Issued by the Ministry of Public Service and Administration
26 October 1999
Building a public service for the new millennium
Ladies and Gentleman
There is widespread consensus within all the major stakeholders in our society, government, the private sector, labour and the rest of civil society, that the key challenge of our time is reversing the scourge of poverty that besets the majority of our peo ple. Poverty, in terms of access of our communities to sustainable livelihoods, proper and affordable health care, decent education and other basic needs together with other human threats like AIDS and crime, are all formidable challenges we can only conqu er on the basis of collaboration and co-operation.
I thus welcome this opportunity to share with the media community some of our strategies to strengthen government's ongoing resolve and commitment to improve the quality of lives of all the people of our country.
The public service plays a crucial role in our lives. As mothers with children, we require access to primary health care, affordable, quality education and child welfare grants, as travellers we require passports, as business people we register companies a nd pay taxes, as responsible citizens we expect safety and security and for our rights to be protected. All these services are provided through an annual expenditure of over R160 billion by over 1,1 million men and women, at a cost to the state of about R8 0 billion.
As government, we have committed ourselves to accelerating the delivery of these services to communities and improving on the quality, accessibility and consumer friendliness. The transformation of the public service, therefore, is about positioning govern ment institutions to focus all their activities towards putting people first, as captured by the Sotho word, 'Batho Pele'.
Without meaningfully changing the way in which the public service operates, all of government's priorities run the risk of disappearing under the rubble of bureaucracy, incompetence and mal-administration.
How then do we seek to tackle the challenge of transforming the public service?
We have over the past five years laid a solid basis by integrating the various apartheid administrations, introduced a decentralised management framework that became operational on the 1st of July 1999, initiated performance and fixed term contracts for se nior managers and significantly improved the conditions of service of public servants.
In addition, we have institutionalised the use of information technology as a strategic resource by creating the State Information Technology Agency and improved planning and budgeting through the Medium Term Expenditure Framework.
These initiatives have stabilised management in the public service and will be consolidated through the implementation of the Public Finance Management Act (operational April 2000) and the proposed wage policy (due for negotiations). As the Department for Public Service and Administration, we are completing a number of studies and investigations that will inform our future actions in building a public service for the new millennium. These are:
The Integrated Implementation Programme (IIP) that will inform us on the state of the public service with regard to (I) alignment of budgeting and planning (ii) efforts to improve service delivery (iii) human resource planning and (iv) management informati on systems.
A key component of the IIP will be a personnel expenditure review that will comment on the size of the public service, appropriate placement of personnel and propose strategies to manage personnel expenditure in the medium to long term
Sectoral reviews, where we seek to understand the delivery imperatives of sectors in the public service with a view to developing transformation approaches and solution suitable to the needs of delivery departments.
A project to explore innovative and alternative ways to deliver public services, including how we can maximise opportunities provided by information technology to improve service delivery. Various proposals have been generated in this regard and are being consulted with the relevant sectors.
Review of training and development strategies in the public service, with a view to prescribing certain competency requirements for public servants, building management capacity and refocusing the role of the South African Management Development Institute (SAMDI). Mr Job Mokgoro, the new Head of SAMDI, will lead this process.
As the various reports and projects complete their activities, we are confident that we will then be in a position to unveil a systematic action plan for a public service designed to meet the requirements of citizens, not one organised to the convenience o f service providers.
Given our resolve to fundamentally transform the state machinery and make it more responsive to people's needs, we will be short-sighted not to seek meaningful partnerships with our key social partners. Labour unions in particular, are important contributo rs and beneficiaries to and of the transformation process. Insinuations and occasionally uniformed analysis that we seek to not only distance ourselves but also reverse the historic gains of the public sector labour movement are an imaginative adjustment o f the truth. We remain committed to a constructive partnership with labour and have even common objectives in transforming the state and improving the quality of lives of our people.
Given the dynamics of employer-union relationships, it is expected that there will be continuous differences on how to balance the needs of broader society with the objective of being a model employer. We are, however, confident that the wage policy proces s will provide us with appropriate guidance on how to continue our efforts to improve public servants' conditions of service whilst also ensuring that we maintain personnel expenditure at reasonable levels.
Chairperson, instead of a conclusion, we think the time has come to focus the challenges of public service transformation beyond the predictable intricacies of the role of the state as employer. Difficult and even more fundamental questions confront us. We are aware that some of these are among the most difficult and formidable challenges that our young democracy will ever be confronted with. With your understanding and appreciation, we will no doubt succeed beyond even our own expectations.
Thank You.