Budget Vote 2023 by Deputy Minister for Public Service and Administration Dr Chana Pilane-Majake, MP
- Honourable House Chairperson.
- Minister for the Public Service and Administration, Hon. Noxolo Kieviet.
- Honourable Members of the National Council of Provinces
- Our Honoured Guests and Public Servants.
- Fellow South Africans
House Chair person, My focus will be on vote 11 within the mandate of the Public Service and Administration, the corporate arm of government, as already outlined by Hon Minister Kieviet of building an effective, efficient and sustainable developmental and capable state.
Provincial governments are critical institutions in building a capable developmental state. They provide a critical link between the national, and local government. They are vital delivery institutions that millions of South Africans across the country depend on.
The capabilities, and resilience of the provincial governments, is galvanized by the NCOP that has a role of promoting the principles of Cooperative Government and Intergovernmental Relations. The DPSA continues to promote the principle of making public service a
career of choice by sharply also focusing on programmes that build a strong and healthy public service workforce for high performance in delivery of services to the people of SA.
These programmes entails:
- The Government Employees Housing Scheme
- Government Employees Medical Scheme (Gems)
I will also House Chairperson, in this address cover the Centre for Public Service Innovation (CPSI), a critical public service institution geared towards improving and enhancing the capacity of the state through innovation.
The Government Employees Housing Scheme (GEHS) was established in terms of Public Service Coordinating Bargaining Council (PSCBC) Resolution 7 of 2015. The Scheme assists government employees to access affordable housing through various interventions
that includes: Administration of Housing Allowance; provisioning of housing stock; production of employee enrolment Scheme for aggregation of demand; and providing advice, education and counselling to employees to improve their chances of accessing housing loans.
Of the 1.3 million public servants more than 1.1 million have accessed housing allowance. To date, home ownership has increased to 774 235 (70.4%). A further 189 856 (17%) of public servants receive housing allowance for rental accommodation. Approximately R300 million is being saved in the Individual-Linked Savings Facility ILSF for public servants on a monthly basis. As at 31 March 2023, over R19b (R19 Billion) has been saved by government employees in the (ILSF) House Chairperson, through the scheme, public servants who would not ordinarily qualify to access home loan finance from mainstream institution have managed to do so successfully towards building homes in urban and rural areas especially in Limpopo, and KZN changing the land scape of rural South Africa- disrupting the housing status quo. No more apartheid poverty in rural areas that hit you in the face. Palatable delivery of services is what you get if you have eyes to see and ears to hear. Let’s not allow ourselves to be detracted by side shows for political mileage gain.
Forward we move.
The budget regarded as limited allocated for this programme is R14,669 million.
House Chairperson, the mandate of Government Employees Medical Scheme (GEMS) is to improve affordability and access to quality healthcare for public servants, resulting in healthy workforce and increased state capacity to deliver services. GEMS has grown to be the
second largest Medical Scheme in South Africa.
Notable achievements, include:
- Over one million of GEMS’ beneficiaries had access to a medical scheme for the first-time in their lives as a result of broadened beneficiary definition.
- The Scheme has a track record of unqualified audits since inception with 2021/22 financial year unqualified audit opinion being the 17th.
- GEMS has the largest Diabetes, HIV, and Hypertension Disease Management Programmes among medical schemes, with more than 148,037 active participants receiving R2.3 billion worth of HIV care per annum. The Scheme has adopted the UNAIDS 90-90-90 targets to ultimately end the AIDS epidemic.
- GEMS was able to cover the unpredictable COVID-19-related costs for its beneficiaries in full.
Chairperson, the Centre for Public Service Innovation (CPSI) mandate promotes state capacity building through innovation as a catalyst for improved and sustained service delivery. It is tasked with building and entrenching the culture and practice of innovation in the Public Sector.
In the 2022/23 financial year, the CPSI undertook a number of new multiyear development projects that will be completed in the 2023/24 financial year such as virtual Thusong Centre that will be starting with Northern Cape to allow citizens to access the services offered without having to physically visit centres.
Some of the other CPSI innovations are:
- Emergency Medical Services (EMS) to efficiently manage planned patient transfers and ehailing to deal with shortage of ambulances
- Partnering with youth innovators and youth organisations, CPSI working together with offices of the Premiers and enhancing the DDM put in place digital inclusion and participation of youth across provinces in service delivery innovation through hackathons. Hackathons are teams of systems developers that progressively hack challenges through digital revolution.
- In partnership with UNDP South Africa, CPSI piloted a Citizen Engagement Mobile App, named, Let’s Talk in two DDM sites - OR Tambo and Waterberg Districts that allows for reporting of service delivery problems and two-way communication between citizens, councillors and officials. The initiative will be rolled out across the country
In the previous financial year, CPSI hosted six “Living Labs” in Umthatha where learners from nine schools were introduced to 4IR skillsets, inclusive of artificial intelligence such as Robotics and Coding.
- Design Thinking and Innovation Workshops and the Annual Public Sector Innovation Awards are channels that encourages innovation in the public sector be it internal or external.
Public sector innovation contributes towards professionalisation of the Public Service, thus improving state capacity. The Centre has been allocated an annual budget of about R46 million for the 2023/24 Financial Year.
In conclusion Honourable Chair, the DPSA, will continue to undertake innovative measures towards building the state capacity to deliver efficient services. The Vote is put forward for consideration. I thank you
