DPSA, NSG, CPSI & PSC 2023/24 Annual Performance Plans; with Ministry

NCOP Transport, Public Service and Administration, Public Works and Infrastructure

03 May 2023
Chairperson: Mr M Mmoiemang (ANC, Northern Cape) & Mr M Rayi (Eastern Cape)
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Meeting Summary

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Public Service and Admin                                                                                                           

Centre for public service innovation

National school of government

The Select Committee was briefed in a virtual meeting by the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA), the National School of Government (NSG), the Centre for Public Service Innovation (CPSI) and the Public Service Commission (PSC) on their annual performance plans and strategic plans for the 2023/24 financial year.

The DPSA highlighted the five main outcomes of their strategic plan, which included intensifying the fight against corruption in the public service, complete implementation of the Public Administration Management Act, and stabilising the public service.  

The PSC said it had embarked on an aggressive recruitment campaign, and as a result, it had been able to reduce its vacancy rate to 7.8%, which was below the 10% target that had been set for government departments. They were able to generate at least 1 420 case reports through their anti-corruption hotline, which would be referred to the respective departments for investigation.

The NSG said it aimed to build a new public sector cadre that was ethical, accountable, innovative, masterful, prudent, and committed to national development and transformation.

The CPSI highlighted its mandate in three sub-programmes: research and development, institutional support and replication, and enabling environment. They had worked on e-learning solutions, digital forensic fingerprint projects -- which included piloting a project to help families get closure from unclaimed bodies in mortuaries due to load-shedding -- and a partnership with the National Advisory Council on Innovation.

Members asked if the DPSA was taking into account a report of the State Capture Commission to check for loopholes in public service administration and to tighten things up to prevent corruption in departments. Was the Department looking at the website of Parliament to prioritise bills because of time concerns? How would it address challenges around service delivery which seemed to be seasonal in nature, such as protests when universities or colleges reopen?

The Chairperson said the national development plan (NDP) focused on developing technical and specialised professional skills in the public service, which were essential for creating a capable and developmental public sector. This was exacerbated by the departure of institutional staff, which was costing the public sector. Reforms were needed to ensure that expertise, experience and professional managerial skills were retained within the public sector.

Meeting report

Mr M Rayi (ANC, Eastern Cape) was nominated as the acting Chairperson in the absence of Chairperson Mmoiemang.

The Acting Chairperson formally opened the meeting, and congratulated Ms Noxolo Kiviet on her appointment as Minister of Public Service and Administration, and welcomed the Members of the Committee. The purpose of the meeting was for the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA), the National School of Government (NSG), the Centre for Public Service Innovation (CPSI), and the Public Service Commission (PSC) to brief the Committee on their annual performance plans (APPs) and strategic plans.

Mr Hlupheka Mtileni, Committee Secretary, said there were apologies for the absence from Ms M Moshodi (ANC, Free State) and Mr E Landsman (ANC, North West).

The Committee adopted the minutes of its previous meeting held on 26 April 2023.

Minister's overview

Minister Kiviet expressed her disappointment over the social service strike and about the public being deprived of health services by the public servants. She reflected on how far the country had come from the apartheid era and said that even during apartheid, health workers were given the right to work. It was painful that during their time of our freedom, one found people who were “tramping” on other people’s rights, as the strikers had done. She apologised to South Africans and said, per the presentations, that they would do away with minimum standards for services, particularly essential services workers. They intended to improve the services to citizens and ensure that these services were” forever improved”.

The Minister said they were looking to improve the management of the following Departments:

National Treasury;

  • Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs;
  • Basic Education;
  • Police;
  • Health; and
  • The bargaining counsels in the public sector.

All of the above departments would be meeting in the next two days at a retreat to discuss and come up with proposals on the management of the wage bill. She highlighted that managing the wage bill was necessary to normalise the workplace.

Minister Kiviet said they were currently working with the School of Government on professionalisation, and were going to discuss the protection of public servants that were whistleblowers. There were proposals to strengthen the management of the public servants by using the Public Administration Management Act 11 of 2014 (PAMA), and the Public Service Act (PSA).

She talked about the integration of the public service and having a single public service and strengthening the political-administrative dichotomy, which currently was a challenge. They found a lot of turnover at the senior levels of Director-General (DG) and Deputy Director-General (DDG) because of areas of conflict or disputes that arise between the politicians that lead the departments. 

The Minister said that the Public Service Commission Bill was in its final stages, and needed to be presented to Cabinet.

Department of Public Service and Administration 2023/24 annual performance plan

Ms Yoliswa Makhasi, DG, DPSA, presented the five key outcomes of the Department's strategic plan for the  2020 to 2025 period. These were:

  • To improve the implementation of programmes;
  • To intensify the fight against corruption in the public service;
  • Complete implementation of the Public Administration Management Act;
  • Improved implementation of administrative policies in the public service; and
  • A stabilised public service.

She said the medium-term strategic framework (MTSF) targets formed the annual operational plan of the Department, and it was really focused on ensuring that these targets were implemented and achieved within the period of five years.

The Minister supported the work of the Public Service Commission, or supported the President in respect of the work of the PSC, and they were targeting a 95% resolution of reported incidents of corruption in government by 2024 through implementing the integrated financial management system (IFMS). This was a deliverable of National Treasury. The Department was implementing the human resources (HR) chapter of the IFMS in the entire public service.
The DG referred to implementation of the professionalisation framework approved in October last year by Cabinet. The first area to be dealt with was the long drawn-out precautionary suspensions. The salary costs were almost R62 million. There were 292 precautionary suspensions across provincial departments, the highest being in Kwazulu-Natal (KZN). They had been doing a lot of work with this province. Many of their cases also had to do with educators and there had been delays in terms of the education labour relations council.

Ms Linda Dludla, DDG: Administration, DPSA, said they hoped to achieve a reduction in incidents of useless and wasteful expenditure in the Department over the next three years, beginning with a 70% reduction this year. They aimed to continue reporting on their compliance and increase the representation of women in the Department's senior management service (SMS) positions. They intended to exceed the 50% target so that when there were movements such as resignations, or people going on retirement, it did not affect the 50% representation. The DG had also approved affirmative action measures as provided for in the employment equity plan.

The Department would introduce a number of initiatives to ensure that they create opportunities in terms of occupations that young people could readily access, as well as for those with disabilities. The national target was a 2% representation of people with disabilities until last year, but this has since been increased to 7%, so they were planning to meet this target incrementally, starting with 3.5% this year and achieving 7% in 2025/26, with a number of interventions to ensure that they recruit people with disabilities.

Currently, determinations and directives were scattered throughout their website, which was their main portal of access, so the intention was to enable easy access by both clients, which were the departments with which they worked and any other interested parties, to have all of their directives and determinations consolidated into one document that they could easily access.

Ms Dludla said the Committee may be aware that the focus of HR for the past few years had shifted from transactional human resource management to what was known as human capital management, and looking at how one implemented all of the different HR interventions or HR policies as part of that.

The Department planned to reduce the current labour relations cases involving discipline for misconduct and suspensions. They intended to offer their support and also to monitor the impact of that support on the cases that would be reduced, so they would be doing that for the next three years. They would also be conducting lifestyle audits.

Government, as an employer as well as labour, wanted to intensify the implementation of the Public Service Charter. They would work with all the departments in the next three years to support them and the African Review Mechanism. The Department had submitted its national plan of action and review report to Cabinet. It would support three state institutions, increasing to four and then five, to implement this plan. It was aligned with the review's recommendations to assist departments in implementing the suggestions derived from their research on the state of service delivery in the country. It would be picking five service delivery departments, because they were looking primarily for those frontline departments. The study identified gaps and obstacles, and put forward recommendations for improvement. In addition, the DPSA would consolidate all service delivery-related instruments under a single policy, for easier integration and implementation by departments.

Mr Masilo Makhura, Chief Financial Officer (CFO), DPSA, said the Department's total budget allocation for the 2023/24 financial year was R553 million, with the administration programme taking the biggest chunk of the budget at R269 million (48%) percent, because this programme supported the office of the Minister, the office of the DG, and all the other support services that were hosted under this programme.

The other programmes, and their allocations, were:

  • Human resource management and development - R49 million;
  • Labour relations and remuneration management was the third programme - R96 million;
  • Information management - R29 million;
  • E-Government services access and improvement - R60 million;
  • Centre for Public Service Innovation - R46 million.

[See presentation document for further details]

Public Service Commission Annual Performance Plan 2023/24

Adv Dinkie Dube, DG, Public Service Commission (PSC), said the entity had embarked on an aggressive recruitment campaign. As a result, they had been able to reduce their vacancy rate to 7.8%, which was below the 10% target that had been set for departments. They were able to generate at least 1 420 case reports from incidents reported on their anti-corruption hotline, which would be referred to the respective departments for investigation.

She said the PSC had a total of 30 performance indicators, and it was important to highlight the number of indicators because the growth had been exponential .This financial year, they identified four topics on which to conduct studies and then issued a report at the end of the fiscal year. The first was the impact of the hybrid face-to-face/virtual working arrangement on service delivery in the public sector. They had just come through the era of COVID-19, and the way the departments and employers adhered to the situation had led to a hybrid working arrangement, and PSC would make an assessment of the impact.

By the end of the fiscal year, the PSC would provide a perspective of the public service to say to what extent all of these reforms had truly transformed the public service. It would also want to assess the extent to which departments were using information communication technology (ICT) and technology in the area of HR. It would be issuing a report on an assessment of the digitisation of HR processes in the public service.

The final report would be related to the headhunting processes they had followed. The PSC would be talking about ensuring that the public service was able to attract relevant talent, so it wanted to explore where actual departments were utilising the provision that already exists in the public service regulations so they could get the needed talent from their respective departments.

Mr Zweli Momeka, CFO, said the budget allocation for 2023/24 was R292 million, which was just a marginal increase from the previous year. R220 million (75%) of the budget was allocated to employee compensation,

as the Commission was primarily a knowledge-based institution, and did not outsource its functions. The PSC conducted research, handled grievances, and reports were written. People, rather than machines did a large portion of the work.

The PSC had 11 offices in total, one head office, one parliamentary office, and an office in each province because it was a national institution with a footprint across the country.

[See presentation document for further details]

National School of Government Annual Performance Plan 2023/24

Mr Dino Poonsamy, Chief Director: Strategy, NSG, said this year marked the tenth anniversary of the National School of Government's establishment. It was currently in the fourth year of the current five-year strategic plan. Their mission was to build an ethical and capable public sector in service of the people, and they continued to live and carry out this vision and mission through their work, and they had not revised it. 

The NSG's mandate was to provide education and training to public servants while also supporting institutional development and fostering collaboration. The principal had spoken about the issue of qualifications and the mandate of training within the three spheres of government, the legislative sector and other organs of state, and finally, to conduct training examinations or tests that could be set as prerequisites. The NSG chairperson's work was based on the service delivery model that was designed, which had moulded not just the organisation's strategy but also its design.

The National School of Government was focusing on quality management right across the organisation. As part of its strategy, it aspired to build a new public sector cadre that was diligent in the execution of priorities, ethical and accountable, innovative, masterful, prudent and committed to the cause of national development and transformation.

The NSG has four faculties that focus on the various occupational levels of public service, with specific programmes and interventions targeting these levels. It had a variety of cross-cutting courses that were both accredited and non-credit bearing. These courses included inclusion and transformation programmes such as anti-discrimination, diversity management, disability management, leading change, and induction and onboarding. There had been significant movement and traction in some of these programmes, such as the compulsory induction programme, which was ten years old and was available only through the NSG.                                                                                                                                   

The NSG also focused on reviewing and developing programmes to target other levels within the public service. These included the induction programme for boards of entities, ethical leadership, and executive oversight, coaching for leadership development, project management, advanced management development programmes, culture and change management, and awareness of constitutional provisions.

It continued to monitor its programmes that were available on the e-learning platform.

The NSG has grown significantly over the past five years, with a total of 86 000 training participants from e-learning and face-to-face courses. This included programmes such as ethics, internal auditors, financial sector conduct authority, the public sector, writing for government, basic writing skills, advanced writing skills, operations management, managing performance, and so forth.

The enrolment numbers showed that 194000 e-learners had been on the e-learning platform since 2020, and the number was expected to exceed 200 000 over the next three years. The NSG's priorities for this year included conducting skills audits in the public service, training 46 480 learners in all forms of e-learning, and generating revenue of R101 million. They also wanted to ensure quality management across the organisation, map out business processes, implement six IT projects, implement a brand and marketing strategy, and engage across the public sector.

The NSG would continue to add new programmes and conduct impact evaluation studies on certain programmes. It was undertaking a number of provincial interventions to support provinces and municipalities, such as training KZN municipal officials on avoiding irregular expenditure, citizen-centred service delivery, and training interventions targeting traditional leaders in the art of facilitation. These interventions include working within the provincial human resource department forums to ensure that the work of the NSG was known and that it was able to support provinces and municipalities.

[See presentation document for further details]

Centre for Public Service Innovation 2020-2025 strategic plan and 2022/23 Annual Performance Plan

Ms Lydia Sebokedi, Acting Executive Director, CPSI, said the entity had two programmes, administration and public sector innovation. It carried out its mandate in three sub-programmes -- research and development, institutional support and replication, and enabling environment.

7.4% of its employees were people with disabilities and were trying to get a 13% representation of youth. It was in the process of filling posts to strengthen its capacity to provide institutional support and replication. They were proud of the CPSI for achieving clean audits for the past six years. It had maintained a 5.8 day turnaround time for multi-year projects, such as the virtual Thusong Centre and knowledge platforms, to create a community of practice.

The Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) was bringing together public sector innovators once a year to share new ideas and expose them to public servants. They had worked on e-learning solutions, digital forensic fingerprint projects, and a partnership with the National Advisory Council on Innovation (NACI).

They were also piloting a digital forensic fingerprint project to help families get closure from unclaimed bodies in mortuaries due to load-shedding. The Northern Cape had taken up a project to connect their Thucsong centres with MTN, and the CPSI was supporting the project to develop a minimum viable product by the third quarter. The entity was also working with the team to ensure that the platform was developed to the right level, and that the Thusong Centre services were extended to as many citizens as possible.

[See presentation document for further details]

Discussion

Mr T Brauteseth (DA, KZN) said he would write his questions in the Zoom chat because of connection issues.

Mr M Rayi (ANC, Eastern Cape) asked if the Department was considering a report of the State Capture Commission to check for loopholes in public service administration and tighten things up to prevent corruption in departments. Was the Department looking at the Parliament's website to prioritise bills because of time concerns? Could some of the clauses in the bills be gazetted, rather than being subjected to the legislative process? Finally, was the Department checking to what extent powers were devolved to the heads of departments (HODs), and how this would affect the Ministers' delivery agreements?

Government was unable to address challenges around service delivery which seemed to be seasonal in nature, such as protests when universities or colleges reopen. This was due to the lack of interventions from the DPSA and the PSC. To address these challenges, government should engage with the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET).

He said the DPSA relied on departments for feedback, and ICT should be used to provide services so that members of the public did not have to go to the departments themselves. Additionally, the CPSI had suggested that the departments should identify the services that were safe, and guard against fraud and interference in their systems. Other issues were being addressed to motivate employees, such as improving working conditions and benefits. Poor people had access to free houses, free education, and access to universities, while middle-class people may not.

Ms S Boshoff (DA, Mpumalanga) said the Department was aware of 1 823 senior managers employed without the necessary qualifications, and wanted to know if they had commenced lifestyle audits and how far they had progressed.

Mr Rayi asked about the importance of professional ethics workshops for the South African Police Service (SAPS), traffic officers, and correctional services officials. He suggested the Public Service Commission should take forward the recommendations of the State Capture Commission, especially the monitoring of law enforcement entities. He also asked if the PSC had its own hotline or monitored the Presidency hotline. He asked about progress with the CPSI's innovation initiatives, such as assisting hospitals with online folders, online applications for driver’s licences, and assisting the SAPS in reducing the number of missing dockets.

The Chairperson said the national development plan (NDP) focused on developing technical and specialised professional skills in the public service, which were essential for creating a capable and developmental public sector. This was exacerbated by the departure of institutional staff, costing the public sector. Reforms were needed to ensure that expertise, experience and professional managerial skills were retained within the public sector.

Response

Minister Kiviet responded that the team was working on a project to relieve those who had been in the system for 25 to 30 years, and who were not able to keep up with today's challenges in the public sector. The team analysed personal data to determine how many people could leave the system without suffering losses, and to attract those who met the qualifications but did not have the necessary number of years in public service. They were trying to increase capacity and numbers without compromising the wage bill. The move would help transform the public service by introducing fresh skills and ideas. It would also help by replacing high earners with young employees, which would attract and retain staff and lower the unemployment rate.

The NSG was also working to identify the new skills needed in the system, such as project management, infrastructure, and human capital management. These skills were necessary for the system to meet its targets.

Ms Zukiswa Mqolomba, Acting Chairperson, PSC, said there were no minimum qualifications for national commissioners -- just relevant qualifications that were relevant to the core mandate of the entity.

They had scheduled meetings with the Minister of Higher Education, Dr Blade Nzimande, to discuss the seasonal challenges at the higher education level. They wanted the PSC Bill to be placed on the list of priority bills. They had identified whistleblower protection as a key focus area in this financial year, and were hosting their own national anti-corruption hotline.

Mr Busani Ngcaweni, Principal, NSG, described an iterative process for training needs assessments and skills audits, which had been going on for a number of years. He said the PSC and the Public Service Association (PSA) had integrated the professionalisation framework into the APP of the Department, as the DPSA had a dual role in providing leadership and in professionalising the public service in general. They had also engaged with HODs and heads of other institutions to ensure that the framework was institutionalised across the system.

Ms Sebokedi said the challenges around health records were due to the lack of integration of systems, and the process of digitising records was not good. They would provide written responses to other questions.

Ms Makhasi responded that the DPSA would provide written detail on the proposed changes, the contracting issues for the DDGs, the negotiations and salary issues, the Minimum Service Agreement (MSA), the housing subsidy for employees, the medical aid for employees, and certain allowances for employees. They would also provide a report on the long drawn-out suspensions and the issue of lifestyle audits. The statistics were expected to be released in May.

Closing remarks
Minister Kiviet said she was grateful for the suggestions made by the Members, as well as the DGs and the Public Service Commission, for their support in improving the performance of the Department , and for their willingness to work and lead.
The Chairperson thanked Mr Rayi for standing in for him in his absence.

The meeting was adjourned.

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