Question NW3855 to the Minister in The Presidency for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation

Reply:

In keeping with the mandate of DPME, additional capacity is required to improve the country’s development planning system and implementation towards improving the country’s development outcomes. This includes modernising the planning system through improving capacity in areas of planning innovation, including macro-economic modelling, complex adaptive systems modelling, foresighting, scenario planning and futures thinking as well as using new technology such as Artificial Intelligence. Improving the planning system further requires experts in sector planning, including in new and emerging areas such as climate change, as well as the relevant policy analysts and researchers.

Additional institutional capacity will ensure that medium-term and short-term planning instruments address current weakness and gaps in the national planning system. This includes ensuring that planning instruments are inter-governmental in nature and are able to combine a sustained programmatic and predictable approach with a more flexible and agile approach, particularly in response to shocks and shifts in the environment and enhance the effectiveness of achieving developmental goals.

Additional professionals are also required to ensure the implementation of the National Spatial Development Framework (NSDF), to improve the spatialization of planning across spheres of government and state-owned enterprises and integrate of spatial planning in the overall planning system. This capacity will be essential in underpinning more effective spatial transformation in South Africa.