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Date: 14/04/2005
Source: Western Cape Provincial Government
Title: Rasool: Western Cape Premier's Office Prov Budget Vote 2005/2006


Presentation of the Budget of the Department of the Premier, Ebrahim Rasool Premier of the Western Cape

Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the Provincial Parliament
My Colleagues in Cabinet
Honourable Leader of the Opposition
Honourable Leaders of political parties
Honourable Members
Director-General, Heads of Departments and members of the civil service
Distinguished guests, leaders of faith, community leaders
Comrades and Friends
People of the Western Cape

1. INTRODUCTION

We can be in no doubt as to what needs to be done to tackle poverty across the globe. Nor is there disagreement about the fact that people living in deep poverty are robbed, not only of their socio-economic rights, but of the dignity and self-respect to which all human beings are entitled.

The Millennium Development Goals illustrate an international consensus that significant progress can be made if all role players set specific goals and targets to win the war against poverty. In South Africa, we have set ourselves similar goals and targets. Our national goals for the next ten years of democratic governance are laid out by President Mbeki in Vision 2014. Amongst other things, they commit our country to:

* Reducing poverty and unemployment by half;
* Providing the skills the economy requires;
* Delivering services to the people in a compassionate way; and
* Achieving a better national health profile and massively reducing preventable causes of death, including violent crime and road accidents.

Mr Speaker, these international and national goals are reflected in our Provincial Growth and Development Strategy, iKapa Elihlumayo. IKapa Elihlumayo sets out specific goals and links them to time-based targets. In other words, we in the Western Cape have drawn up our development priorities and milestones, and we can now move with certainty, efficiency and determination to build a People’s Contract to create employment and fight poverty.

In my Budget Speech last year, I set out a conceptual framework for governance, based on the principles of integration, cooperation, responsiveness and global connectivity. Having recently been given a mandate to govern in the Western Cape, I felt the need to establish a shared conceptual framework for our transformation agenda in government as whole, and especially in the Department of the Premier.

In this budget speech, Mr Speaker, I want to apply these concepts to a practical and comprehensive programme of action over the next year. I am in no doubt at all that the Department of the Premier needs and will undergo deep transformation in order to equip us for the role we must play in leading government in this province.

2. BUILDING THE CENTRE OF THE DEVELOPMENTAL STATE

Through a series of engagements within my department and external reviews by a Re-engineering Team and the Employment Equity Task Team, it quickly became clear that radical transformation is needed if we are to shed our historical baggage and reposition the Department of the Premier as the policy centre of provincial government. The review process is complete and we are now ready to begin to introduce a series of key reforms to lead the Western Cape in the next decade.

2.1. Policy Leadership

As we know, iKapa Elihlumayo was developed as an integrated response to the unique development challenges of the Cape. Its aims and objectives are being translated into the strategic plans and programmes of the 12 departments in provincial government. However, it quickly became clear that these departments continue to operate like silos: without central policy guidance or reference to one another. Because of this fragmentation, I have decided to establish a Policy Integration and Coordination Unit in my department.

The primary purpose of the Policy Unit will be to promote and synthesise all departmental and cluster programmes so that our efforts as government (together with our social partners) contribute significantly to economic growth, poverty reduction, social cohesion and to building a people’s identity and unity of purpose in our province. We want all our people to stand proud and free in a Home for All.

The Policy Unit will inform the key decision-making bodies in our province: such as the Cabinet, Cabinet Committees, senior management, and bodies like the Provincial Development Council and the Youth Commission.

As a core part of its work, the policy unit will continuously analyse and help guide the alignment of the National Spatial Development Perspective (NSDP), iKapa elhlumayo and the Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) of all municipalities, in line with President Thabo Mbeki’s State of the Nation Address earlier this year. The Policy Unit will also inform the agenda and the deliberations of the Premier’s Intergovernmental Forum. This eagerly awaited body will begin to define the role of provincial government: as an integrator, coordinator and driver of implementation, backed by the capacity to deliver and implement.

This role requires the necessary diagnostic instruments if we are to work intelligently and move forward with logic, precision and maximum performance.

2.2. Diagnostic Capability

Leading public management theorist, Prof. Merilee Grindle reminds us that “good government has much to do with the quality of human resources, organisations, and institutions in the public sector. Getting good government means, among other things, efforts to develop human resources, strengthen organisations, and reform (or create) institutions in this sector.”1 This means that it is not enough to have sound development policies. We also need to develop the effective human resources, organisations and institutions to implement those policies.

We need to take this reminder seriously. Despite the broad agreement that iKapa Elihlumayo strategies are needed in the Western Cape, the principles on which it is based have not penetrated deeply enough into our departments. This creates a real risk that, as we implement iKapa Elihlumayo, our staff and organisational infrastructure will not be ready for the task.

We must therefore make sure we have the diagnostic capability and tools to measure policy against its implementation, so that we can take the necessary remedial steps to improve our staff and institutions.

In order to get the ball rolling, my Department is planning a series of diagnostic studies. These include:

* A Skills Audit to assess the skills base of provincial government in relation to the imperatives of our iKapa programmes. The skills audit will focus on the need to improve and upgrade the technical, clinical and management skills base in government, in order to meet our Internal Human Capital Strategy
* The second study is be an Organisational Culture Assessment to test whether the values, attitudes, interests, habits, practices and behaviour of our staff and within the various networks with which we engage are consistent with the values of our Home for All vision and iKapa Elihlumayo;
* Thirdly, we plan a Departmental Review to assess the specific developmental impact of our strategies and programmes towards achieving the targets in the national Vision 2014 and the Millennium Development Goals of 2015;
* Fourthly, we will undertake a Service Delivery Review to assess whether our strategies and programmes are reaching the people on the ground through the service delivery models we use. The evidence suggests that state policy roll-out often fail to reach people in the intended way, and may be inefficiently delivered or lack the compassion that is so critical a part of our vision for the Province. A Service Delivery Review will allow us to address such weaknesses. It will also lay the basis for the ‘Service Delivery Charters’ we intend to develop in 2006, with the support of the Public Service Commission
* In addition, my department will collaborate with Treasury in a Service Delivery Survey both inside provincial government and with a representative sample of the population in the province. This information will help us understand the perceptions and experiences of the people who rely on our services. They will also inform the development of performance standards and programmes aimed at strengthening capacity.

The information we gather and the analyses we do will give us the evidence we need to guide our developmental role – helping us to align the staff and departments who must drive our vision and development strategy, and ensuring that they are well-supported by skills and the capacity to act.

2.3. Intervention Capability

This is a key point: diagnosis without the will or the ability to act is futile. The Department of the Premier will be organised in a way that allows us to intervene in the content of policies and programmes, and to help guide the performance and culture of our staff, organisations and institutional frameworks. Policy interventions will take place in formal decision-making forums, informed by the work of the Policy Unit, and reinforced by the Performance Management System.

The Human Resource Development component of the department will be geared to the effective implementation of the internal human and social capital strategies. The skills audit will point the way towards a major review of the content of and models for training, including a major overhaul and repositioning of the Cape Administrative Academy. We intend to partner with training agencies outside of government to ensure our access to relevant and tailor-made courses. This will begin, as it should do, at the top, with a new custom-made Executive Management Course to train senior management in high level policy management and implementation. We have been in discussion with cutting edge institutions like the Kennedy School of Government and similar institutions in Brazil and India, who will, together with the national Department of Public Service and Administration, partner us in this venture.

Over the course of the next year, we will ensure that we have sufficient capacity and leadership in the department to address three major weaknesses in the Province’s human resources:

* The first weakness lies in the area of individual skills, competencies and capabilities because of weak alignment with iKapa elihlumayo;
* The second weakness lies in the management of human capital development at central and departmental levels, which are currently in a poor state; and
* The third are weaknesses in workplace systems aimed at promoting sound human and social capital development, which are currently applied haphazardly.

Mr Speaker, it is vital that our interventions to improve the functioning of the developmental state are not restricted to individuals and the human resource management systems that support them. We also need to focus on the less tangible aspects of our sprawling administrative body. Here the priorities will be to ensure:

* That government employees can work in service-delivery teams and have the skills and capacity for effective project management;
* That our staff internalise the values that underpin Batho Pele so that they are able to interact with the citizens of the Western Cape in humane and caring ways; and
* That our staff reconnects with the communities from which they come through a well-organised and carefully targeted internal volunteer programme aimed at serving the people of this province.

2.4. Performance Management

Thus performance management is the next target on my list. The national Department of Public Service and Administration has developed a comprehensive approach to staff performance management. Yet, despite the fact that this broad model has been adapted for the Western Cape Provincial Administration, it has not, regrettably, been applied with the kind of consistency and diligence we expect. This is probably because of the disjuncture between the over-arching strategic direction and priorities of government, and the content of the various elements of the performance systems: that is, job descriptions, key performance areas, performance standards and the like.

However, with the finalisation of the iKapa Elihlumayo strategies in June 2005, my department will focus on, and reinvigorate, the staff performance management system to guarantee that it is driven by the requisites of iKapa Elihlumayo and Batho Pele. In other words, the strategic plans of each department must be consistent the realisation of IKapa elihlumayo programmes. Consequently, the performance agreements of – especially the senior management structures – in each of our departments must be tightly aligned with its targets as it implements the programmes and projects of iKapa. And this requirement cannot remain the property of senior management. It must cascade to every level of each department.

Mr Speaker, I must admit that I have not, over the past year, followed-through on the quarterly reviews with heads of department to ensure that they are systematically achieving their performance targets for the year. This will now change. As I said in my State of the Province address earlier this year, we plan to focus vigorously and relentlessly on performance management within Cabinet and between Ministers and their heads of department. The rewards and sanctions attached to performance management must be based on whether people have simply earned their salaries, or whether they should be additionally rewarded for extraordinary work, or whether they have been derelict even in their basic work.

Practically, Mr Speaker, this focus on implementing our staff performance management system means that we must move government to a point where there is a direct line between iKapa strategies, departmental strategic plans, budgets, human resource plans, job descriptions and key performance indicators. Once this alignment is in place, we will be in a much better position to ensure consistency between our inputs and the impact of our numerous programmes.

I have committed myself to measurable government, and our performance system will be supported by a well designed and focussed Monitoring and Evaluation System.

2.5. Learning Platform: Monitoring and Evaluation

This is an important goal and is, indeed, one of our most important priorities in the Department of the Premier during the 2005/6 fiscal year. The monitoring and evaluation component in the department is being set up and a pilot government-wide system will be launched in July 2005, just after the finalisation of the IKapa Strategies at the next Cabinet Lekgotla. In setting up our monitoring and evaluation system, we are working in close cooperation with the Research and Development department in the Presidency. Thus, although our provincial system is designed primarily to track the implementation of iKapa Elihlumayo and progress towards our vision of a Home for All, we need to make sure that it is consistent with the national framework.

The purpose of the monitoring and evaluation system is to track the inputs and activities of provincial government programmes against the outcomes and impacts envisaged in the various iKapa Elihlumayo strategies.

Our long term goal is, as we know, the achieving of economic and social well-being and the empowerment of all our people in the province. We also know that one of the most marginalised groups is African women, especially young women. Any improvements we make in this sector will help us measure the degree of improvement in the quality of life of everyone in this province.

On this note, I am happy to inform the House that my department has developed an excellent instrument to facilitate the assessment of, and debate about, quality of life in the province and in the municipal sphere.

The Quality of Life Index is equivalent to composite development indexes like the Human Development Index of the UNDP. This index gives us the opportunity to measure performance in terms of outcomes and impact, rather than by simply counting inputs and frequencies.

A sound monitoring and evaluation is not about control and policing. Rather, it implies continuous learning about how best to deploy our limited resources to maximum effect in improving the quality of life of our people.

Moreover, I believe that the monitoring and evaluation platform will greatly enhance the quality of our dialogue and debate with our social partners as we all focus our energies on how to improve the well-being and empowerment of all our people.

We therefore invite our social partners to join us in exploring the Quality of Life Index that we are developing for province as whole and for every municipality.

2.6. Communication and Social Mobilisation

A key part of the developmental state approach is the notion of developmental communication. This is defined by the Government Communication and Information System as, “communication which takes into account the needs of society, the developmental goals of government and general empowerment of the citizenry.” The ambition of the Communications function in my department is, accordingly, to provide services and information that is integrated and that communicates in a manner which:

* Is responsive and empowering
* Is interactive and responds to feedback
* Is innovative and creative
* Enhances participatory democracy and community participation
* Establishes common ground between government and people
* Makes government visible and accessible
* Uses plain and relevant language, and
* Includes internal communication with government employees.

IKapa Elihlumayo requires that communities become active participants in the programmes of government. This means that we need to do a great deal more than simply impart information. Rather, we need to help people find their own voices: to help them engage in interactive communications with government, and to provide information that leads to empowerment and participation.

As government, we must, therefore, communicate our targets and objectives so that people can hold us accountable. We need to be honest about our weaknesses so that people know that we acknowledge and respond to their frustrations. We need to talk about our plans so that people can share our visions and goals. And we need to tell people about our achievements so that they can see how this or that may improve their own lives.

This is one of the goals towards which the Imbizo programme is geared, because it gives us an opportunity to listen as well as talk; and to learn about the concerns, the fears and the pressures of life in South Africa today.

We must continue to open up the space within which our people can engage with us and with one another within the context of our vision of a Home for All. This is what makes public discussions like the Symposium on Race Relations so enriching and valuable.

It is why, also, we need to continue to introduce and expose our people to the rich variety of our cultures, beliefs, practices and values in this province, and allow them to experience the pleasure that comes of true understanding between different peoples. Iconic events such as the Cape Town International Jazz Festival, the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunste Fees, the Rittle Fees, the Suidooster Fees and many others hold up a mirror to our communities, so that all can see their diverse selves in this Western Cape mosaic. This is also why we welcome sacred days, national holidays and other commemorative moments as vital opportunities to learn about what others value.

3. RE-POSITIONING THE DEPARTMENT OF THE PREMIER

As I have indicated, the organisational structures, institutions, cultures and management frameworks that I have inherited in my department are inadequate and inappropriate to the role that the department must play as strategic leader of our collective vision (A Home for All) and our growth and development strategy (iKapa Elihlumayo).

Mindful of this, we have engaged in two critical investigations over the past year. First, how to re-engineer the Department of the Premier so that it can fulfil its new purpose and meet its goals; and second, how to achieve a public service that better reflects the demography of our province.

In essence, this means that the central character of the department will shift from being essentially a support department to the rest of government, to being a strategic leader in realising our vision and implementing our strategy. Thus, we will build, virtually from scratch, and in coordination with Treasury and the Department of Housing and Local Government, a policy nerve-centre for the whole of government to ensure the realisation of iKapa elihlumayo. This capability will anchor the department in its role as facilitator of integration at inter-departmental and inter-sphere levels, using our emerging policy, diagnostic, monitoring, evaluation and communication capabilities and transmitted through our internal human and social capital strategies.

In addition to establishing new capabilities in the Department of the Premier, we also envisage a reinvigoration of traditional support functions. Legal services will be reconfigured to become more pro-active and to specialise in the drafting of legislation, offer corporate legal advisory services and, of course, engage in litigation when necessary.

The Centre for E-innovation will be overhauled and will focus on the systematic improvement of services across departments. It will, in addition, develop and management shared data management platforms for the whole of government as our work becomes increasingly evidence-based. Holistic governance is fundamentally dependent on shared knowledge and information platforms aimed at improving and supporting decision-making.

4. RE-POSITIONING PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT THROUGH EMPLOYMENT EQUITY

In last year’s Budget Speech, I said that the provincial government had made insufficient progress in meeting national targets for employment equity due to the lack of political will before the ANC took control of the government. As promised then, I engaged Minister Geraldine Fraser Moleketi, who provided us with a high-level Employment Equity Task Team, working in conjunction with the Public Service Commission. This Task Team has just submitted its draft report.

Mr. Speaker, the report makes interesting, yet riveting and disturbing, reading because it shows just how far off the mark we remain, and the enormous challenges we face if we are to attain equity in our employment profile as a provincial government.

If my first year as Premier was primarily about understanding the challenges we face, the second year must be about significant movement towards a representative public service.

The Task Team seconded by DPSA uses the provincial labour market profile as its point of departure, and then contrasts this with the employment patterns in the provincial administration.

Some significant trends emerge:

Africans are under-represented at all levels of the administration. While Coloureds on the whole are over-represented, both they and Africans are dramatically under-represented at managerial levels.

Women remain under-represented in the Administration, but this is most significantly reflected in senior management, where women constitute only 20.2%.

People with disabilities remain, by and large, an excluded group in the administration.

While there are improvements in the representivity profile (in so far as the percentage of Africans increased from 11% in 2002 to 16.6% in 2005, and over the same period Coloureds and Whites decreased from 65.9% to 62.9% and 19% to 15% respectively) the trends are too low and incremental.

The central challenge illuminated by the DPSA Employment Equity Task Team’s Draft Report is the dramatic under-representation of black people in the upper levels of the organisation, especially black women.

The reality is that our current efforts to transform this situation are quite simply inadequate. For example, we had a target of achieving 75% Black people at management level by December 2004. The actual improvement was from 34.6% in July 2002 to 43.8% by March 2005. This still reflects that we are 27.2% short of our target. Mr Speaker this is clearly not good enough.

The Task Team has also done projections into the future, based on trends of the past four years. According to its calculations, we will reach our target of 75% only by 2012, and our 30% target for female participation in management by 2011. Again, I repeat this is just not good enough, and will require some innovative and creative work if we are to reach our targets faster and sooner.

The Task Team also identifies attitudinal and cultural barriers which inhibit designated groups from taking up employment in the administration. Our administration is seen as patriarchal and not friendly towards women; it is seen as being unfriendly towards Xhosa as a language, and its culture is not inclusive. The way employees arrange their lift clubs, socialising and so on is testimony to this.

Furthermore, we still have a way to go towards being disability-friendly.

The Task Team’s report acknowledges that distortions in the broader labour market and our inheritance in the Western Cape make it difficult to address these challenges immediately, especially at the senior levels of the organisation. Furthermore, the almost exclusive reliance on natural attrition is not helping either. The biggest problem seems to be the absence of a sufficiently robust human resource development and management capability in provincial administration departments. One indicator of this is that Employment Equity Task Team found that only 5 of the 13 departments had Employment Equity Plans in place.

In light of this, the Department of the Premier will ensure that the Internal Human Capital Strategy explicitly addresses the employment equity challenges we face. Rigorous steps will be taken to overhaul and sophisticate the human resource development infrastructure and capacity of government so that a combination of the following interventions can be realised, as envisaged by the Task Team.

* Promotion of strategies for career progression through a training and development framework within the provincial administration;
* Improvement in staffing and recruitment practices to source effectively and retain target affirmative action candidates;
* Improvement of induction, probation and performance management practices to retain black people with the required skills;
* Structure rewards and benefits to attract black people with the required sills at higher levels at higher levels.

We will also consider establishing a special politically-led Task Team to ensure that the recommendations of the Employment Equity Team are indeed implemented. Finally Mr Speaker, I want to reiterate that the achievement of employment equity is not simply a numbers game. It is based on the belief that, if we are to position this government as an agent of development, we need a rich diversity of skills, aptitudes and capabilities. Employment equity is simply one of the measures necessary to realise that rich diversity and dynamism.

CONCLUSION

President Mbeki has said that our priority for the next period is to build the capacity of the state to deliver. I believe that the repositioning of the Department of the Premier that is currently underway will lay the foundation for a government-wide renewal of purpose and practice. This will not only make government more responsive to the people, but will ensure a more representative and sensitive public service.

Over the next few months, we will use the instruments I have described in order to develop an appropriate organogram, and then populate it with the best people inside our administration, together with the best and most representative people available in the country.

I wasn’t to acknowledge that the personnel in the Department of the Premier have been very patient as we proceeded with our plans for transformation in the Department and in government as a whole. I thank them sincerely for this patience in very trying and, often, insecure times. However, I want to express my appreciation for people who, in the midst of constant change, have, by and large, remained committed to our vision and strategy.

I want to acknowledge the role of the DG in shepherding people in a direction which has not yet taken clear shape, but is emerging forcefully. This has resulted in significant sectors in our Department displaying enthusiasm for this new direction.

The ground we have covered and our optimism about the future have laid a firm foundation on which to respond to the President’s call to build the capacity of the state to deliver to our people.

1. Grindle, M.S. (1997). “The Good Government Imperative: Human Resources, Organisations, and Institutions”, in Grindle, M.S. (ed.) Getting Good Government: Capacity Building in the Public Sector of Developing Countries. Boston: Harvard Institute for International Development, p.8.

Issued by: Office of the Premier, Western Cape Provincial Government
14 April 2005

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