Public Service and Administration Minister Roy Padayachie has reiterated government's commitment to implementing an effective and efficient public service.

This, according to the minister, will ensure that public servants are appropriately skilled to render services to citizens with speed and at a lower cost.

Padayachie was briefing the Portfolio Committee for Public Service and Administration in Cape Town on the Strategic Plan and Budget Vote for the Ministry to be delivered on 15 May 2012.

He told the committee that the ministry had adopted five strategic focus areas that were drawn from the delivery agreement for Outcome 12 and the plans of all the portfolio institutions.

The five strategic focus areas seek to strengthen access to service delivery to citizens, improve internal efficiency of the public service, implement the turn-around strategy of the State Information Technology Agency (SITA), accelerate training and development of a Public Service Cadre and the repositioning of Public Administration Leadership and Management Academy (PALAMA) into a School of Government and to fight corruption in the public service.

"In addition to the five strategic focus areas, we have decided to roll out four campaign programmes that will include instilling ethos of public service aimed at inculcating a new culture of responsiveness, dedication and patriotic commitment in the minds of public servants as part of a strategy of building a public service cadre," said the minister.

Other additional campaign programmes include the fight against corruption that will profile government efforts in dealing with the scourge; the modernisation of the public service and public participation.

Padayachie emphasised that as part of bringing government services closer to the people, the department needed to speed up the connectivity of Thusong Services Centres.

To date, the department, together with SITA, have connected 96 of the 123 Thusong Services Centres with the focus now shifting to schools to provide a platform for educators to be able to deliver lessons to other learners especially where there is shortage of qualified teachers.