DPME Frontline Monitoring & Support; Presidential Hotline Performance; with Minister

Meeting report

The Chairperson welcomed the attendees to the meeting, and asked all the Members of the Committee to introduce themselves, as this was the first meeting being held since the election of this Committee.

An apology was received from Ms Pinky Kekana, Deputy Minister in the Presidency.

Minister's opening remarks

Ms Maropene Ramokgopa, Minister in the Presidency for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, appreciated the platform given by the Committee for her to report on the frontline monitoring and support, and the presidential hotline. They were making sure that they performed the monitoring physically to prepare for the Imbizos that the President and his Deputy were doing. Some projects had been running through the district development model (DDM) and their champions, and they aimed to ensure that the frontline monitoring was based on the current challenges in the country, or research that would have been made in different areas.

They have been focusing recently on education, health, special economic zones, gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) centres, and issues around Covid-19. They send their staff members mostly to do the groundwork and heavy lifting, and sometimes struggle to have institutions to which they give reports, to implement their recommendations after monitoring the situations at hand. This happened because the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME) was not a department that had enforcement mechanisms to issue consequences to non-compliant institutions. They did not deal with issues relating only to government, but could also have access to the private sector, and they were trying to bring everyone together to create an environment where businesses and private citizens were able to play a part in building a capable state.

Frontline monitoring and support

Mr Robert Nkuna, Director-General (DG), DPME, said there should be long-term planning, and the planning system responsible for coherence, alignment and quality of plans must be coordinated. The critical government programmes should be evaluated, and there should be interventions on behalf of the Cabinet and the President.

He described the frontline monitoring and support provided in 2022/23.

• There were 134 technical and vocational education and training (TVET) colleges monitored, and overall issues including the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS), information technology (IT) exam systems, entrepreneurship hubs and their infrastructure.
• Citizens were unhappy with the non-response of the 10111 Gauteng Command Centre, as there was little to no response to emergency calls.
• It was found that many clinics were not complying with the self-assessment reports.
• South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) delays were not communicated to beneficiaries, and there had been a constant record of delays.

See attached for full presentation

Presidential Hotline

Mr Melisizwe Bleki, Director: Presidential Hotline, DPME, said that the planned monitoring activities for the third and fourth quarters of 2023/24 included monitoring the Presidential priorities with ministers, oversight monitoring of special schools across provinces, and improvement monitoring of the ideal clinic verification project.

The Presidential value chain had three lines, with the following challenges:

• Line 1: Lack of Integration, lack of modernisation and limited services.
• Line 2: Limited use of information, intelligence, and early warning.
• Line 3: Limited management accountability and low responsiveness.

See attached for full presentation

Discussion

Ms S Graham (DA) appreciated the presentations, and asked for an update on the performance agreements of the Ministers. She asked if there had been any investigation into an issue raised about the overpricing of the Covid-19 vaccines. She commented that there were a lot of people who were beneficiaries of government grants through the post offices that had had their grants delayed due to issues with the post offices, and suggested that if the Department was aware that any of the post offices were closed, they should make alternative arrangements for all beneficiaries to get their money on time.

NSFAS had been an issue at TVET colleges, where payments for accommodation and living allowances were delayed and students were forced to live in private accommodation that they could not afford. She suggested that courses like human resources (HR) and office management should not be offered at colleges in rural areas, and that there should be more offerings on farming, tourism, plumbing and artisan-related courses. Social protection was not being taken seriously, as shown on a Carte Blanche episode that a school in the Eastern Cape called Ikhwezi Lokusa Special School had been treating its disabled children in an unacceptable way.

She asked what happened after an assessment, because there was no use doing an assessment and not taking any action thereafter. She said that as a Member of Parliament, she was not aware of the Presidential Hotline, so their marketing needed to be improved and they needed to ensure that their systems were put in place to accommodate a large volume of calls coming in. She suggested that they create a Facebook page and use Messenger, because these platforms allowed people with no data bundles to engage, thus accommodating people in the deep rural areas.

It was disturbing to see how low the resolution rate for provinces and national departments was for this year. The ministers’ key performance indicators (KPIs) should be involved to improve the enforcement of recommendations. She suggested that the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) should standardise all stationery email signatures with links to the hotline. She was concerned that the Department missed the repeat callers when they gathered their data, and called for a better running of the hotline, as it would help with the governance of departments. She asked if there was an automatic response that reports that the complaints or queries had been received, and did it inform the caller whether there would be a response to their message after a certain period of time?

Mr K Pillay (ANC) appreciated the exceptional work done by the Department, especially with the monitoring. He asked if the Department had the capacity to keep up with the volume of work that they were doing, and what the staff complement was. What was the immediate intervention with the 10111 line, because there was little to no access to it? How effective had the frontline monitoring system been, and had they considered including customer satisfaction? He suggested that having some of the Committee Members in on some of the evaluations would be nice. He recommended that the hotline expand to the WhatsApp medium, and shared his concerns about the State Information Technology Agency (SITA), saying that the Committee should look into it.

Had the Department considered a national call centre that could be linked and channelled to different departments to filter and track information? He was concerned about the pilot of the hotline, as it had been planned for 2020, but they were now in 2023. Was there a standard operating procedure (SOP) stating how to deal with the turnaround strategies of the hotline, and could the emails not be dealt with remotely to avoid the backlogs? He wanted to know which issues were commonly submitted on the hotline, and suggested that a poster be sent to Members so that they could distribute them to their constituents to create awareness about the hotline.

Mr J McGluwa (DA) said that establishing this Committee was exciting to him, as it had been long overdue. There had been a record of late payments to SASSA beneficiaries lately, which was concerning because many people relied on the grants. There was also a record of drugs in a lot of rural schools. He asked if the Department could take the Committee through their role on oversights. He appreciated that there were unannounced visits to officials in the Department. He asked how often they conducted them and if it would be possible for the Department to submit a list of facilities that had been visited in the past.

He was interested to see what kind of remedial action had been taken in the past after these kinds of visits were made. He recalled the monitoring framework of the DPME, specifically addressing the recommendations of the Zondo Commission, some of which had been sent to the various government spheres to implement, and he was curious to see the outcomes. He asked what had happened to the ministers implicated in the report, and about the progress with monitoring in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) because there were people still living in the shelters provided after the floods. He noted that there had been a loss of about R50 billion to corruption, and requested a report of action taken against implicated persons so that the Committee would know a way forward from its side.

Mr V Zungula (ATM) asked how the Department had exposed its work to different portfolio committees to aid them in specific issues they may be dealing with, and if they could benefit from the Department.

Mr B Yabo (ANC) asked when the DPME envisaged the finalisation and facilitation of protocols that needed to be observed for them to engage with other departments, municipalities, and provinces. Since the Presidential Hotline was outsourced through SITA on a three-year contract, did SITA facilitate the contract as a middleman or not? He asked if all complaints get through the hotline without being filtered, and if the Khauleza app had been used countrywide since its launch in Limpopo in 2020.

Ms C Phiri (ANC) observed that there was a good story to tell about the responses from certain provinces, and asked what mechanisms the Department was going to put in place to ensure that other provinces that had not shown a response were performing well. She believed that there should be a system that would assist the underperforming provinces. She asked what was being done about improving service delivery and responding to calls from citizens, especially from the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the Department of Home Affairs. What was the Department planning to do to help the Post Office get back on its feet and render services to SASSA beneficiaries? She asked if the legislature was really sure that all South Africans were aware of the Presidential Hotline, and if there were any marketing strategies to create awareness.

Mr M Manyi (EFF) asked if there were any resolved issues that had been resolved through the hotline, and wanted to know about the performance evaluations of ministers and their deputies. He shared his concerns about implementing some programmes that had been announced since 2019, the performance management of ministers, and unsatisfactory meeting of targets.

The Chairperson raised an issue about the Department's lack of protocols and enforcement. He said the monitoring and oversight done by the DPME was an academic issue if there was no enforcement of their recommendations. He asked the Minister if there was a plan to introduce protocols and enforcement measures to their work. He asked where the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) would be in instances where Mr Nkuna, the Department's DG, would have to dirty his hands by assisting during disasters. He said that the telephone-based hotline was technologically behind, considering that society was focused on social media.

DPME's response

Mr Nkuna said that from the administrative side, there were agreements in place, and there were reports they were looking forward to in the early days of October that would allow the President to meet with the Ministers.

There had not been any investigation into vaccine overpricing, but they focused on ensuring that all Special Investigating Unit (SIU) recommendations had been implemented.

They were set to meet with the NSFAS in the next two weeks for a comprehensive assessment of what was happening there, because there were more issues besides the ones stated in the meeting.

 He welcomed the suggestion from Ms Graham-Mare about alternative ways to pay government beneficiaries. Even though this would cost more money, it was something that needed to be considered.

The Department was planning on going to municipalities to monitor how they had implemented the recommendations they had previously made to improve their management and service delivery. He said that the Department did not have the capacity needed to do the work they had under the previous Minister. They had been allocated a further 29 positions that were funded, but National Treasury had taken that money back.

He had had discussions with the Minister to see how they could repurpose the Department so that it could work with the resources they had. Some discussions were needed, even at the political level, including the Department of Communications. to bring some of the big service providers on board. The DPME attempted to do their own customer certification service, but there had not been any action recently because of constraints and their reliance on the GCIS.

He welcomed the point about allowing Committee Members to be involved in the monitoring. He noted that the President had established a National Anti-Corruption Advisory Council, chaired by Prof Firoz Cachalia. The DPME was responsible for the secretariat services of the Council, and they had met with the DGs of other departments to get their perspective on developing a plan for the Council. SIU recommendations had been directed to the National Prosecuting Authority, over which the Department did not have control , and some were directed to government. They found that there had not been any implementation of the recommendations in many cases.

He said there were portfolio committees that invited the Department for presentations, like the Appropriations Committee, but they were at the mercy of committees in the sense that they go only when invited. They had appeared before the ad hoc committee to address disaster issues, and they would work on exposing themselves more with the help of this Committee. He said that they issue guidelines to departments on how to approach strategic planning, and that when they got to KZN for monitoring, disaster management was in complete disarray. There was no coordination from the provincial and national government. When they got there, they had to institute a coordination mechanism and ask the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to come on board to create a template for reporting. He thought that COGTA had also been overwhelmed by the situation, and that the National Disaster Management Centre had no system for disaster management in any case. The reporting that was instituted was difficult for some of the departments, and a review of the national disaster management centre (NDMC) was necessitated because of the experience. They have been a part of the review to ensure that they would work as best as they could to avoid what had happened in the past.

He said the DPME would request the Minister and the President to relaunch the Presidential Hotline after the digitisation programme was finalised so that the hotline could be marketed. The provinces must shoulder the responsibility for using the platforms. They had to inform citizens about the hotline, but the current problem was that the marketing had been limited to only the DPME. He hoped that after the relaunch, all departments would be required to market the hotline.

The response and non-response to citizens was a performance issue, and they ensured that they included the responses in the key management areas of DGs. He was aware that some complaints may take time to resolve, but there must be at least an indication that some work was being done to resolve them. The modernisation of the hotline aimed to include the reading of the digital analytics so that it could read the messages itself, and report to the Department.

Mr Bleki said that they present the performance of provinces at the Public Liaison Officers’ Forum, and those that performed well share their best practices. The Department also goes to districts that have problems, and tries to resolve complaints with them by engaging with senior management.

He said that the marketing strategy was out there, and was at the level of being signed off. They were going to roll out the use of Facebook and Messenger between October and November. They had invited a private company to share insights on how they could improve the hotline and the Khauleza initiative. Standardisation was happening in places like the police station in Brooklyn, where the number had been advertised, but the GCIS had to work on ensuring that other public institutions advertised the hotline number.

There was an email that responded to citizens when they sent queries, but it was difficult to put turnaround times due to the different types of cases that were brought forward. The Khauleza App was designed to enable citizens without data bundles to lodge their complaints using a USSD code, so that people in deep rural areas could send in their queries. The pilot had to be looked at critically before rolling it out to avoid the problems they had encountered before.

The SITA Act tied the Department up -- the government could have been more creative and saved a lot of money had it not been for them. The turnaround times would be considered, and a breakdown of common queries would be sent to the Committee. The day-to-day issues reported on the hotline included accessing their identity documents (IDs) from Home Affairs, the Life Esidimeni issues, and the sewage spillage in the Vaal. All these issues were reported and resolved through the hotline by reporting to the relevant departments.

Ms Mmakgomo Tshatsinde, Deputy Director-General (DDG): Sector Monitoring, DPME, said that there had been several assessments done, especially for the municipalities. There had been challenges at the municipalities in the Western Cape, but there was information in place for the management practices and capabilities of the municipalities. There were implementation plans that they had suggested, and they were tracking them. They were in alliance with the National Treasury and COGTA. There were more interventions that they needed to put in place with municipalities, and they were looking to build their capacity in order to have in-depth assessments. They were also involved in helping collapsed municipalities, like some in North West, to improve service delivery.

Minister Ramokgopa thanked Members for all their inputs, and said that they were going to work hard to come up with scenarios that would answer deeper questions that may be asked, using the strategic planning of the Committee. She said that the performance agreements of the ministers had been established between her, the President and his Deputy, and they had agreed to report back on how effective it had been in a duration of six months after its establishment.

The Department had requested that they write to the President at least once a month about the issues they believed needed to be looked at so that he could take them up. They were waiting for the Cabinet to finalise a decision on their request, and once it was done, they would need the Committee to assist in passing the bill so that they could put some protocols and enforcements in place.

Since the Post Office was going through a business rescue process, SASSA was looking for other alternatives in order to be able to render better services to their clients, and in no time, an improvement would be seen. She was grateful for the comments and positivity that the presentations had received, as this provided an encouragement to work harder towards a better monitoring process.

She noted that the use of the word ‘institutionalisation’ took the meaning out of what she had meant before, and that performance management had been done before, but it was not yielding the fruits that the President would have wanted to see, hence the establishment of a new system. The implementation process was ongoing, and results would be recorded within a six-month period.

The Chairperson noted that the bill would be a priority of the Committee. From now on, it would drive enforcement from the Department’s side.

The meeting was adjourned.