Councillor Mthetheleli Sam,
Chief Executive Officer for CPSI, Ms Thuli Radebe,
Director-General, Mr Mbulelo Sogoni,
Representatives from higher education institutions and private sector,
Our Heads of Departments,
Delegates of the Conrefence,
Molweni ngalenyanga yo Mama.

Fellow delegates allow me to steal a minute of your time to applaud the Minister of Public Service and Administration, Minister Sisulu: we thank you and your team for managing without any drama the wage negotiations in the public service this year. You have shown us during this year’s wage negotiations in the public service that as a nation we can resolve our issues without any confrontation.

We should all learn from how you achieved a harmonious settlement of that process and reciprocate it in other sectors. By so doing we would be saving our country billions of rands which could be lost through strike actions, disruptions to services and in some instances to violence and loss of life. On that note I urge all of us to observe a moment of silence to remember those who lost their lives in Marikana, many of whom are from our province. May their souls rest in peace.

Enkosi

Ladies and gentlemen the 6th Public Sector Innovation Conference has come to our province at a time when we are still celebrating women’s month. This is the month in which we recognise the efforts and the significant role played by the women in our country to uplift the social standard of our people.

It is indeed a great honour for the province of Eastern Cape to host this remarkable National Innovation Conference. We fully embrace the concept of innovation in the public sector and this is vindicated by the number of accolades that we have received as the province through our innovative intervention in service delivery. It should be noted that the Eastern Cape Province is one of the largest province and it is characterised by poverty and unemployment and it is more rural based. Therefore, it is essential for us to find new ways of doing things in the public sector as the demand for Services we provide far exceeds our limited resources.

We perceive the concept of innovation as the most critical and vital element that can enable us to meet the demands of our people. Furthermore, it is imperative for us to engross innovation with the aim of empowering our people to initiate projects that will sustain them and ultimately reduce government dependency.

Our approach focuses on the concept of innovation together with knowledge management as we firmly believe that these two complement each other. Therefore the Provincial Objective with regard to innovation and knowledge management in the public sector is to enable the creation and implementation of new processes, products, services and methods of delivery which will result in significant improvement in outcomes, efficiency, effectiveness and quality of service delivery.

Honourable Minister, I am fully convinced that it is through innovative interventions that will eventually unlock the potential and increase the performance of the public sector, as we constantly face the shrinking of resources.

I am delighted about the fact that the Province of Eastern Cape has demonstrated its potential to be Innovative in service delivery. We have received recognition from the United Nations Public Service Awards through the School Greening Project facilitated by our Chris Hani District Municipality and our Saving the Future organisation which is a non-governmenta; organisation (NGO) based in East London. The project aimed to empower young girls and as a result more than 3 000 young girls have received the training in adolescent and reproductive health education.

Other innovative projects that led the province to receive recognition include:

St Johns College at uMthatha which is the centre for Mathematics and Physical Science
Honey-bee Keeping Project by the Department of Rural Development and Agrarian Reform
Road Rangers Project facilitated by Transport Department with the aim of reducing stray animals in our Roads

Ladies and gentlemen I firmly believe that innovative practices must be an integral part of our daily work and we therefore wish to encourage innovation in all spheres of government.

I cannot over-emphasise the significance of learning and sharing from each other as we seek to transfer knowledge and skills within public institutions and learn other best practices from the private sector.

We therefore view innovation as the vehicle to improve the performance of the public sector. It is our belief that innovation will provide assistance in our endeavour to achieve some of our strategic priorities which include:

Speeding up growth and the transformation of the economy to create decent work and sustainable livelihoods
The building of a developmental state, the improvement of the public service, and the strengthening of democratic institutions

We are committed to entrench innovation in the public sector as this was supported by the executive council through the endorsement of the provincial innovation and knowledge management strategy. With this strategy we intend to provide aptitude to our provincial departments to become:

Best practice departments by practicing a reliable document management database and facilitate benchmarking and replication of successful projects
Learning organisations and by this we intend to learn from each other’s success and improve our performance
Departments Practicing Incremental and Radical Innovation in order to improve our operational processes
Smart organisations in which excellence and high performance prevails

As I conclude ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Eastern Cape province, I wish to express our support to ensure that innovation provides a platform to create a conducive environment for excellence that we desire to see in the public sector and improve the delivery of services to our people.

I thank you!