Public Service Commission & FOSAD on Performance Areas Requiring Attention by Executive Authorities & Heads of Departments

Meeting report

Public Service Commission (PSC) Key Performance Areas Requiring Attention of Executive Authorities & Heads of Departments
Mr Ben Mthembu, PSC Chairperson, introduced the PSC delegation and Prof Richard Levin, Director General of PSC, gave the presentation. He outlined the overarching imperative which was to improve the quality of service delivery. Several priorities were put: better performance management was believed to be a fundamental issue and referred to both individual and organisational performance management. Improved financial management would also improve accountability. Using people better through improvements in Human Resource Management was another fundamental area.  Corruption and maladministration was a major problem and would be addressed by attention paid to ethics and integrity. In conclusion, action, consequences, intervention were required in those areas because they were not new, the issues had been raised already in the past (slide 2).

The proof of public service performance was ultimately in the quality of service delivery, especially to the most marginalised and vulnerable populations in South Africa. The triple challenge of poverty, social inequality and unemployment was very high on the government’s agenda and in order to address those issues, it had to be ensured that the public service performed well. Evidence suggested that performance was poor and in some cases even declining. Improving the quality of service delivery required that a number of areas of public management be addressed decisively (slide 3).

One of the key areas was the quality of strategic planning. Strategic planning was linked with policy implementation. The implementation of policy to address the triple challenges remained a major challenge. Performance reporting was a new area, but very important, because it allowed the bodies that performed oversight function, in particular, Parliament and the legislatures as well as the PSC, to make an assessment and to identify problematic areas. In 2010/11, the Auditor-General found that 54% of departments had difficulty in developing targets that are specific and measurable and 41% of the departments had a lack of evidence to support the information in the annual performance report. It was important to look at the question of performance management of personnel and to begin to impose sanctions for non-performance (slide 4).

The current framework for the public service through the Public Service Act [No 103 of 1994] and regulations and various codes in place that had been negotiated collectively with labour did make provision for decisive interventions around non-performance. The question was the extent to which the disciplinary code was being applied from department to department. In the area of financial management, it was very important to address matters raised in Audit Opinions. In individual cases these were addressed, but PSC believed that this was an area that required attention. The controls that prevent unauthorised, irregular as well as fruitless and wasteful expenditure should be strengthened. In addition, risk management was not simply a compliance exercise and with the Auditor-General’s finding that only 66% of departments had adequate risk management systems in place, it was a very important area that required detailed focus (slide 5).

Next, several tables were presented which looked at expenditure versus performance. The tables on slides 6 and 7 represented actual performance of tasks that were completed. If a task was 95% completed, then it was not included in the statistics, because it was not finished. The departments that were included in the tables were chosen for specific reasons. PSC had picked the five priorities of government and identified critical departments. In order to provide a snapshot of the problems around performance, key governments had been selected in the area of health, education, rural development and land reform and policing. The aim was to illustrate a general trend rather than pick on a specific department and dissect it. It was shown that in many cases, budgets were fully or almost expended. A major disjuncture was clear between the performance of the department and the budget spent which raised serious questions. Part of the question was the area which the AG was focusing on, namely, the capacity of departments to engage in performance management and performance reporting. This was clearly an issue emerging from that analysis.

The Audit Outcomes were also very important. Slide 8 showed the performance for national departments for two financial years – 2010/11 and 2009/10. Overall, there was indication of improvement, but it needed to be tracked over the years for more analysis.

Another area that PSC had looked at was the issue of unauthorised, irregular as well as fruitless and wasteful expenditure of national departments and their exact amounts: R802 million unauthorised, R2.3 billion irregular and R1.6 billion wasteful expenditure (slide 9). Those were significant amounts of money. PSC believed that leadership must address financial discipline and at the same time engage in measures to strengthen the systems and internal controls for financial reporting, to avoid poor financial performance.

Moving on to human resource management (slide 10), a few areas were mentioned. The issue of vacancies encompassed a high turnover rate in respect of professionals and Senior Management Service (SMS) members. Although the vacancy rate was high, organograms were not always fully funded. Connected with this was the discussion about funded and unfunded vacancies. PSC believed that if a vacancy was not funded, it was not a vacancy and should not be on the organogram because it provided a distorted picture. Departments needed to ensure that personnel information was updated and accurate. It took a long time to fill vacancies which impacted on service delivery. Distribution of personnel was skewed in some departments and dominated by lower and semi-skilled employees. This could be a problem particularly in the area of policing. At the same time, misconduct needed to be managed conclusively and ruthlessly. Issues around professional ethics and corruption were highlighted. There was room for more decisive intervention by executive authorities (EAs) and heads of departments (HoDs) and possibly by strengthening the powers of the Public Service Commission to implement compliance frameworks and to ensure that recommendations on compliance were implemented by executive authorities and heads of departments.

Slides 11 and 12 represented the vacancy rates for the five priority departments as well as the average period for which a post was vacant. There were reasons for concern in a number of departments that had very high vacancy rates in the professional and SMS cadre - COGTA had 27.2%, Public Works: 20.8%, Transport: 25.2%, Basic Education: 36.6%, Health: 61.1%, Correctional Services: 30.44% and Communication: 38.7%. The average period for which a post was vacant was also disturbing. For example, the Department of Public Works had vacancies which remained vacant for 23.1 months on average which was almost two years. Transport even exceeded two years with an average of 29.6 months. For the Department of Communications, the average vacancy period was 31.1 months, for the National Department of Health, it was 25 months. This information was indicative that as a general trend across the public service, policy making departments at national level had high vacancy levels. However, it could be because the organograms were not properly managed. Yet, the current trend was cause for concern.

Slides 13 and 14 turned to the major issue of skills. There was a trend of skew distribution of skills. Especially the five priority areas, the critical national departments, were taken into account and their skills distribution on the basis of available information. DPSA was currently working on a system known as HR Connect. Once that system was functional, it would provide a skills profile of each public servant. Each department would be providing skills information on every public servant in their department and the information would be updated on an annual basis. However, PSC believed that there were questions around the distribution of skills, for example, there was very skewed distribution of skills at the Department of Justice and the South African Police Service (SAPS). But this analysis had an inherent limitation because it was based on the salaries rather than the actual skills.

A number of critical skills shortages were identified on slides 15 and 16. For example, engineering skills were needed across different departments.

As far as corruption and maladministration were concerned, the National Anti-Corruption Hotline was discussed and the implementation of the Financial Disclosures Framework as well as the management of potential conflicts that the senior managers potentially had between their private business interests and their official responsibilities (slide 17). Again, the need to act decisively to punish and prevent financial misconduct was emphasised.

Since the inception of the National Anti-Corruption Hotline, the table on slide 18 showed the number of cases referred to departments by provincial and national departments as well as by public bodies. The table also provided information on the feedback received and the cases closed. It was worrying that feedback was received on only 42% of the cases and 27% of the cases were closed. The hotline was ultimately set up by the PSC on a cabinet mandate. The hotline had to function. But in order to function, departments had to respond to the complaints received. There were also issues of internal capacity across the public service to investigate. Hence, investigative capacity was a major gap in the public service to deal decisively with corruption and specific allegations and cases that come to individual departments.

A look at the financial disclosures on slide 19 revealed that there was growing compliance with the Financial Disclosure Framework in terms of the actual submission of financial disclosure. However, that particular set of data did not necessarily reflect compliance in terms of the timing of the disclosure, but it did reflect for 2010/11 the information around what was actually submitted. The problem lay in the details of those forms. PSC had begun scrutinising them but had limited resources. Currently, the Commission was looking at 30% scrutiny, but wanted to move towards 100% scrutiny. After the scrutiny, real issues arose pertaining to non-disclosure, and to the necessary follow-up action and to ensure that permission was being sought for remunerative work outside the public services. Sometimes there might be disclosure, but the permission for the remuneration, which flew out of a directorship or shareholding etc, was not fully reflected. Sometimes, in the case of some kinds of remuneration, there was no necessary approval that had been granted by the executive authority.

The table on slide 20 looked at financial misconduct. The number of cases of financial misconduct reported to PSC was suspiciously low given the high rate of unauthorised, irregular and fruitless and wasteful expenditure. Hence, PSC expressed concerns around the actual reporting side and was not sure whether the reporting was accurate. Moreover, PSC believed that there was an increase in the cost of financial misconduct over the past five years.

In conclusion, Prof Levin emphasised that little of the presented analysis was new and had been presented to Parliament repeatedly over a number of years. PSC wished to see improvement in dealing with the outlined challenging areas. The public service performance had to improve in critical areas for intervention by the developmental state. The Public Service must do things differently in a way that would raise confidence of the executive, Parliament and society broadly. PSC believed that there was a crisis of confidence on behalf of the executive, of Parliament and the legislatures with the performances of the public services and this was reflected in society more broadly. These concerns might have unintended consequences. The down side of that was the accountability question. In terms of apparatuses of the state, the public service was the most accountable; directly accountable to the executive authority without the intermediation of any board, which placed the executive at a distance from public entities and state owned enterprises. Public services was the most accountable set of institutions and if there was a crisis in confidence of those institutions, because those institutions themselves were failing in the area of accountability, then there was a major issue at hand.

A number of areas for the strengthening of capacity needed to happen in the area of human resources management, skills shortage and distribution, monitoring and evaluation as well as mobilising the public to ensure effective community participation. Many of the programmes that address the key priorities of government did not rely only on government, but on communities and societies to engage in a partnership with government to realise the objectives of dealing with poverty, social inequality and unemployment. The very inability to mobilise public participation indicated that in many instances public service departments had not applied themselves adequately to the challenges as to how to engage in public participation in order to enhance the quality of implementation of their programmes. Public participation was a value and principle in Chapter 10 of the Constitution – one of the core values and principles of public administration in the progressive South African Constitution. It required departments to engage in public participation processes which in itself required capacity. At the same time, parliamentary oversight had to be strengthened and one of the reasons for the existence of the PSC was to contribute to the strengthening of that oversight. And as PSC got engaged in performance information, one of the key issues would be what the consequences for non-performance were. Therein lay part of the solution. And part of the solution might be to increase the powers of the PSC with respect to the enforceability of recommendations and findings which were often compliance related in the reports which were tabled in Parliament. If the penalties which PSC could impose on non-compliance were strengthened, it would put pressure on executive authorities and heads of departments to act. Through a strengthened mandate, PSC could play a significant role in ensuring that there were consequences.

Forum of South African Directors-General (FOSAD) Response to PSC Presentation
Dr Sean Phillips, Director General of the Department of Performance, Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME), presented the response by the Forum of South African Directors-General (FOSAD) on the Public Service Commission Report. FOSAD was in general agreement with the PSC Report. However, FOSAD suggested some additional perspectives in a few areas and had identified some additional areas that required the attention of Executive Authorities & Heads of Departments.

In April 2010, the President met with senior public servants with the aim of finding ways to improve the performance of the public service. In his speech to senior public servants, the President identified a number of examples of poor performance and then asked: “Why is this the case, given that we have capacity, relatively well-paid and educated staff, and budgets, and given that our administrative systems are not worse than any other in the world?” (slide 3).

In dealing with that question, FOSAD concluded that some managers in the public service were not managing adequately. It was recognised that, while some regulatory frameworks may require improvements, the key cause of the identified problems was the poor quality of management. The fact that some departments were performing well in the identified areas indicated that it was possible for all departments to do the same. In order to improve management, the management culture in general needed to change. In some departments, the top managers were not paying attention to fixing basic administrative challenges. Sometimes there was a culture in departments of viewing administrative issues as non-strategic and therefore not requiring the attention of top management. Hence, FOSAD agreed with PSC that Executive Authorities and Heads of Departments needed to regularly monitor progress with addressing these issues in their departments (slide 4).

FOSAD made a commitment to the President that it would work towards addressing the causes of the problems identified. FOSAD was now regularly monitoring a range of indicators of management performance. Many of the issues raised in the PSC Report were the focus of the Delivery Agreement for Outcome 12, “An efficient and effective public service” and the progress in that regard was regularly monitored by Cabinet. The presentation referred to the issues raised in the PSC Report, with reference to the FOSAD monitoring and the work of National Treasury, DPSA and DPME to address the issues. FOSAD also agreed with PSC’s recommendation that the support of activities of these departments needed to be complemented by increased accountability for poor performance by individual Heads of Department and Parliament had a key role to play in this regard (slide 5).

Over the past year, FOSAD had initiated monitoring of the indicators listed on slide 6, but also some other indicators. The mere act of monitoring these indicators already started to have some impact. Some of those indicators showed recently some improvements, but there was still a long way to go. For example, there was a steady responsiveness to the Presidential Hotline. DPSA was monitoring the time taking to fill a funded vacancy in the public service. There had been some improvement on feedback to the public and to PSC on Anti-Corruption Hotline cases, although, as indicated by PSC, there was still a lot of work to do in order to improve the responsiveness to the Anti-Corruption Hotline. There had also been improvement in the waiting times and turnaround times for various services. The progress reports were not only considered by FOSAD itself, but it also periodically reported to Cabinet and the President’s Coordinating Council.

Certain key departments at national level were involved in key activities aimed at improving administration and management. One of them was the Department of Performance, Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME) which was actively monitoring the quality of management practices in national and provincial departments.

FOSAD agreed with PSC that there was a need to improve the quality of service delivery. However, FOSAD suggested that attention also needed to be paid to the management of service delivery improvement in addition to addressing other areas of public management. In 2011/12, assessment was made of the quality of management practices in 103 national and provincial departments. Nearly three quarters of national and provincial departments rated themselves as being less than fully compliant with the Public Service Regulations related to service delivery improvement, and nearly half of departments indicated that they did not have a service charter and/or service standards in place, as required by the Regulations (slide 9).

FOSAD was taking measures to address that issue. In addition, DPSA would start monitoring not only the submission of service delivery improvement plans submitted by departments for the 2012-2015 cycle, but also the quality of those plans. DPSA was also engaged in knowledge sharing activities about the management of service delivery improvement through service delivery forums at national and provincial level. Moreover, the Centre for Public Service Innovation was making service delivery awards and service delivery innovation awards in order to acknowledge good performance. At a more operational level, DPSA was actively assisting departments to improve business processes and identify and document standard operating procedures in order to improve service delivery. DPSA and SARS were involved in the Department of Home Affairs’ turnaround and provided support. This was a very good indication of what could be achieved with such kind of support programmes in helping departments improve their service delivery. In addition, DPSA was assisting departments in identifying appropriate service delivery models (slide 10).

FOSAD agreed with PSC that there were problems with quality indicators and targets in Annual Performance Plans (APPs) and performance of departments against these in Annual Reports. In the Management Performance Assessment Tool (MPAT) assessment facilitated by DPME in 2011/12, nearly three quarters of departments assessed themselves as fully compliant (or better) with Treasury guidelines on planning and reporting and indicated that they had adequate performance information policies in place. However, the MPAT assessment results for this area of management were not in line with Auditor General’s negative findings on the reliability of reporting against predetermined objectives.

That pointed to a need for DPME, the Office of the Auditor General, and National Treasury to engage with departments to develop a common understanding of compliance requirements for SMART, measurable indicators and evidence-based reporting against them.

Parliament had a key role to play as the receiver of strategic plans, APPs and Annual Reports of departments in the strengthening of the quality of performance information and reporting against predetermined objectives (slide 11).

FOSAD also agreed with the PSC recommendation that the performance management of individuals needed to improve. In the MPAT assessments, less than half of departments indicated full compliance with the performance management requirements for the Senior Management Service. One of the indicators that FOSAD was monitoring was filing of Head of Department (HoD) performance agreements with the PSC with the aim of improving compliance in that regard. FOSAD had developed proposals that were currently before Cabinet for strengthening the performance management system for HoDs and linking the performance assessment of individual heads of department to the assessment of the quality management practices in their departments.

DPSA was currently looking at trying to improve the uniformity in the performance management system for Levels 1-12 and would make the required amendments based on the assessment. A key point was made that regulatory frameworks did exist that enabled management to institute disciplinary actions for non-performance.  So the problem was not primarily about the existence of a regulatory framework, but about its implementation. Again, given that HoDs had the necessary powers to take disciplinary actions, Parliament had a role to play in holding HoDs accountable for taking the necessary disciplinary action (slide 12).

While FOSAD agreed in general with the PSC findings on financial management, it expressed some concerns about linking the percentage of targets fully achieved to the percentage of budget fully spent presented on slides 6 and 7 of PSC’s presentation as this might not provide a complete picture. The targets in the APPs were meant to be stretch targets and may not have been met for reasons beyond the department’s control. It appeared that the PSC’s presentation only took account of fully achieved targets and did not incorporate partially achieved targets even though they could have been 95% achieved (slide 13).

There were a number of actions that the National Treasury was engaging in, in order to improve the financial management. The key action was the Financial Management Capability Maturity Model (FMCMM) which was based on international best practice and provided a financial management benchmark which departments could work towards (slide 14).

The results for 2010/11 to 2011/12 from the application of the Financial Management Capability Maturity Model were presented on slide 15. They indicated that there was some reduction in non-compliance for those two years over those two financial years. That could partly be attributed to the fact that National Treasury was not only doing the assessments, but was also providing support to the departments to address the issues raised in the assessments.  

In addition, the National Treasury was represented in audit committee meetings of almost all national departments, and it analysed reports and suggested corrective plans to the departments concerned. National Treasury (NT) facilitated and funded the Public Sector Audit Committee Forum (NT, IIASA, SAICA, IoDSA, and IRMSA) to train members of audit committees with a view to strengthen their role. NT furthermore was involved in training personnel to ensure understanding and adherence to the applicable accounting frameworks and standards. NT also collaborated with PALAMA in terms of revising all financial management courses offered by PALAMA. Both NT and DPSA developed standard delegations for the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) and Public Service Act to ensure appropriate delegations (slide 16).

FOSAD furthermore agreed that it was critical to act against financial misconduct as raised by the PSC in slide 9 of its presentation. Recent disciplinary action was taken by the KwaZulu Natal provincial government and was a good example which showed that it was possible within the current regulatory frameworks. FOSAD was actively monitoring the finalisation of disciplinary cases. Again it was emphasised that Parliament through its oversight function had a key role to play in holding HoDs accountable for taking the required disciplinary action for financial misconduct (slide 17).

FOSAD also agreed with PSC analysis regarding shortages of critical skills, problems with skills profiles in some areas and the need to fill funded vacant posts more quickly. As mentioned by PSC, a key issue was to clean up the data on PERSAL. Currently, PERSAL included both funded and unfunded posts, but for the purpose of analysis, it was essential to differentiate between funded vacancies and unfunded vacancies. However, unspent personnel budgets at the end of the financial year were an indication of the level of funded vacancies with the Public Service. The general trend for the previous financial years showed that close to or above 100% of the personnel budget was spent. Therefore, it appeared that the level of funded vacancies at any one time was relatively low. However, this was a generalisation and there were higher levels of funded vacancies in a few departments (slide 18).

In order to address the problem of unfunded vacancies, DPSA recently issued an instruction to all departments to abolish all unfunded posts and by 31 May 2012 to reflect only the approved funded organograms on PERSAL. DPSA and FOSAD would monitor the implementation of this instruction. In addition, DPSA was instituting special recruitment processes for particular scarce skills and assisting departments to improve the practice of career management to enhance staff recruitment, development and retention. The average time to fill a funded vacancy in the public service was being monitored by FOSAD and improved to 4.9 months for the first 3 quarters of 2011/12 ( 3.1 months for national departments and 5.4 months for provinces) compared to 9 months in 2010 which indicated a small improvement. The target in Outcome 12 Delivery Agreement was for all vacant funded posts to be filled within four months. However, this would be only on average, some departments would take a lot longer to fill some vacancies (slide 19).

FOSAD was of the view that the key problem with skewed skills profiles was at provincial rather than national level. For example, the Minster of Health had been highlighting the disproportionate increase in administrative staff in provincial health departments. The tables in slides 13 and 14 of the PSC presentation appeared to be based on data from departments’ annual reports. There was a need for DPSA to update the standard formats for the HR tables in the annual reports, because they were not aligned to the new occupational classification system. The data in the annual reports did not appear to be giving an accurate picture of skills levels in national departments (slide 20).

In order to address the problems with skewed skills profiles, DPSA was engaging in a number of initiatives. One was that DPSA was developing standard organisational structures for generic functions such as social development, corporate services, provincial Offices of the Premiers, Education, Health and EA’s offices. This would assist with addressing some of the imbalances in skills profiles identified in the PSC’s presentation and the skewness towards corporate services and minister’s support identified through other analyses. In addition, there was a requirement that before new organograms were introduced by departments, a discussion was needed with the Ministry of Public Service and Administration (MPSA) which would further contribute towards addressing those problems (slide 21).

Moreover, FOSAD agreed that there were shortages in key skills areas such as engineers and medical practitioners as noticed by the PSC. However, the tables in departments’ annual reports indicated the positions that were critical for the department to perform its mandate, so that occupations identified as ‘critical’ in the tables were not necessarily ‘in shortage’. Therefore, the tables in slides 15 and 16 of the PSC presentation appeared to reflect other ‘critical’ occupations in addition to the key critical skills shortages and hence needed to be adjusted (slide 22).

DPSA was using the HR CONNECT initiative to develop and distribute department-specific and sector-specific reports on the extent and depth of skills gaps and shortages in the public service. DPSA was supporting departments in the interpretation of the reports and the development of department or sector-specific intervention strategies through supply-side initiatives. DPSA was also working with the relevant Public Service Education and Training Authority (PSETA) to upgrade skills of existing staff (slide 23). 

FOSAD agreed with the findings of PSC on the need to root out corruption and address ethics and integrity in the public service. The submission of financial disclosures was being actively monitored by FOSAD. However, as PSC noted, there was a need to move beyond the submission of financial disclosures to their actual analysis. Decisive action was required to remove any conflicts of interests indicated in the financial disclosures. DPSA was engaged in various activities to try to improve ethics and integrity. This included collaborating with PALAMA for developing training courses on ethics and integrity targeting both general employees and anti-corruption practitioners. FOSAD was monitoring the responsiveness to the Anti-Corruption Hotline. DPSA was also currently finalising the Public Sector Integrity Framework to improve the management of ethics and increase the integrity of public servants (slide 24).

In the MPAT assessments, nearly half of departments assessed themselves as non-compliant or partially compliant with the finalising of disciplinary cases within the policy requirements, keeping the necessary documents and submission of relevant reports, so there was a need to build capacity in this regard. DPSA was engaged in various initiatives to build that capacity. It was reviewing the frameworks for disciplinary action. It was also carrying out labour relations training on disciplinary hearings and dispute resolution (slide 25).

The MPAT assessments indicated that most departments were not regularly evaluating their programmes and using the results of such evaluations to inform changes to programme plans, business processes, and their APP and strategic plan. As a result, DPME developed and Cabinet approved on 23 November 2011 the National Evaluation Policy Framework to address this issue. The framework included the development of a three-year and annual national and provincial evaluation plans. The first annual evaluation plan was currently being considered by Cabinet. The policy also included publication of evaluations and development and implementation of improvement plans (slide 26).

DPME was engaging in a number of M&E (monitoring and evaluation) capacity building activities with national and provincial governments listed on slide 27. DPME was also working with PALAMA to develop various courses in M&E.

Finally, FOSAD listed other key issues requiring the attention of EAs and HoDs:
▪ Supply chain management and payment of suppliers within 30 days
▪ Management of diversity
▪ Public service culture (revitalising Batho Pele)
▪ Management culture (managers must take disciplinary action where necessary, manage performance of subordinates, monitor outputs and outcomes and take corrective measures where necessary, fix basic administrative problems)
▪ Responsiveness to citizens (waiting times, turnaround times, queue management)
▪ Responsiveness to Parliament, Chapter Nines and PSC
▪ IT governance
▪ Facilities management (lack of cleanliness, basic maintenance of facilities)
▪ Debts owed to municipalities by departments.

In conclusion, FOSAD agreed with the general thrust of the PSC presentation that basic administrative weaknesses had to be addressed. There was an existing legal system in place for holding people accountable for poor performance, hence it had to be made to work. Thus, all role players, including Parliament, Provincial Legislatures, EA’s, HoDs, senior managers, and managers needed to play their role in achieving this objective (slide 29).

Discussion
Mr L Suka (ANC) identified three key issues: the people that must actually do the work, the revenue – the money and, the physical assets – the tools to achieve the work. The focus in the discussion was on the people. He asked whether there were people capable to lead and did they have the capacity to do so. Did people have the ethical orientation to do the right things? He also wanted to know from both FOSAD and PSC whether there were such people in South Africa and if not, what was being done about it.

Next, Ms D Nhlengethwa (ANC) from the Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Portfolio Committee, referred to slide 6 of the presentation by FOSAD where it was said that there had been an improvement in the turnaround time. However, she knew that people were waiting for a long time in queues. People wake up at 2-3 am and go to queues and later sell that position to someone who came later. She asked whether FOSAD had ever monitored the queue management. On slide 17, FOSAD mentioned that they were monitoring the finalisation of disciplinary cases. While doing so, were they also monitoring the implementation of the Municipal Systems Act. Slide 24 referred to the fact that some officers had been trained in anti-corruption. What were the criteria in select officials for training? Were they going to train other trainees after completing their own training?

Mr Mashwahle Diphofa, Director General of DPSA, replied that people who were assigned these responsibilities in a particular department were trained as anti-corruption practitioners. The departments were approached to identify people who had been assigned those responsibilities, so that training could be provided. Anti-corruption was an ongoing intervention as part of Outcome 12. They had committed to training at least 200 anti-corruption practitioners annually within DPSA. Therefore, the criteria were to find the people that had been assigned these responsibilities within the departments.

Mr D Du Toit (DA) agreed that there must be a consequence for non-performance. He asked what was being done in a situation where the Head of Department did not sort out the management. This problem was created by Parliament itself, which had not done its job properly by sorting out ministers.

Mr S Marais (DA) asked what the role was of FOSAD and how accountable was it. FOSAD did agree to a large extent with the findings of PSC, but FOSAD gave other reasons for failing to have good management. What was the role of FOSAD in assuring that improvement would happen. FOSAD had also mentioned that National Treasury, DPSA and DPME were responsible but what was binding them to give some accountability structure? Monitoring and evaluation was not enough to bring about implementation. FOSAD’s slide 19 noted the average time to fill a vacancy had improved, which was contradictory to the respective PSC slide. PSC talked about more than two years, with the lowest at 4,7 months. This did not correlate with the information provided by FOSAD.

With regard to the role of FOSAD, Dr. Phillips explained that it was a co-ordinating body. The President and the Director General of the Presidency decided to use FOSAD as a co-ordinating body to increase the focus of national and provincial HoDs and DGs in addressing management and administrative challenges. Hence, DPME on behalf of FOSAD was collecting data and presenting it to FOSAD to present it to all DGs and try to co-ordinate addressing the issues. But FOSAD did not have any legal power to act against DGs or HoDs who did not perform in these areas. There was an accountability system in terms of the Public Service Act and the PFMA where either executive authorities or accounting officers were given powers to take disciplinary action. Accountability must be taken using those powers in the existing legislative frameworks.

The difference between PSC’s data on the time it took to fill in a vacancy and the data of DPSA was due to different methodology. As Dr. Phillips noted, DPSA focused on the average time to fill a funded vacancy, whereas PSC took into account the time to fill all vacancies, which included unfunded vacancies as well.

Mr Marais had the impression that the DG of DPSA was the biggest culprit. The presentation mentioned many times what actions was DPSA taking, but if it was supposed to do this and it was not working, then it seemed to be DPSA’s fault. He wanted clarification on that.

Mr Marais then turned to PSC and said that many of the presented issues had already been discussed before. They had been reported year after year, so who was taking responsibility? Who was dealing with those findings and what actions were being taken? PSC mentioned on slide 8 that accountability had improved, but this was not the case. “Disclaimers” and “adverse opinions” had increased. Only the “qualified” ones had improved. There was a misrepresentation on that slide. “Financially unqualified with findings” had worsened. “Financially unqualified with no findings” had come down.

Slide 9 of PSC’s presentation referred to leadership inability to address the issues and punitive actions for non-complying. Whose responsibility was it – the individual HoDs and provincial departments or DPSA’s? If the individual HoD was responsible, then where were the mechanisms for it?

Ms M Tlake (ANC) said when she looked at PSC and FOSAD’s presentations she could not see any reference to people with disabilities. Yet, there was a strategic objective of a 2% quota for people with disabilities to be employed in departments. If there was no framework for them, then what would happen when they actually were employed in the departments, they would become even more disabled than before that. In a previous meeting with the Public Service Committee, they had decided that the PSC should come up with a gender equality tool to give guidelines to departments on how to deal with gender equality. However, it seemed everybody had forgotten about the promotion and protection of gender equality.

Mr Diphofa said that people with disabilities were employed in the public service. However, the necessary assistive devices were not always available and departments did not always do enough to ensure they received reasonable accommodation. The necessary framework for gender equality and mainstreaming disability for the public service did exist, the question was only its implementation. FOSAD was taking collective responsibility for this.

Another MP asked about the suspension of officials. This practice continued for not less than 6 to 8 months for the suspended individual. This was a significant amount of money spent on individuals who were not doing their work because there were still under investigation. He was concerned that the country as a development state actually had this additional money to spend! He urged for an immediate solution.

The second issue he raised was about non-compliance with regulations and laws, especially the PFMA. Any official not complying with the law should face consequences. A typical example was Limpopo where half of the departments were under administration. The third issue he raised related to the capacity of the state and its officers. Although there were highly qualified people in the offices, they were not just not bothering to implement the requirements. He suggested that change in the attitude towards their work was necessary.

Ms D Ramodibe, Chair of the Portfolio Committee on Women, Youth, Children and People with Disabilities (ANC), thanked them for their presentations. She emphasised that gender equality should always be included in the discussion. She asked for clarity on PSC’s slide 4. She had the impression that in taking on too much that at the end of the day one was not able to achieve. Hence, she wanted clarity about the statement “EAs and HODs need to regularly monitor progress with addressing these issues in their departments” from slide 4 of FOSAD’s presentation. Slide 6 referred to “payment of suppliers within 30 days of receipt of a legitimate invoice”. However, departments were simply not paying the invoices. There had been many complaints from people saying that departments had not paid. The departments were sometimes even saying that the invoice was missing. Hence, she wanted to know what disciplinary means were there to ensure that this did not happen. She asked how the feedback on Anti-Corruption Hotline cases was been done. She drew attention to slide 9 of FOSAD’s presentation which stated that “nearly half of departments indicated that they do not have a service charter and/or service standards in place, as required by the Regulations”. She asked was this not what contributed to poor service delivery if there were still departments that did not have a service charter. She welcomed the fact that PSC and FOSAD had put the issues on paper, but expressed great concern about the lack of implementation.

Ms E More, Democratic Alliance's Shadow Deputy Minister of Health, and Member of Parliament, serving on the Portfolio Committee on Health as the Democratic Alliance Deputy Spokesperson (DA), thanked them for the presentation. She asked the DPSA DG if he agreed that there was a great need to impose penalties. Hence, what authority and powers did DPSA have to take action against departments that were not complying? This was a vicious cycle, reports were being presented, but who was accountable to discipline departments? She remarked on PSC’s slide 16 that the Department of Health was missing and its shortage of skills of medical practitioners. She found it alarming that 54% of departments had difficulty in developing targets that are specific and measurable, as noted on PSC’s slide 4. There were many CEOs going on training on SMART objectives and targets, and yet, they were unable to apply the knowledge. They were obviously taking the training for themselves and their own CV only, whereas they were not implementing the knowledge obtained there.

Ms More found everything on PSC’s slide 3 very worrying. She said that financial remuneration as a reward was a huge mistake and needed to be reversed. Other creative ways to reward people should be developed. In some departments there were too many managers and leaders. Not only was the time to fill a vacancy too long, but also procurement, this was a disaster, everything was centralised. She asked FOSAD why were “managers not managing adequately” (FOSAD’s slide 4) and what had the DGs done as such to change that. Managers were attending a lot of training, they were constantly away, but she wondered what they were trained for. With regard to DPSA considering the impact of the lack of uniformity in the performance management system for levels 1-12 on slide 12, she did not see any uniformity. She asked for an explanation whether it was uniformity of the form, content or the context. She had heard that “DPSA [was] assisting departments to improve the practice of career management to enhance staff recruitment, development and retention” (FOSAD’s slide 19) many times before. But departments did not have a national retention strategy or plan. However, not only retention strategies were needed, but also recruitment strategies. Otherwise, people came, got trained, acquired skills and then moved. Ms More finally asked with respect to the observation that “so far a total of 1666 general employees and 474 anti-corruption practitioners had been trained” on FOSAD’s slide 24, which years was this referring to, which departments and which provinces were these people from because departments differed in terms of corruption levels.

Ms H Lamoela (DA) asked whether the figures for unauthorised, irregular fruitless and wasteful expenditure on PSC’s slide 9 had increased and what was being done to rectify this. The figures referred to billions of rand so she was thinking not only about the impact they would have on budgets for the following years, but also on service delivery. In addition, they would also affect the implementation of the strategic plan.

The Chair said these were a lot of questions so the presentation of the National Treasury would have to be postponed for another time.

Mr Jayce Nair, Chief Director, Governance, Monitoring and Compliance, National Treasury, said that he did not have the figures for unauthorised and fruitless expenditure for subsequent years. Hence, whether there had been further deterioration or improvement could not be determined. With regard to unauthorised, fruitless and wasteful expenditure it did not mean that there was necessarily fraud involved on the part of the departments.

The definition of unauthorised expenditure in the Public Finance Management Act was “expenditure not in accordance with the purpose of a vote or, in the case of a main division, not in accordance with the purpose of the main division”. Thus, expenditure outside the mandate would be regarded as unauthorised expenditure. Therefore, it did not necessarily involve fraud. He cited the definition of irregular expenditure being “expenditure incurred in contravention of or that is not in accordance with a requirement of any applicable legislation” including the Public Finance Management Act. Procedures were not followed. The amount of irregular expenditure was 2.3 billion rands, but to a large extent this was due to non-compliance with supply chain management procedures. Only if the department had a very good case why it did not comply with the regulations, would NT condone that irregular expenditure. But this happened only under very rare circumstances. If the irregular expenditure was not condoned, it must be recovered from the official that caused the expenditure. The same was true for unauthorised expenditure as well. On the other hand, fruitless and wasteful expenditure occurred when, for example, people had booked in hotels and did not go or for conferences they had paid for and did not attend. That amount must be recovered from the officials concerned and, if not from them, then the departments needed to write the expenditure off. 

The Acting Chair, Mr Suka, who had taken over from Ms Moloi-Moropa, made it clear that the Members of the Committee were aware of the existing law. What they wanted to know was whether the procedures foreseen in the law were actually being upheld and if not, why.

Mr Nair could not tell whether it was happening in all departments, but there was evidence that in some departments there were sanctions imposed, but not in all departments.

The Chair asked if National Treasury did not have the answers and information, then who did?

Dr Phillips explained the Audit Outcomes for national departments on PSC’s slide 8. The reduction in qualified audits was a key indicator because qualification was a very serious issue. PSC was trying to deal with the serious issues first. Hence, they reported that some progress had been observed in reducing the numbers of qualified audits. But he agreed that there were other issues to be dealt with as well.

Prof Levin said that the indicative answer was in PSC’s presentation on slide 9 in conjunction with slide 20. Slide 9 was looking at unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure in 2009/10. It amounted to a total of around R4.7 billion. Financial misconduct reported to the PSC indicated where there had been an intervention, where people had been charged with misconduct. PSC said in the presentation that it was concerned about the number of cases of financial misconduct being suspiciously low: R4.7 billion was the total amount, but for 2009/10 the amount involved in the 1 135 cases on slide 20 was R346 million. Given those numbers, PSC was suggesting that action was not being taken. On the basis of information reported to PSC against the extent of unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure, PSC concluded that there was inadequate action around misconduct. 

The Acting Chair said that if each department was asked pointed questions rather than general ones, there might be more results than currently reported.

Ms Nhlengethwa made a proposal that there should be another whole day or a workshop to discuss these topics.

The Acting Chair said that the responses to the questions needed to be in a summary form. They would reconvene again and get back to the matters discussed.

Mr Vusi Madonsela, Director-General of the Department of Social Development, said he would like to make a point that could not be dealt with exhaustively in that meeting. Service delivery for a national department with concurrent functions would probably be an elusive concept. What national departments were doing was to formulate policies and design programmes. For purposes of the annual performance plan of the national departments that might appear to be service delivery on a number of polices they wanted to formulate. But service delivery properly construed would not end there, it would end at that point those policy intents were translated into policy implementation. PSC should also consider the inter-governmental system. Policy intent was not lost. There was a big gap between policy intent and policy impact precisely because of the many players in the system since the accountability lines did not move to the centre but in different directions. Heads of Departments at provincial levels were not reporting to their national Director General. Similarly, he suspected that Municipal Managers were not reporting to provincial Heads of Departments. That configuration had to be examined carefully. There was a greater risk to service delivery in that kind of arrangement. He suggested investing time in looking at how to make sure that the systems of service delivery would get integrated across the spheres of government, and make sure that even though there were divergent lines of reporting, the risk of that gap between policy intent and policy impact was minimised.

The Chair referred to the time constraints they were facing. He said that the question whether service delivery performance was being done in the way it was expected within the constraints of resources and framework should be dealt with very seriously. He thanked the Chairperson for the initiative.

Ms Moloi-Moropa urged the Chairperson of PSC to summarise his views. There was not enough time to reply to all questions.

Mr Mthembu said that a key issue was the one around public accountability not in the negative sense of the word. In his opinion, the forum that was created by the Committee to meet with the DGs and members from other Portfolio Committees which enabled a strategic conversation was, in fact, promoting accountability and there should be more fora like that.

The Chair thanked all for attending the meeting and adjourned the meeting.