Question NW2792 to the Minister of Public Service and Administration

Reply:

The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (1996) provides that public administration in South Africa must be governed by the democratic values [s1(a-d)] and principles enshrined in the Constitution [Chapter 2], including the principles outlined in Chapter 10 [s195(1)(a-i)], which includes the principle requiring that the efficient, economic and effective use of public resources must be promoted [s195(1)(b)].

It is therefore a constitutional imperative that the total public administration system of the Republic must be geared towards higher productivity.

To ensure that the Public Service is productive through promoting the efficient and effective functioning of the Public Service, the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) has:

• Regulated the measuring and monitoring of Public Service productivity through Regulation 29 of the Public Service Regulations (2016) which requires that: “An executive authority must assess the efficiency and effectiveness [i.e., the productivity] of a department in supporting that department’s service delivery objectives...”;
• Developed a Public Service Productivity Management Framework (2018) in support of Regulation 29. This Productivity Management Framework aims to: (a) define productivity in the context of the Public Service; (b) introduce a Public Service productivity measurement and monitoring instrument; and (3) encourage context-specific interventions to address identified blockages in the public administration system that weakens productivity.

The application of the Public Service productivity assessment tool is basic and uncomplicated in that the tool uses three (3) dimensions, namely Labour, Operations and Performance to isolate key factors in government departments that impacts directly on their productivity:

• Under the LABOUR dimension, the DPSA conducts an assessment and monitors the vacancy rate, skills development investment, absenteeism rate, and the costs of labour in relation to the programme expenditure of a department. This labour dimension shows the labour productivity of a department.
• Under OPERATIONS, the DPSA measures and monitors a department’s ICT investment and system-downtime, the efficacy of the physical workplace environment, and the implementation of regulated operational processes that includes compliance with set service standards, the accessibility of a department’s service charter, mapped business processes, standard operating procedures, and the Batho Pele principles and standards. This Operations dimension shows the operational productivity of a department.

• And under the PERFORMANCE dimension, the DPSA assesses and monitors citizen satisfaction, employee satisfaction, the distribution of performance rewards in a department, discipline and stress management, as well as the achievement of performance targets and overall budgetary performance. The performance dimension shows the performance efficiency and effectiveness of a department.

When the DPSA combines the assessment scores of the three (3) dimensions, this not only generates a comprehensive picture of a department’s overall productivity, it also allows the DPSA to identify those factors that weaken the total productivity of a department. These factors could – for example – relate to vacant, funded posts not being filled in time; or poor discipline management; or poor budgetary performance; or poor investment in skills development. Whatever the contributing factor or factors to poor productivity may be, the Public Service Productivity measurement instrument will identify these factors and department-specific interventions will be proposed to address the identified blockages to higher productivity.

To date, the DPSA has assessed the productivity of over forty (40) national and provincial government departments. As a result, sound recommendations have been made to ensure that these departments achieve their maximum productivity as mandated by the Constitution of South Africa, and as expected by the citizenry of the country.

The DPSA performs the above monitoring, continually in line with the objectives of the approved Public Service Productivity Management Framework.

End