SA Management and Development Institute Strategy and Budget: briefing

Meeting report

PUBLIC SERVICE AND ADMINISTRATION PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE
4 March 2005
SA MANAGEMENT AND DEVELOPMENT INSTITUTE STRATEGY AND BUDGET: BRIEFING

Chairperson: Mr J Gomomo (ANC)

Documents handed out:
SA Management and Development Institute briefing: Strategic Priorities and Budget

SUMMARY
The SA Management and Development Institute (SAMDI) presented their strategic priorities and budget, and explained how they had decided on these priorities. They also outlined how SAMDI’s priorities were derived from the Government’s priorities, reported on programme progress, identified their medium-term objectives, detailed their intermediate projects, and examined their budget.

MINUTES

SA Management and Development Institute briefing
Mr B Soobrayan (SAMDI Director-General) described SAMDI’s role and mandate, as determined by the Cabinet and relevant legislation. SAMDI had the central role of developing the capability of the state and it was the key player in facilitating and improving the efficiency of government.

Mr Soobrayan pointed out that the capacity of the state needed improved management and human resource management was poor. He added that professionals were judged on the basis of the results of their actions and this results-based approach needed to be applied to those in the Government. Programmes had been introduced that sought to improve management at both the junior and senior levels. SAMDI had also enthusiastically encouraged human resource development.

SAMDI had created a balanced scorecard made up of four parts, which would be able to measure the efficiency of Governmental Departments. The first part of the scorecard was service delivery, which simply referred to how many people had actually received the service that the government had attempted to provide. Secondly, the scorecard checked to see if the organisation had the framework necessary to perform its intended function. Thirdly, it determined if the organisation had the necessary people to carry out its function. Lastly, the scorecard ensured that the organisation had a system of financial management that was in synchronicity with the results of the implementation of the first three parts of the scorecard.

The scorecard dealt with the specific changes to an organisation, but Mr Soobrayan emphasised that they did not want to lose sight of the fact that the organisation’s activities must result in the specific Government objectives that it was meant to accomplish. He stated that the key pillar of SAMDI’s strategy was to "offer a full solution." To do this, SAMDI would examine whatever challenges were in the department and then provide the relevant training to address the department’s specific needs. It was his belief that if you prioritised training and ensured that the training was relevant to the problems that existed, then the training would be successful. He added that if the need arose, SAMDI was even willing, with the help of strategic partners, to change a department’s fundamental structure.

Mr Soobrayan explained the current progress of SAMDI. He pointed out that SAMDI’s Turn-Around course was beyond the point when it could be turned back or stopped, but it was on course and had built momentum. There had been marked improvement in the functioning of SAMDI, but he conceded that there was still a need to align the structure with their new vision of SAMDI. As confidence in SAMDI increased, the number of people who took their courses would also increase which would in turn increase SAMDI’s finances. SAMDI was also now driven by the client’s needs, and that made them able to deliver the relevant training and development intervention. Thus, SAMDI had made progress in increasing their own efficiency, which would allow them to be of more service to Government Departments.

Their training statistics showed that they had met 67% of their target and that they were progressing toward 100% of their target. They also wanted to ensure that each of the provinces received an amount of training relative to its size. The provinces had the final say on how and where to send the training and money that SAMDI provided.

Mr Soobrayan said that at some point the Committee must take up the issue of whether SAMDI should move from cost-recovery to a mixed arrangement. However the cost-recovery structure was beneficial in that it prevented SAMDI from becoming complacent.

SAMDI’s medium objectives were to deliver high quality and relevant skills to departments from all three spheres of government. They intended to have every civil servant understand his/her role in government. It was their intention to increase the number of trained managers in Government Departments. They also wanted to strengthen the capacity of SAMDI.

He added that they needed to get the right people into the civil service, and that the people working for the Government deserved the very best training. Some of the best teachers for these training courses were people already working in Government. Therefore, SAMDI was pulling people already involved in the civil service and training them to be teachers. Once they had taught these people how to teach and accredited them, they would serve as instructors in SAMDI courses. But SAMDI did not want to take these new teachers out of their jobs since it was their experience in Government work that made them ideal teachers.

SAMDI wanted to build a mentality of life-long learning through SAMDI courses. Even people within SAMDI itself had to continually seek training so as to improve themselves and their job performance. Their last medium-term objective was to ensure that SAMDI was both cost-effective and sustainable.

Mr Soobrayan said that in moving forward, the important thing was not SAMDI’s ideas, but the fact that these ideas could be implemented because SAMDI was working with the government. Improved efficiency in Government spending would increase the effectiveness of Government programmes and even increase the Gross Domestic Product.

SAMDI supported development work in NEPAD (New Economic Partnership for Africa’s Development) and the African Union, specifically programmes that focused on managerial development. Even though they struggled to pay for it, SAMDI had sent people to the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Sudan, and other nations to aid in efforts of development.

SAMDI’s revenue was improving as course participation increased. So even though their budget was small, revenue had been increasing each year. And that meant more money was available for capacity building and training. SAMDI’s trading revenue had also gone up. Their goal was to increase turnover to R100 million because at that size they would be able to fully actualise their mandate. Mr Soorbrayan concluded that SAMDI was currently on track for that success.

Discussion
Mr B Mthembu (ANC) recommended that they look at training in a much broader sense. People might be technically competent but may not have been trained in public service. However, good managers needed to be both technically and politically competent. Therefore, they needed political managers because one cannot be neutral in public service. He said that public servants needed to be able to persuade others and have the ability to reach compromises; and these skills had to be put to use in order to meet the political objectives that had been set forth.

Mr M Sikakane (ANC) asked how SAMDI would succeed in becoming strategic partners with the Departments, and how they would be able to get into a Department and figure out what the problems that needed to be addressed were.

Ms H Mgabadeli (ANC) questioned if SAMDI was taking an approach that was too broad. She asked how many trainers SAMDI currently had and asked for examples of individuals that had been trained and successfully incorporated into civil service.

Mr Soobrayan agreed that it was important for government workers to be both technically and politically competent. He added that any workplace contained a level of politics. But public servants make political decisions every day and the public had to come to terms with that. The public service was neutral in that it must be able to adapt to the party that is in power and that party’s mandate. Therefore, public service was not a mouthpiece of the Government, but it did have to carry out their mandate.

He added that a lot of work required on-the-job training, but they could not allow that to result in a lag in productivity. It was necessary to train people, but they needed to deploy workers in a manner that did not stunt productivity. They needed to avoid having people sitting around trying to learn while Government projects, like building schools, fall by the wayside.

He said that SAMDI sent people into the Departments in order to help build those strategic partnerships. They established what the Department’s plan and mandate was and then figured out what would be needed for those goals to be met. SAMDI would then develop specific training to meet the needs of that particular department. Obviously the key was to ensure that they knew as much as possible about the Department and this was best achieved by gathering information from within the Department.

He admitted that it was tough to balance SAMDI’s small budget and their broad goals. But it was important to help in human resource development throughout the continent. SAMDI currently has 30 full-time trainers, but they had many associates that were capable of training and they intended to draw the bulk of their trainers from within the client Department from related areas of the public sector. He emphasised that it was important for their trainers to both work and teach, and compared this strategy to that of a Medical School, in which the teachers are required to continue practising medicine. He added that all senior managers go through vetting so that they could ensure that the right people were sent to the right places.

Mr E Gcwabaza (ANC) asked if SAMDI was playing a role with technical schools and universities, and if not, should SAMDI consider that sort of collaboration with institutes of higher education?

Mr S Simmons (NNP) asked which Departments had approached SAMDI for help, which Departments did they think had problems, and could the Committee assist them in these tasks.

Ms H Mgabadeli spoke about the problem of bringing in service providers that did not speak the language of the people with whom they dealt. These people came into a region with the mentality that the people they were training and the area they were in "were like a desert". This view was not conducive to successful training and impeded the empowerment of the people being trained.

Mr Soobrayan said that SAMDI was not currently playing a role with colleges and universities, and this was mainly due to the fact that the Institute was not competent enough to do so. That sort of interaction would result in SAMDI being swallowed up by the Department of Education because SAMDI was about 50 times smaller than the Department of Education. However, SAMDI did use institutes of higher education for research on occasion, and this represented the type of strategic interaction that SAMDI desired.

SAMDI was trying to establish its credibility. Therefore, they took the matter of sending the right teachers to the right places very seriously. Once SAMDI had sent a teacher to an area where he was unfamiliar and unprepared for the students that he would be facing. Ultimately, the teacher angered the students who then walked out of the classroom. Obviously, this was unproductive so SAMDI made sure that teachers understood the language and culture of the students they would be teaching, and sometimes these teachers would be accompanied by locals that facilitated this understanding.

The meeting was adjourned.