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"The ACDP welcomes this initial debate on the green paper on improving government performance. We support the proposal that the new monitoring and evaluation unit will ensure that not only national departments meet certain agreed targets, but will also monitor provinces and municipalities.

The green paper accepts that "despite massive increases in successive budgets... service quality and standards have decreased." This has resulted in widespread service delivery protests. There is an urgent need to improve government performance at all levels and to reverse the trend of growing incapacity, corruption and lack of accountability.

The stacking of priorities will be the main challenge as government ministers will have to agree on 25 - 30 key "outcomes" in the areas of education, health, job creation, rural development and crime and corruption.
A central aspect of the outcomes performance management system mentioned in the green paper relates to performance contracts of cabinet ministers and MEC's to achieve deliverable outputs that can be measured.

The ACDP agrees that "what gets measured gets done." As they are appointed by political prerogative, they clearly can and should be held accountable and fired for lack of performance - unlike in the past where cabinet members appeared to be protected. Their performance will, however, have to be closely aligned to that of their DG or head of department.

The contracts will be based on the outputs government wants to achieve, such as improving the reading and maths scores of a certain grade. The role of each sphere of government will be set out in the delivery agreements.

It is interesting that the green paper uses basic education as an example of the outcomes performance management system particularly following research commissioned by Nedbank that if the quality of schooling was at a level befitting an upper-middle income country, then GDP would be R550bn higher than it is.

The previous performance management system for DG's and public servants in general has, however, been weak and erratic. Whilst everyone in the public service is supposed to have a performance contract, many are either not in place or are not monitored properly - this particularly at municipal level. Important matters have also been left out of such contacts, such as achieving a clean audit. How can we have the situation of DG's and managers being awarded bonuses where there were qualified audits?

The further challenges will be to change the culture in the public service to a performance, output-orientated one; to remove and not merely redeploy incompetent and corrupt managers and officials; and finding competent and skilled managers to work in the state bureaucracy.

The green paper describes a process for translating government's mandate into a set of measures against which it can hold itself and be held accountable. The ACDP particularly supports the creation of a Delivery Unit to respond to blockages at national, provincial and local levels. We welcome the green paper and will contribute to adding to the framework to ensure it is effective".