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Date : 16/03/2006
Source: Gauteng Provincial Government
Title: Shilowa: Gauteng Senior Management Service Conference


  Address by Premier Mbhazima Shilowa at the 4th Annual Gauteng Provincial Government Senior Management Service (SMS) Conference, Delivery towards Vision 2014

Members of the Executive Council
Heads of departments
Mayors and other representatives of local government
Civil society representatives
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen

It is a great pleasure for me to welcome you, the senior management corps of the Gauteng public service, to the fourth annual conference of the Gauteng Provincial Government SMS. You are the pride of government, much as you are leaders, pace setters and role models in society.

With the local government elections now over, I want to also thank those of you who took the time to deepen democracy in our province by voting in the local government elections. Our congratulations go to the new mayors who have been elected and to those who we expect to be elected tomorrow. We look forward to working even more closely with them in building better communities, in making Gauteng a globally competitive city region and in continuing to tackle poverty and unemployment in our province.

When the President delivered his State of the Nation Address in parliament last month, he gave evidence of a growing optimism in our country among business owners, consumers and among South Africans from all walks of life.

He said that our people are convinced that South Africa has entered its ‘Age of Hope.’

As I indicated in my State of the Province Address, this ‘Age of Hope’ is definitely true of Gauteng:

* Gauteng remains an economic success story and has continued to strengthen its position as an economic engine of the country and the continent, reaching a growth rate of 5,6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2004.
* Of critical importance are the indications that this growth is also reflected in employment growth. Unemployment in Gauteng dropped from 30.4 percent in September 2001 to 22.8 percent in September 2005, despite continued high levels of in migration.
* Gauteng accounts for close to half of all employees' remuneration and company turnover and 35 percent of all household expenditure in the country.
* Gauteng attracts over half of the seven million international tourists who come to South Africa.

Over 40 percent of all creative enterprises are found in Gauteng. The recent Oscar award for Tsotsi which has once again brought international recognition and hope to our country is an expression of this potential which is still to be tapped.

This good news about Gauteng goes beyond the success of our economy. We have also made significant strides in addressing the social needs of our people:

* 96 percent of households have access to free basic water
* 77.6 percent of households have free basic electricity
* 83 percent of identified bucket systems had been replaced and all bucket toilets in Gauteng will be eliminated by June 2006
* Over 80 percent have access to basic sanitation
* Over 80 percent have weekly refuse removal services
* 1 142 172 people benefit from the social grant system, including 883 669 children on child support grants
* 310 881 of the poorest children in primary schools were exempted from school fees and 378 298 benefited from the school nutrition programme
* 35 972 children are benefiting from foster care grants
* 38 231 of the poorest children in Grade one will have received free school uniforms by the end of March 2006
* 66 318 of the poorest children benefit from free scholar transport
* 151 236 orphans and vulnerable children infected and affected by HIV/AIDS benefited from 98 community based care programmes and
* Between 1994 and March 2005, close to 900 000 housing opportunities were created, directly benefiting the lives of more than 3.5 million residents - more than one third of Gauteng's population.

These achievements would not have been possible without your contribution as the Gauteng government's senior management corps.

You have a central role to play in realising the massive potential which is inherent within this ‘age of hope’. The ‘age of hope’ is based on our people's experiences of the progress we have made, together with them, since 1994 it is based on our track record of delivery in tackling the challenges of poverty, unemployment and underdevelopment. It speaks to the confidence that our people have in government and the future development of democracy, as well as their expectation that we will move speedily to address their aspirations and fulfil their mandate.

This places an enormous responsibility on government in general and yourselves in particular as leaders of the public service machinery in Gauteng. Indeed, we can go so far as to say that our ability to live up to the expectations of our people and realise their dreams is in your hands.

As you would know, the mandate of the people of Gauteng is encapsulated within the Gauteng Provincial Government's five year strategic programme for 2004 - 2009 and our vision for the second decade of democracy to 2014. In particular, we made a commitment to place our objective of contributing to the halving of unemployment and poverty by 2014 at the centre of all our programmes.

In achieving this, our challenge is to:

* increase the rate of investment and job creation;
* introduce a range of interventions in the Second Economy to ensure the integration of the two economies and to promote sustainable livelihoods amongst communities;
* preserve and develop human resources through social services and a comprehensive social security system;
* improve implementation in an integrated manner and strengthen particularly the local government sphere;
* improve safety and security in a way that it creates an environment for heightening economic activity; and
* prioritise the African agenda and broader international relations to benefit development.

The theme of this conference, "Building the Capacity and Organisation of the State: Gauteng accelerating Delivery towards Vision 2014," is indeed appropriate.

Given that the state is a primary vehicle for development, it has become increasingly clear that our ability to achieve all our objectives rests on our ability to build the capacity and organisation of the state. This has emerged as a common theme in our major policy and strategy documents that have been developed at the various levels of government.

Our five year strategic programme prioritises the building of an effective and caring government in realising our 2014 vision. Our growth and development strategy, which we launched in April last year with a target of boosting our growth rate to 8 percent by 2014, identifies government institutional efficiencies as one of its key strategic levers. The Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa (AsgiSA) which is a set of national interventions to serve as a catalyst for accelerated and shared growth, also highlights the need for better public service management and responsiveness to public needs.

Improving the efficiency and performance of government is therefore not a nice to have. It is an essential prerequisite in achieving our objectives.

While there is a lot we can be proud of, we cannot be fully satisfied with the current pace and quality of delivery. We need accelerated delivery and we need a qualitative leap in our performance so that we can avoid a situation where we are overwhelmed by growing development challenges. Instead we need to step up delivery and move at a faster pace.

When we speak about the capacity of the state we are not just talking about sending senior managers on more training courses. We are speaking about the full set of capabilities and capacities that are required to best meet the developmental needs of our province and our people in line with their mandate.

With these imperatives in mind and in line with a national initiative, we last year undertook a study on building the capacity and organisation of the state. We emerged with a strategic framework designed to reposition the Gauteng governmental system to more effectively capitalise on available opportunities and deliver on our development agenda.

The challenge now is to ensure that the new capacities and organisation which the framework entails are embedded and further elaborated within the provincial government and an implementation plan developed by the end of April this year. This conference and you as senior managers, have a central role to play in this regard.

The strategic framework points out that the Gauteng Provincial Government has achieved considerable levels of success in implementing national policies and improving service delivery that contributes to a growing economy and improvements in social conditions for the population of the province. It also points to the very important process we have undertaken together with municipalities in the province to develop Gauteng as a thriving, globally competitive city region. This is a major initiative to help ensure that we achieve the higher economic growth rates required to contribute to halving unemployment and poverty and reducing inequality by 2014. The building of Gauteng as a globally competitive city region will not just benefit the people of Gauteng; it will contribute to building sustainable livelihoods and wealth creation for neighbouring provinces and indeed for South Africa as a whole.

The approach to creating this globally competitive city region with a high annual growth rate will be through inter alia, sustained investment in infrastructure, boosting innovation in the high technology and knowledge intensive economic sectors, renewal of urban living spaces, becoming a base for advanced human capital development in a ‘knowledge economy’ context, high quality service infrastructure for businesses and households and effective crime reduction.

This approach requires the further cementing of intergovernmental collaboration and integration across the spheres of government. It requires a "one for all and all for one" approach including the design and implementation of a coordinated, cross governmental strategy that produces holistic benefits across government, maximises synergies and minimises duplication in economic and social programmes and investments.

The global city region perspective points to the need for institutional arrangements to support this level of integration, to promote joint decision-making and cooperative governance with a clear delineation of powers between national, provincial and local spheres. In addition, a spatial coalition is required to build strategic networks linking government, business, financial, development and other sectors around common goals.

Our report on the capacity and organisation of the state points to the need to improve on our multi year planning and budgeting system. For example, it argues that the provincial government in the first 10 years of democracy adopted an incremental approach to policy implementation and service delivery with an emphasis on structure, budget and management. Key activities became "locked in" to medium term budget plans with little room for new initiatives. This contributed to organisational inertia and prevented "even the smartest managers" from breaking paradigms and mindsets.

In improving our performance we need to shift the direction of government action from command and control to ‘innovation in service delivery.’ An innovation focused development path which promotes constant analysis of change and rapid response mechanisms can play a major role in ‘raising the game’ and elevating our performance and impact. Rather than change running ahead of provincial and local government, we need to position ourselves ahead of the game.

Since 1997, our strategy to grow the economy has emphasised the importance of knowledge and innovation in growing Gauteng as a smart province. Our interventions have helped ensure the emergence of a ‘knowledge economy’ in our province and the country in general. But we need to extend this more effectively to the public service. Knowledge intensity is a key factor of production resulting in innovation and advancement not just in the broader economy, but in the public service as well. Our imperative in Gauteng is therefore to drive knowledge intensity both within government and in the broader economy.

We need to invest in capacities and organisational interventions that generate high quality performance of knowledge and innovation systems, including education and higher education; science engineering and technology based economic activities across the spectrum of low, medium and high technology intensity as well as efficient and effective services to poor communities.

Critical components of this emerging South African knowledge economy are:

* Concerted long term innovation and change in the business environment, including in industry, commerce and government leading to adoption of new technologies, new business processes, new business models and paradigms such as e-business, social innovations, e-government, advanced manufacturing and refocusing spatial development in housing and urban planning
* Significant public policy focus over a sustained period on science, engineering and technology, research and development and on building the national system of innovation including policies on indigenous knowledge and intellectual property rights
* Creation of a range of financing models and public institutions to support the generation of new knowledge for innovation and competitiveness * Significant legislative and institutional support for building highly skilled human capital and for life long learning
* Diffusion of information and communication technology (ICT) as a major platform for communicating and exchanging knowledge.

In this context, a knowledge economy exhibits a high level of demand for "knowledge for development", whether social or economic in the private or public sector. Thus, according to the World Bank's Ian Goldin, "99 percent of development is about ideas. Money is important but only with the right ideas at the right time. This is why some countries are able to achieve more with the same resource envelope."

To address new imperatives, our framework identifies a development path made up of seven strategic breakthroughs which require new forms of capacity and significant reorientation of current capacity. These strategic breakthroughs, some of which will be further explored at this conference are:

* Positioning and branding Gauteng as a global city region
* Facilitating a services revolution
* Exploiting niche opportunities in national development strategies
* Re-envisaging and intervening in the second economy
* Managing knowledge and innovation
* Steering human capital development and * Establishing a business gateway to Africa.

The successful achievement of these breakthroughs requires a reorganisation of government and shifts in programme design and change management. In particular, a shift in the approach to strategic planning is required that emphasises long term policy development and planning, the use of geo spatial information in decision making and other quality information that effectively analyses trends impacting on government programmes.

The macro organisation of the government system needs to take into account the process of creating a single public service as well as the objective of crating ‘seamless government’ whose aim is to effectively service citizens in an integrated manner.

The new intergovernmental relations legislative framework will assist us in building intergovernmental relations to:

* Set, execute and monitor key development priorities for the country regarding the creation of work, fighting poverty and reinforcing national pride, given the relative autonomy of provincial and local government in key areas of social delivery;
* Consult another sphere on policy or actions that it must implement or that affects it before a decision is taken and to give due regard to its views and circumstances;
* Manage service delivery in ways that are efficient, accessible to beneficiaries, responsive to the needs of our communities and that result in integrated and sustainable service provision despite jurisdictional boundaries and with due regard to unequal capacities;
* Forge strong, flexible goal directed partnerships that can unlock the creativity and energy of collaboration and partnership without weakening performance and accountability;
* Empower communities to participate in processes of governance whilst inspiring and supporting communities to become self-reliant;
* Plan and act within the framework of domestic and global conditions within available budgetary constraints and to account for performance in terms of existing legislation; and
* Resolve disputes without recourse to court action.

A key priority in lifting governance in Gauteng to a higher plane will be to help strengthen local government. We are already working with municipalities on the provision of managerial, professional and technical staff and to capacitate local government on financial management.

In my State of the Province Address last month, I outlined a set of commitments drawn from the provincial government's programme of action for 2006/7 and the period to 2009. These are the commitments and deliverables on which all of us will be judged. I would therefore urge all of you to familiarise yourselves with this programme as you bear responsibility for the fulfilment of these commitments. Our monitoring and evaluation system will track this implementation and we will also continue to publish information on progress on our website to enable members of the public to monitor our performance.

I want to thank all of you who participated in the revitalisation of the Batho Pele campaign in our province, including the Public Service Week in July last year. This year we need to take this a step further by extending the mobilisation of public servants and taking the campaign to the public so that they can hold us accountable for service delivery. We are currently finalising service standards for all provincial departments and a provincial service charter. I would urge all senior managers to ensure that this process is fast tracked and concluded as soon as possible.

The effective delivery of services also requires that we build our interface with various stakeholders, including through strengthening and creating platforms and processes of interaction to ensure that our policies and services are indeed relevant to the needs of our stakeholders. This must become a standard way of operating across the provincial government. In this way we can give effect to our commitment to build a people's contract to create work and fight poverty in our province.

Knowledge, and therefore people, is our greatest asset in building our capacity and organisation to successfully drive our development agenda and in building a better Gauteng for all. Knowledge building and mobilisation across government, the economy and in communities should therefore be a top priority.

The journey we are embarking on today to reposition the Gauteng public service will be an immensely challenging and exciting one, it will be an unparalleled learning experience and bring about change which will put us up there with the best that the private and the public sector worldwide has to offer. As I said earlier, the future of Gauteng is in your hands. I am confident that you will rise to the challenge.

I wish you all the best in your deliberations.

Thank you.

For more information contact:
Annette Griessel
Cell: 082 563 3614

Issued by: Office of the Premier, Gauteng Provincial Government
16 March 2006
   

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