struisbaai. I also want to state categorically that all spheres of government must work together in order to address the needs of our people. This ANC government has a responsibility to respond to all the needs of our people, regardless of their geographic positions.
Building government capacity for M&E
This department, Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME) is the custodian of the Government-wide Monitoring and Evaluation System (GWMES) and has a responsibility to work with other departments such as the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) and institutions such as PALAMA to develop capacity for M&E across government. In addition to the sectoral data forums which I mentioned earlier, we are in the process of putting in place a government-wide M&E capacity building programme.
In addition, we are in the process of establishing an African M&E learning network, which will be kick-started with an African Conference on M&E later this year in conjunction with some academic institutions and other international organisations. The Conference will be attended by officials from other African countries which are implementing or planning to implement performance monitoring and evaluation initiatives similar to those being implemented by DPME.
Issues raised by the President in his State of the Nation Address
Government has declared 2011 as a year of job creation. In his State of the Nation Address, President Jacob Zuma indicated that DPME must provide a report on the filling of vacant funded posts within six months and that DPME must monitor the work of government departments with regards to job creation. This work is underway. We are working with DPSA on the filling of vacant funded posts and we have done a situational assessment which gives us a picture of what interventions are required. In summary, the results to date indicate that government as a whole has made very good progress in filling vacant funded posts.
With regards to monitoring job creation, we have been working closely with the Department of Economic Development to put in place a range of mechanisms to monitor the impact of the state on job creation. We are also working with Statistics South Africa, which collects information from the private sector on its job creation. We are confident that we will be able to give a comprehensive report in August this year.
Let me also take this opportunity to thank the President, colleagues in the executive and the entire team of the department and The Presidency for supporting me up to thus far. Together we can build better communities and serve our people with pride and dignity.
I thank you.
