Ministerial response to Committee's draft report on Department of Public Service & Administration Strategic Plan 2012

Meeting report

Election of Acting Chairperson
Mr M Manana (ANC) was appointed as Acting Chairperson until the Chairperson could be present. He welcomed the Minister for Public Service and Administration to the meeting.

Draft Committee Report on the Department of Public Service Strategic Plan and Budget Vote 12: Minister’s response
Hon Roy Padayachee, Minister for Public Service and Administration, noted that he would like to reiterate the broad strategy of the DPSA.  The Ministry for Public Service and Administration had five key strategic focus areas. These were: to strengthen access to service delivery, to improve the internal efficiency of the public service, to implement a turnaround strategy for the State Information Technology Agency (SITA), to accelerate training and development of a public service cadre, and responses of the Public Administration Leadership and Management Academy (PALAMA), and to tackle corruption in the public service efficiently. The main purpose overall was to ensure that the public service was transformed into an effective, efficient, responsive, accountable and development-oriented service.

In addition to the five focus areas, the Ministry was running four campaigns. These programmes included installing a good ethos within the Public Service, efficient anti corruption, improvement towards efficient service delivery and modernisation of the public service, and ensuring public participation.

The Minister noted the recommendations made by the Portfolio Committee in its Report, and said that there were six points made, which he would respond to in turn. In relation to the acceleration of cleaning the PERSAL system and the implementation of the Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS), the Minister agreed that there was a need to implement both with due speed. There were already systems in place to ensure that this would be done. The Ministry would also prioritise the resuscitation of oversight structures between DPSA, SITA and National Treasury.

The Committee’s second recommendation was that proper measures must be put in place to ensure that the targets of employing 2% disabled people in the public sector were reached. DPSA itself was complying with that target, but there was a need for a much clearer plan to mobilise the whole public service to achieving it, and his Ministry would be collaborating with the Department of Women ,Children and People with Disability (DWCPD).

The Committee’s third recommendation was to foster the independence of the Public Service Commission (PSC) and the Minister noted that the PSC was required by the Constitution to be independent. The PSC obtained its budget from the Ministry, but he assured the Committee that the Ministry did not interfere with the workings of the PSC, and the budget allocation was a National Treasury directive, so the concerns of the Committee in this regard should be directed to National Treasury.

The fourth concern was the limited budget of the Public Service Commission, and Minister Padayachee concurred that there was a need to ensure adequate funding for the PSC to discharge its constitutional mandate. He would support the Committee in any requests to National Treasury.

The Committee’s fifth concern was the need to expedite connectivity of the Thusong Service Centres. The Minister agreed with the Committee and said that to date the DPSA and SITA had connected 96 of the 123 Thusong Service Centres, but was presently concentrating on providing connectivity to schools, to provide platforms for teachers in one centre to deliver lessons to learners in other areas where there was a teacher shortage. The Ministry was considering taking the Thusong Service Centres to railway stations, and was holding discussions with the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa around this. A Management Framework for Thusong Services Centres and ICT connectivity was also being formulated.

The sixth concern was that there should be a collaborative approach to skills planning in the public service. The Minister noted that a number of recent service delivery failures were due to the lack of skilled public servants, and there were endeavours to develop skills, including training 1 192 unemployed youth graduates on Breaking Barriers to Entry in the Public Service, in conjunction with the National Youth Development Agency. 18 846 new public servants had undergone induction programmes through PALAMA, and the DPSA would strengthen the collaboration between PALAMA, the Public Service Sector Education and Training Authority (PSETA) on the Workplace Skills Plans.
 
Discussion
Mr A Williams (ANC) asked if there had been any progress on the Special Anti Corruption Unit since April 2011.

Mr Williams also asked what measures were put in place to address the findings of the Auditor–General on the DPSA and its entities.

Mr J Marais (DA) wanted to know the budget for the PSC, and whether it interacted directly with National Treasury on the budget expropriation, or whether everything to do with the budget was handled through the Ministry.

Mr Marais commended the repositioning of PALAMA, but stressed that PALAMA needed to deviate from its current client-driven approach, and ensure that it set benchmarks for prospective public servants to reach before they were accepted into the public service.

Mr Marais said that whilst he noted the target of 2% disabled employment, there had, to date, been nothing but promises to reach this target, and the Minister should rather concentrate on abilities of individuals, than their disability.

Ms J Maluleka (ANC) asked the Minister whether the disabled community played any role in trying to reach the 2% employment of disabled target.

Ms Maluleka believed that PALAMA should not simply offer 10 days of training, but instead significant institutions should be created to advance the skills of the public service.

Ms Maluleka wanted to know the targets for achieving connectivity, particularly in the rural areas.

Mr L Ramatlakane (COPE) asked about the SITA’S turn around strategy, noting that there was apparently irregular expenditure within SITA, and asked how the DPSA and Ministry were ensuring that finality was reached on those issues.

Mr Ramatlakane commented on performance management, and found it hard to accept the 50% compliance agreement, asking for more details on this, and stressing that no department should under-budget.

Mr M Manana (ANC) also commented on poor procurement practices in both PALAMA and SITA in the past, and asked what mechanisms were in place to ensure that this did not occur again.

The Chairperson asked about the Auditor-General’s comments on performance. She also thought that the advertisement of vacancies should be revised, as she had not seen any specific advertisements noting that applications were welcomed from the disabled.

The Minister said that the questions seemed to fall into four broad categories, and he would address them in that way. In relation to the category of questions around PALAMA, he agreed with the Committee that there was a need to institute a strategy to transform PALAMA. It needed to offer a more professionally competitive service, and not merely focus on short term courses. He also asserted the need to work more closely with PALAMA leadership. In response to questions around SITA, he noted that a Board was currently addressing the issues, and SITA’s leadership would be best-placed to detail exactly what was included in the turnaround strategy. He agreed that, in relation to disability targets, DPSA had a responsibility to set a target, but noted that DPSA had no power to sanction departments who did not comply, although the performance of departments in this regard would be evaluated. He said again that DPSA and DWCPD were currently trying to ensure that the targets were met. At present, there were two main reasons why the targets had not been achieved to ate. Firstly, some people held the view that people with disabilities were in a position to do the work required of them, but others maintained that it was hard to find disabled persons who could work in the public service. The gap between these perceptions had to be bridged and DPSA would continue to push for the 2% target to be reached.

In relation to the PSC, the Minister stated that the primary role that DPSA played was to transfer the budgetary allocations to PSC. DPSA had little engagement with National Treasury on the PSC allocation, and it was instead the Portfolio Committee who played a greater role in influencing the budget appropriations.

The Minister noted that a special Anti-Corruption Unit was to be established to deal with disciplinary cases, and agreed that there had been poor handling of most of the cases in the past.

The Minister asked that the DPSA officials should speak to 50% compliance issues, and he was then excused from the meeting.

The Chief Financial Officer, DPSA, amplified that the DPSA played no role in the PSC’s budget allocation, and it was the PSC who submitted the budget motivation directly to National Treasury.

A representative of SITA amplified that quite a lot had been achieved on the SITA turnaround. SITA had now adopted a new business model, more than 51% of the vacancies had been filled, and it was noted that, whilst irregular expenditure had arisen in the last year through fraud, the most recent instances of irregular expenditure were related to the difficulties in the monopolistic environment of Telkom and IBM.

Mr R Alli, Acting Chief Executive Officer, SITA, added that disciplinary measures had been implemented against those responsible for irregular expenditure and stops taken to ensure that it did not recur.

Mr Marais noted that the Auditor-General had been very critical of SITA’s performance, in the 2011/12 financial year as well, and therefore he asked SITA if all issues raised by the Auditor-General would be addressed.

The SITA representative confirmed that all the instances of fraud arose in relation to the 2010/11 financial year.

The Chairperson (ANC) highlighted procurement issues for SITA, and asked when proper IT capacity in state departments would be reached.

The delegates from SITA and DPSA were then excused.

Adoption of Final Report of the Portfolio Committee on the Department of Public Service and Administration Strategic Plan and Budget
Mr Ramatlakane highlighted point 2.1.2 of the Report as a very serious issue, as it related to compliance issues. He also commented that the Minister was attempting to put the responsibility for the PSC budget on the Committee. He felt that on page 7 of the Report, the SITA corruption cases had not received a strong enough emphasis.

The Chairperson stated that the 50% compliance was a serious and major concern, but noted that the Auditor-General would soon be giving a report on that. She emphasised the need to eliminate corruption in SITA.

Mr Williams noted the Minister’s remark that questions on the PSC budget be directed to National Treasury and noted that this had not been done previously, so it suggested that a whole new process be engaged upon.

The  Chairperson stated there was need to hold meetings with other portfolio committees on Treasury issues

Members agreed to adopt the final Report of the Committee. Mr Marais said, on behalf of the DA, that he had no problems with the Report, but the DA particularly wished to emphasise point 4. Mr Ramatlakane, on behalf of COPE, concurred with the recommendations.

Adoption of Minutes
The Committee discussed and adopted minutes of meetings held on 22 February, 29 February and 7 March 2012.

Committee Programme for the second term 09 April – 22 June 2012  
The Chairperson tabled, but the Committee did not discuss, the second term programme.

The meeting was adjourned