Filling of vacant posts in public service & DPSA 1st quarter 2015/16 performance

Meeting report

Filling of Posts: Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) briefing
Mr Mashwahle Diphofe, DPSA Director General, pointed out that the first time he appeared before this Committee in March the vacancy rate was about 14%, and since then it has lowered to about 11%.

Mr Geeva Pillay, Chief Director of Human Resource Planning, Employment Practices and Performance Management, briefed the Committee on the progress being made and the plans to continue to make progress in this area. He explained that they were taking a “multi-pronged” approach to dealing with vacancies. They have been dealing with current recruitment strategies by offering training programmes at the National School of Government; in addition they are reevaluating their current use of PERSAL, the computer system being used to track vacancies.

The DPSA is also assisting individual departments that have been having trouble reaching the target rate of 10% vacancies. Their main focus is lowering their vacancy rates and the time that it takes to fill these posts. This is something that they monitor quarterly, because it is a goal of the Government’s Medium Term Strategic Framework (MTSF).

Mr Pillay explained that in 2012/13 the vacancy rate was as low as 8.58% and that it was nearly 14% in March, the last time that they met with the Committee. Since then they have worked hard to lower the rate to 11% and shortened the median amount of time to fill posts to three months. Mr Collins Chabane, the late DSPA minister, emphasised the importance of meeting with leaders of each department in order to reduce these rates. DPSA brought the old data to the departments and offered advice on how to improve their performance. According to Mr Pillay, many executive authorities complied with these interventions.

Though much progress has been made, Mr Pillay emphasised the need for a new approach, because the progress is beginning to “flat line”. The DPSA has looked into PERSAL, the computer program they use to calculate these rates, in order to optimise the clean-up process. The problem is that the once a department populates a planned structure, it activates the planned posts, which marks a post as active, therefore they are counted as funded vacancies. This is challenging for departments, because they prematurely activate planned posts. For example, the DPSA has decided to grow 700 posts in the next three years. This does not mean that the posts should all be activated now. Growth is a slow process and departments need to be aware of that, so that they can most efficiently calculate legitimate vacancies. The DPSA is looking to clean up this process, because the formula used to calculate funded vacancies has not changed.

There are more issues with this process outside of the recruitment and appointment process. The DPSA feels that they have optimised these processes; therefore they need to begin looking for other ways to improve efficiencies. In addition to looking at the structures of the departments, the DPSA is also examining the budgets, because the posts that are vacant continue to be funded. Treasury releases funding to departments for multi-year growth plans in advance, so departments must grow their budget appropriately and take care to not activate these posts before the funding is in. In addition, to optimise budgets, departments must abolish unnecessary vacant posts, which will assist in lowering the vacancy rate.

Overall, most provinces are succeeding in reducing their vacancy rate, however there is still some concern about the Northern Cape and the North West provinces. It is important for the DPSA to work directly with these areas in order to find specific solutions to these problems.

Moving forward, Mr Pillay indicated that the DPSA is planning to focus on more than just the recruitment processes in the future. He recognised that the budget data is a more reliable indicator of actual vacancies, as opposed to PERSAL data, subsequently, there is a necessity to clean up and improve the PERSAL system. He emphasised the necessity for departments to reduce the number of funded posts so that it falls more in line with their current budget. This is in addition to abolishing duplicate and unfunded posts so their vacancy rates are more reliable. Mr Pillay pointed out that DPSA’s biggest problem may not be with the vacancy rate, but rather with the PERSAL operational design and information management problem.

Discussion
The Chairperson recognised Deputy Speaker Tsenoli who joined this Committee during the presentation. The Deputy Speaker indicated that he was very interested in the work that this Committee did, and thanked the Chairperson for having him.

The Chairperson then said that she is pleased with the progress that the DPSA has made since their original meeting that was held in March. She asked whether or not the DPSA was experiencing departments that are recruiting outside the agencies, and whether or not that would affect the number of vacancies. She also wanted to know if human resource practitioners were competent enough to deal with these recruitment issues and if they were delegating their power in doing so. She also wondered if there was any nepotism or political interference that was an issue if departments were just trying to fill vacant posts quickly. Mr Pillay responded that incidents involving nepotism and favoritism should still be reported to the Public Services Commission and that they will continue to act on those matters appropriately. She then raised concerns

about the North West and Northern Cape provinces that were not performing well. She expressed her concern that the DPSA is not doing all that they can in this area. She said that the DPSA needs to go past raising concerns with these departments, but also work with them to come up with a solution and support efforts to lower the number of funded vacancies on the system.

Mr M Dirks (ANC) was worried that departments were recruiting too much outside of themselves, which grows the bureaucracy. Growth should come from within the bureaucracy so as to not expand it any more than it needs to be. He noted, especially in education, health, and other such human-orientated services that national government has to ensure that the services provided by these jobs are actually being provided. If the government is just filling positions to reduce the number of vacancies, the system is not effective. He argued that this makes for problems at the local level.

Mr M Ntombela (ANC) commended the DPSA for lowering the vacancy rate since March. He also asked why PERSAL is still being used if it is such an old system. Should DPSA not replace it with a newer system rather than improve the old model.

Ms Z Dlamini-Dubazana (ANC) stated that this problem is not within the parameters of the DPSA, as they have already created an approved public structure. She said it is a serious problem in that the departments are creating problems for national government. This is an issue that they should be working on. The departments are funded which then makes it a problem for Treasury and the DPSA. She noted the critical role of the departments working on this problem and wondered what role the DPSA should actually play in solving of this issue.

Mr Pillay responded that it is the DPSA’s duty to work with departments so that they know how to operate within their plans, because it is a multiphase structure. Many departments do not know that they must not activate all posts immediately or they become 'vacancies'.

Ms P van Damme (DA) asked about the role of positions that have been vacant for a long time. If a position had been vacant for a number of years and a department was able to function without it, then it was probably redundant and should be abolished.

Mr Pillay said that if a post is vacant for longer than three years, it is no longer counted.

Mr J McGluwa (DA) started on “a very low note”, expressing concern that the DPSA has been without a minister for nearly six months following the passing of Mr Collins Chabane. It was time that the Committee engage with the President and find out why the post has not been filled yet. They could not talk about filling posts at lower levels if they were not concerned about filling posts at the higher levels. In addition, he raised concerns, similar to those of the Chairperson, about the North West and Northern Cape. He wondered what variables are preventing them from achieving the average rates of the rest of the country, and what else the DPSA can do to bring them back from being such far outliers.

Ms R Lesoma (ANC) argued that the President and his Cabinet have plans to fill the empty positions at the higher levels of government; therefore it is not an issue that should be dealt with in the Committee.

Mr A van der Westhuizen (DA) asked Mr Pillay what his exact definition of vacancy was. In response to the Chairperson asking for Mr van der Westhuizen's definition, he said that “vacant posts” should exclude people working on a contract basis, posts filled by someone in an acting capacity, and people who are permanently appointed. He asked where the people on incapacity leave were counted, because while they were being paid, their jobs were not being done. He also asked if a post was counted as filled if a person had been appointed to fill it, but had not completed training yet. He raised concerns about the goal to fill positions, because he believes that departments should still only fill positions with the most qualified individuals. He asked about ghost employees, people who are receiving paychecks without ever showing up to work, and what is being done to prevent this.

Finally, Mr van der Westhuizen wondered why the DPSA set a goal of a 10% vacancy rate, when an ideal unemployment rate was internationally set around 8%.

Similarly, Mr S Motau (DA) asked why they did not set a goal of less than 10%.

Mr Pillay responded that 10% was a good target that has been developed by Cabinet and approved by the Minister. He argued that it would be hard to make it much lower than 10% because there would be little room for people to move around, which would make it a more difficult job market for young people.

Mr S Tsenoli (ANC) brought up concerns about the technology being used by the DPSA to calculate vacancy rates. He criticised DPSA for not working on a new system that is designed to handle the different types of vacancies and come up with a more accurate set of data. He also raised concerns about people’s perceptions of technology. He said that he felt the need for a plan to modernise systems while protecting jobs and getting people more excited about new technology, rather than having them fear it. Finally, He asked why the data was not segregated by gender when Mr Pillay presented the numbers.

Mr Pillay explained that his colleagues presented such information to the Committee a few weeks prior to this meeting, so he assumed it would not be as important to break down the information for the Committee.

In his response to questions, Mr Pillay mentioned that it would not be responsible to simply fill every vacancy. He clarified that there is difference between growing departments in the right areas and bloating departments for the sake of filling vacancies. He argued that sometimes positions have to be left vacant while people are being promoted and changing positions. He said that 10% allows room for this to happen efficiently, and allows for departments to promote and move people while filling the empty posts with the most qualified candidates.

In response to the criticisms and questions about the PERSAL system, he mentioned that it is important to know that it was designed as a payroll system and it has been morphed into something that it is not. Therefore, it is important for the DPSA to modernise and transform it to meet their needs. DPSA is making an attempt to cleanse the system. In addition, it is just not the system; it is the data that can be problematic as well.

He argued that, just like any other job, human resource professionals have to be competent to fill their job descriptions and play their role in the recruitment process. Therefore, the recruitment process must be efficient to be successful.

On the North West and Northern Cape departments, Mr Pillay said that the DPSA is providing them with data then asking them what is causing the discrepancies in the data and what role they need the DPSA to play in coming up with a solution. He noted that most of the departments are working to come up with their data, which is taking some time.

On why posts are not being filled immediately and why some are being kept open for so long, Mr Pillay replied that it was because of a scarcity of skills. The public sector simply cannot compete with the private sector in terms of salaries for competitive candidates; therefore it is difficult to fill many positions that require highly skilled candidates.

With regards to incapacity leave, Mr Pillay said that one cannot make those posts vacant, because a person is on incapacity leave if they have cancer or a serious injury. It is not fair to vacate their posts and leave them without an income.

Mr Pillay asserted that wherever ghost employees are found they are being dealt with appropriately.

The Chairperson then looked up statistics and found that there are nearly 36,000 public servants in the North West province who cannot be accounted for.

Mr Diphofe commented that it should not be possible for these ghost employees to exist unless someone is either doing their job incorrectly or is deliberately helping them get away with it.

In response to Ms van Damme inquiring who is responsible to stop ghost employees from becoming a reality in departments, Mr Diphofe said that the responsibility for this rests on the shoulders of the head of the department. Since that person is in charge of the department it is his job to oversee the people working in the payroll section and make sure that they are doing their jobs correctly.

Before moving on, the Deputy Speaker once again asked DPSA representatives to answer his questions about technology.

Mr Diphofe replied that the DPSA is planning to go into a completely new system called the Integrated Financial Management System. He said that as the Committee was meeting, there was a team working on technological advances within the department.

Before beginning the next presentation, the Chairperson asked that due to time constraints if the DPSA could give both of the remaining presentations together, but unfortunately that was not possible.

DPSA 1st Quarter 2015/16 Annual Operational Plan (AOP)
Ms Linda Shange, Acting Chief Director: Integrated Planning and Programmes Management in the DPSA, gave an overview of the department’s 1st Quarter Performance on the 2015/16 Annual Operational Plan.

Programme 1 Administration: There were two targets that were not achieved within this programme. The DPSA was hoping that they would have a first quarter report on the implementation of Human Resources Policies submitted to the Director General by the end of the first quarter. However, the report took longer than planned. To address this, the department will submit this report to the Director General in the second quarter. Additionally, the target of a quarterly report on Communication Campaigns and EXCO had to be put on hold, because the first report took longer than planned.

Programme 2 Policy, Research And Analysis: In this programme there are there were only two targets that were not achieved, and the department is working hard to address those targets. The Government Technical Advisory Centre (GTAC) and the Limpopo Department of Basic Education. Both of these departments are working to better understand their challenges, and action steps have been taken to address these challenges.

Programme 3 Labor Relations and Human Resource Management: There were two targets not achieved in this category. The first target that was not reached was to have requested the salary data from selected entities, but the DPSA found that there is insufficient internal human resource capacity to study this correctly. In addition, they had planned to implement a plan and outreach programme with the Government Employees Housing Scheme (GEHS). They found that the negotiations took much longer than anticipated. Also the Resolution was only signed on 26 May 2015 so this would have been very difficult to achieve during the first quarter. DPSA is working to reach this target in the second quarter.

Programme 4 Information and Technology Management: In this category there was only one target that was not achieved. They had hoped to develop an e-Enablement/e-Government/e-Service strategy that would be endorsed by DPSA, the State Information Technology Agency (SITA), and the Department of Telecommunications and Postal Services (DTPS). They ran into problems with human resource capacity due to the delay in the appointment of the DPSA Director for ICT Business Processes.

Programme 5 Service Delivery Support: Three targets were not reached. First, they had hoped to have Batho Pele standards developed with three service delivery departments, however this took longer than planned. The standards are currently being finalised. Second, the DPSA wanted to come up with templates for successful implementation of the Batho Pele programme, but this target is still in progress as well. Finally, DPSA had hoped to have drafts of all Batho Pele toolkits and information guidelines to be revised and prepared by the end of the first quarter. Yet, they are still working to revise the toolkits and aim to complete this target by the end of the second quarter.

Programme 6 Governance of Public Administration: There are two targets that were not completed. The first target hoped to have selected departments workshopped as part of the research on administrative practices regarding operational delegations. However, many departments responded late to requests for workshops. The workshops will be conducted by the end of the second quarter. The second target was to guide on "other remunerative work" communicated to all government departments. However, they were challenged by a legal opinion that questioned the legality of this action which was received later than they had expected. All of the tasks that were not completed are currently in progress.

Discussion
Mr van der Westhuizen noted that it was unfair to judge the department on one quarter only, however, the department broke down the targets by quarter for the Committee so they had no choice but to judge them that way. He asked DPSA why they aimed to complete so many targets when they knew that they would not be able to complete them all. He questioned whether the department should be over shooting their targets or under shooting them in an effort to better their numbers.

Ms Dlamini-Dubazana explained that she is satisfied by the report, because in her opinion the school of government has to do everything, which is a lot of work. She noted that if one looked at the overall budget, it does not align with the expenditure, which is the real problem in this case.

Ms Lesoma said that she is worried if this problem becomes one for Parliament to deal with, therefore these targets should be sped up. She asked if there were any targets to do with customer service standards.

Mr Diphofe did not have much time to respond to these questions and concerns, because the meeting was cut short, due to a scheduling error. He did however, have time to assure the Committee that the DPSA is trying to continue to improve, and in an effort to do this, it is important that they set a lot of targets. He hopes that future reports will be better. However, lessening the targets in an effort to achieve a higher percentage of them would be a mistake, because those numbers would not be a truthful reflection of the department’s progress. He assured the Committee that there would be a follow up meeting to discuss the Annual Performance Plan (APP) performance for 1st Quarter 2015/16 and they would answer the questions that remained unanswered. He did however; mention that the APP presentation that was handed out would be outdated for the next meeting.