Department of Planning, Performance, Monitoring and Evaluation, Statistics South Africa & National Youth Development Agency on their 3rd Quarter 2015/16 performance

Meeting report

National Youth Development Agency: Presentation

The National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) said the strategic objective of its first programme was to enhance the participation of young people in economy. The target was to have 429 new youth-owned enterprises, and the actual number achieved was 543. The targeted number of young aspiring and established entrepreneurs supported through NYDA business development support services was 38 406, and in the year to date the target had been exceeded. On the number of communities provided with community development facilitation support, the target was 35 communities, and this had not been achieved. A catch up plan had been developed and the target would be met. On jobs created and sustained through grant funding, cooperatives and business development services, the target of 2 166 jobs had been exceeded.

For Programme 2 (Education and Skills Development), the strategic objective was to facilitate and implement education opportunities in order to improve the quality of education for the youth. Key performance indicators included the number of young people enrolled in the NYDA matric rewrite, as well as the number supported through the Solomon Mahlangu Scholarship Programme. On the number of young people supported through individual and group career guidance interventions, the target of 606 375 was exceeded.

In Programme 3 (Health and Well Being), the strategic objective was to facilitate access to health and wellbeing programmes. The interventions designed to improve health was exceeded.

In Programme 4, the strategic objective was to provide health and wellbeing interventions for young people. The number of youths participating in campaigns and special projects implemented was exceeded.

In Programme 5 (Policy and Research), the strategic objective was to create and produce information and knowledge for better youth development planning and decision making. The performance indicator target number of 33 youths for youth development, research, evaluation and policy review was not met, but a catch up plan had been developed to meet the annual target. To develop the National Youth Employment Plan 2030, the target was to submit final plan to the Presidency. Consultations would be conducted with the private sector and a final draft would be produced. The final draft would be submitted to the Presidency by the end of March 2016.

For Programme 6 (Governance) the strategic objective was to establish a credible, efficient and effective organisation. One of the key performance indicators for this programme was for efficient and effective information technology (IT) systems to support youth development. The target was to review the NYDA IT systems architecture and roadmap implementations, and the year to date target had been met.

Mr Khathutshelo Ramukumba, Chief Executive Officer, NYDA, said the total budget for the 2015/16 was R431 million. R46 million was for economic participation, R42 million for educations and skills development, while R189 million was for employee costs.

Discussion

Mr A van der Westhuizen (DA) said the projections for the quarterly report on all the programmes were very low. He asked why each programme had a drop in projections, because this was where the demand was at its highest. How was the entity going to fund the overspending? Did the Agency really believe that the overspending was a realistic figure, or was it going to be much higher? He asked for details of where the agency had assisted with grants – were these once off grants, or did they carry over for a number of years? What was the Agency’s plan to really address the serious of problem of young people starting their own businesses and hopefully becoming employers of other millions of unemployed youth?

Mr S Motau (DA) said that drawing from the previous presentation things, seem to have gone from gloomy to be going “okay,” so what had happened? He asked if young people who had been assisted with grants were monitored after the grants had been given to them.

Ms V Mente-Nqweniso, EFF, said she needed an indication of what happened with the bailout of R200 million last year. She said the Agency was reducing the money available for the programmes, nothing was being increased for the fourth quarter. Was there no way the Agency could increase funds for the youth employment and entrepreneurship programme and the service delivery channel? She asked how the NYDA determined the targets set out in all its key performance areas (KPAs). Could the Agency also provide the Committee with the areas in which the targets had been met? She said its successes had been based mostly in towns close to metros, and not in villages. She asked the Agency to inform the Committee who it had linked with.

Mr S Mncwabe (NFP) referred to the education and skills development programme, and asked what had been the entity’s position on institutions where there were students who were financially needy. What had been its position on racial issues at these educational institutions? Also, what had been the Agency’s part in the campaign to encourage young people to go and register to vote in the upcoming elections?

Mr M Ntombela (ANC) referred to the economic participation programme, and asked about the geographic spread and the nature of grants given this programme. How did the entity follow up on youths who did not succeed in getting funding in previous years? With the 278 municipalities in South Africa, were there any special areas that the agency focused on with regard to national youth services? How widespread was the agency?

Ms Z Dlamini-Dubazana (ANC) asked for information on the Agency’s budget.

Mr Ramukumba said the budget requested by the NYDA for the 2015/16 financial year was R200 million, but it had not been approved by the National Treasury. The level of impact that the NYDA was making on young people in the country was indeed a drop in the ocean. However, this was because of the inadequate resources the agency had in relation to the expectations and demands of young people were. This was why it had come to the Committee last year to request the additional R200 million. He said the Agency had done what it needed to do. It had demonstrated good governance and prudent financial management, which had been attested to by the Auditor General. It had also done its best to ensure the limited resources to deliver on the commitment it made to the youth of the country, as well as the Parliament of South Africa, and had been able to meet 93% of these commitments in terms of the Annual Performance Plan (APP). The NYDA had demonstrated that it was an institution that could be trusted with good governance.

Ms Dlamini-Dubazana said the Agency should tell the Committee how much funding it had from 1 March 2015.

Mr Ramukumba said the allocation for the Agency was R413 million, which was directly from the government, and it had been able to raise an additional R19 million from various donors. The report presented consisted of expenditure up to date, and there was still expenditure for the fourth quarter. The low funds for the fourth quarter were the result of the huge demand of young people coming in with needs to be funded for businesses that would create more jobs, and the Agency could not send these youths away because it wanted to keep money for the fourth quarter. The demand actually exceeded the supply. In relation to the salary spent, the Agency would not be reducing the salary base, as there were few employees to whom it had to pay salaries in the last quarter. The agency had been engaging with National Treasury and has been even before the restructuring programme. The agency has requested National Treasury for assistance in funding the voluntary severance packages which the Treasury had said that the Agency must implement. In principle, the Treasury had indicated that it was willing to assist the Agency and would continue to engage with it.

He said the NYDA grant was structured such that those that had been assisted were sent to a young entrepreneurship development programme for a week, at which they were taught the basics of what business was about and how to run their business. If they did not have a registered entity, they would be assisted in registering it. They also received mentorship, which was now also available online. The support from the Agency included oversight visits from Agency staff members on a quarterly basis to check how the business was doing. The intention of the grant programme was that this support should continue for at least 24 months. On the quality of jobs created, the Agency looked at jobs that showed a level of sustainability.

Referring to the Agency’s administration, he said that now that it had fewer people, the level of expenditure had dropped. As far as it affected service delivery, there were now people who were located in branches, whereas previously the organization had a number of people in head office who had to travel long distances to these locations. In this regard, it was anticipating a further reduction in expenditure. In relation to its geographic location, what the Agency could do was make a commitment to submit in the coming week a list of all interventions that had taken place, and this could be done per branch. The recruitment processes in local municipalities was currently under way, and from 1 April all the municipalities with which the Agency had agreements would get support from the full services branches that were close to them.

He said the improvement was the result of the turnaround strategy that had been presented to the Committee. The Agency was committed to improving and being better able to position itself as an institution that government and society in general could have confidence in. On the issue of the #feesmustfall campaign, the agency had adopted parallel processes. One example was working together with the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) in trying to respond to this challenge, and NSFAS had committed an additional R10 million to NYDA for this purpose. It had aso intervened on behalf of students who did have registration fees through the Thusano Fund. The Agency had had engagements with various universities for a number of students to register, and the relationship with these universities had been very good.

On the issue of racism, the NYDA had a planned approach of engaging in dialogue sessions which it would be implementing in the new financial year, and the reason for not immediately responding to this had been the question of budget allocation. For the education programme, it had a plan for implementation in 2016/17. On the issue of targets, these were determined on the basis of priorities defined by the Board.

Ms Nthuseng Mphahlele, Executive Director, Programme Design Development and Delivery, said that in the turnaround strategy the NYDA had presented to the Committee last year, in order to improve its visibility it was entering into partnerships with local municipalities, which would become access points as they were closest to communities. What the Agency had managed to do in the course of the financial year was to source resources and form a partnership with the Skills Education Training Authority (SETA), and it had approved an amount of about R40 million to the Agency to capacitate the local youth offices. This meant that the Agency was going to appoint graduate interns in service-related spheres. The mobile outreach vehicle would help with the recruitment of candidates for the ‘second chance’ matric rewrite programme.  

Ms Dlamini-Dubazana said the questions she was going to ask the Agency would have to be responded to in writing, with the information emailed to the Chairperson. The geographical implementation of projects should be aligned with money value, and she asked how the money the Agency was given was spent, because in the presentation it had not provided any details. She said the reason the money the Agency requested had not been approved by National Treasury was for this same reason. She said the Agency should not use the word ‘governance,’ but ‘administration.’

Department of Planning, Performance, Monitoring and Evaluation: Presentation

Dr Ntsiki Tshayingca-Mashiya, Deputy Director General, Department of Planning, Performance, Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME), said 160 employees had been targeted for training, but 227 had been trained, exceeding the target by 41%. The six targets that had been fully achieved related to governance and administrative support issues.

Five targets had not been achieved. One related to the development and implementation of the communication plan. The communications unit was in the process of being re-established. The communication plan had since been developed and communication activities included in the plan were being implemented. The challenge had been the lack of capacity in the communication unit, where there was only one person. The unit was being capacitated and posts were being filled.

Then there was the issue of the payment of suppliers within 30 days. Five cases were involved where internal control processes had not been followed, resulting in the failure to comply with the 30 days payment standard. Disciplinary action had been taken against the responsible officials.

With regard to the submission of performance reviews by members of the senior management service (SMS), 21 senior managers reporting to the Acting DG had not been assessed due to changes in leadership. This was being addressed and the new Acting DG would conduct the reviews.

While maintenance of the vacancy rate was targeted at 10%, the vacancy rate had been at 16.9%. This was largely due to delays in the vetting process and the creation of additional posts.

In the implementation of information communication technology (ICT) business projects, seven out of 21 projects had been achieved against the target of 12. This was due largely to delays in the procurement process and projects running longer that anticipated. The submission of risk committee reports to the risk committee target had since been achieved.

The two targets exceeded related to the production of eight of nine briefing notes on executive visits, constituting 89% against the target of 80% for the quarter. Two Operation Phakisa reports on education and the mining sector had been produced. The partially achieved target related to the displaying of six outcomes monitoring on the Provincial Ordinances Act (POA) system for public viewing. This had now been achieved. 14 reports had been posted on the POA system after the end of the quarter. Outcomes reports had been approved by the DDG in the second quarter and displayed on the POA website.

Discussion

Mr Ntombela asked if the results on Programme 3 were going to be shared with the Committee. He asked who managed the customer satisfaction survey on the Presidential hotline, and how effective the collaboration with the provincial department was.

Ms Mente-Nqweniso said she was concerned about NYDA’s Programme 5, which had been 100% completed. It had provided a statistics for the Northern Cape of 400+ consultations, whereas the Northern Cape had only 205 wards. Where were these consultations done, because it seemed like there had been duplication in this province. Therefore, when the Department said a job had been 100% well done, did it rely only on documentation, or did someone from the Department go physically to see if the job had really been done. The fact that the Department paid itself for leave days forfeited should be corrected.

Mr Mncwabe asked if Commissioners signed any performance agreements.

Mr Motau referred to the National Planning Commission, and said now that the Minister had the executive authority, what was the relationship between commissioners and the Department? What could the Committee do to ensure vetting was done correctly? What had the Department done on the issue of delayed appointments due to the vetting, and what could the Committee do for vetting to be done timeously?

Mr Van der Westhuizen asked what had caused the failure to pay within 30 days. Was it a matter of prioritization? On the vacancy rate, not all staff had been vetted. What other problems had led to the vacancy rate not being met, besides the vetting of staff. To what extent did the Department conduct monitoring over the NYDA?

Ms Dlamini-Dubazana asked if the money on administration was inclusive of employee salaries. The salaries of Directors-General were different. Why was this so, given that the government emphasises equality? Why were DGs being paid so much money when targets were not met?

Dr Tshayingca-Mashiya said the Department looked at how government institutions performed so that they could deliver on services, focusing on areas such as financial management, people management and governance. Most departments were at the minimum level of what was required. The DPME was trying to address the issue of management so that there was an overall improvement in performance.

On the question of who managed customer satisfaction surveys, the DPME worked within the Presidential Hotline. People called in, their calls were registered, logs were created and categorized for dispatch to the relevant Departments. The DPME then followed up to see if the Department had delivered and if the issue had been resolved. The resolution rate varied from department to department -- at some it was higher while at others the rate was lower. The Presidential Hotline did collaborate with provincial departments and the relationship was working, but could still be improved.

The NYDA discussion had indicated there were questions about the percentages provided being more than the real situation, and the Agency would deal with this question.

She said commissioners had been appointed but had not signed performance agreements because they had been appointed only towards the end of last year. They did work with the Minister. She would take the issue of signing performance agreements by the commissioners to the Department.

Oversight was quite broad, and what had been reported currently was what the Department had done in the first quarter. There were indications that programmes were being implemented so that youth development was being mainstreamed.

Mr Pieter Pretorius, Chief Financial Officer, DPME, said the leave payouts applied only when one resigned from the public service. There was pre-employment screening which happened with every post filled, from cleaning (level 2) to Director General (level 16).

The basis for monitoring 30 day payments was a tracking system, and every invoice had to be recorded on the tracking system. What happened in some cases was that service providers gave invoices to officials who put them in a drawer and went on leave, so nothing was known of the invoice until it was too late. This was the failure of the tracking system. Nothing could be done until the Department had a system were invoices could be submitted online by service providers.

The Department conducted oversight on the NYDA only when it looked at compliance with the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA), which was the financial oversight. Also, the youth desk looked at the Agency’s performance.

Regarding the salaries of the Deputy Directors General, the salaries were more or less the same -- there was no discrimination within the Department.

Mr Ntombela said he was concerned about the Presidential Hotline which was supposed to address people’s grievances. Last year, one of the Members of the Committee had tested to see if the hotline was working and response had been negative. He had tested it again by calling the Hotline, and had not gone through. He was making an appeal to the Department to ensure that projects that were the direct initiatives of the Presidency should be made to work.

Ms Dlamini-Dubazana said she shared the same sentiments. The project had cost close to R23 million. People in rural areas did not have faxes and therefore the Department was messing around with the citizens of South Africa by referring them to faxes when they called the Presidential Hotline.

Mr Van der Westhuizen said an email would have been appropriate.

Mr Mncwabe said the language on the Hotline was also an issue. The hotline should have options so people could choose the language they wanted to be assisted in.

Statistics South Africa: Presentation

Mr Pali Lehohla, Statistician-General, Statistics South Africa (StatsSA), said that at the organisational level, 46% of targets had been achieved.  A number which had been delayed would be accomplished by the end of the fourth quarter. The areas where programmes had been delayed included corporate services, office of the statistician, survey operations, statistical collection and outreach, statistical support informatics, methodology and standards, population and social statistics, and economic statistics.

R2.3 billion had been allocated to the organization, and R1.6 billion (69%) had been spent by the third quarter, while the remaining funds would be spent appropriately in the fourth quarter. Projections were that in the next financial year, the organisation would ask for money for programmes that would add a lot of value.

The vacancy rate was about 8.8%, which could be considered acceptable because there was always movement of people in and out. One of the things StatsSA tried to do in order to mitigate vacancies and ensure continuity was to arrange that when people were about to retire, they gave themelves a few months in order to advertise and get people on board.

For the third quarter, the proportion of population groups by sex was:

• Males: 87.6% Africans; 5.6% coloureds; 2.2% Indians; 4.6% whites.
• Females: 86.2% Africans; 5.0% coloureds; 1.2% Indians; 7.6% whites.

During the third quarter, 71 publications had been released, and service delivery user enquiry responses within 24 hours had been above 94%. In terms of statistical support, approximately 90 000 questionnaires had been processed. In the field of corporate support, construction of the new building had continued. Stats SA had endorsed South African Police Service crime statistics, and the eight Millennium Development Goal reports had been completed.

Key priority projects for the third quarter were on track, including a citizen satisfaction survey for KwaZulu-Natal, a community survey, the GDP expenditure approach in 2016, and improving the policy, statistics and decision making value chain. Other priority projects for the period were driving statistical and legislative reform, moving to a new building in 2016, as well as leading statistical developments on the continent. Statistics had grown to a level where it needed to be considered authoritative, and if a country did not ensure this, it was going to lose out. Countries like Mexico, China, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia had realized the authority of the Statistician General.

Looking at the year 2016 and the years ahead, the organization would look at:

• The annual international comparison programmes;
• A dynamic map of regional consumption markets and industrial markets to inform Africa’s industrialisation programme;
• Addressing informational requirements to guide Africain attaining a demographic dividend;
• Eliminate the scandal of invisibility in Africa through Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) programmes;
• Addressing infrastructure statistics in Africa;
• A compendium of statistics that informed Agenda 2063;
• Strengthening African statistics institutions through tuition programmes;
• A system of economic and environmental statistics in Africa; and
• A system of statistics that tracked and traced merchandise properties, their origin, destination and use.

Discussion

Ms Mente-Nqweniso said there had been clear allocations on how much had been spent for each programme, and when. Commenting on the vacancy rate, she said StatsSA was a small organization and could not afford to have vacancies, having a limited staff already, so it needed to sort out this issue. She was concerned about the delayed targets, and asked what the source of the delay was. Were the discontinued programmes due to lack of importance or lack of funds? On the issue of illicit financial flows, was there a programme to establish the collection of data between the Reserve Bank and other countries?

Mr Ntombela said the significance of statistics in South Africa could not be underestimated. He asked what plans there were to enhance statistical leadership in the country. What had been the other departments’ responses to using statistics to implement certain mandates?

Ms Dlamini-Dubazana congratulated the organization on finally having its own building and on the improvement in its human resource management. She said it was really worrying that Stats SA did not have legislation giving it authority to impose decisions on other departments for non-compliance.

Mr Risenga Maluleke, Deputy Director General, Stats SA, said the 12% of delayed targets in statistical collection and outreach was because of the high standards of internal management processes that were set within this cluster. With the use of iPads now, the process would be quicker and quality issues would be dealt with instantly.

He said the richness of the data produced previously by Stats SA had not been easy to understand, but now the statistics had been made user friendly. What the organisation had observed was that the ruling party in Gauteng and North West had had a lot of interactions with it. One of the meetings had been in preparation for the State of the Province Address (SoPA), and what the organisation had told them was that statistics was not a monopoly of the ruling party. Other parties also needed to engage with it in order to enhance discussions at the policy level. He said information about the amounts spent for each programme would be emailed to the Committee.

Mr Lehohla said unemployment and lack of education were the main drivers of poverty. Lack of housing was a minor influence, and if more houses were built the situation would change little. He asked how, as legislators, one drove policy to ensure that when development plans were implemented, meaningful results were achieved.

Ms Dlamini-Dubazana asked if Mr Lehohla has been to the Cabinet with the information he had presented.

Mr Lehohla said he has discussed this information with the Minister of Education and in the indaba with trade unions, but not with the entire Cabinet.

Ms Dlamini-Dubazana said Mr Lehohla should go to the head of government business with the information so that everyone became aware of it.

The meeting was adjourned.