DPME & NYDA & Stats SA 2018/19 Annual Performance Plan

Meeting report

The NYDA

Mr Waseem Carrim, CEO of the Agency, took the Committee through the presentation. The agency had appointed a new CEO who would embark on the process of recruiting for the vacant positions of CFO and the Executive Director: Operations. The Agency had continued with fundraising efforts and had recently concluded agreements with the Free State and Limpopo Provincial Governments for the grant programme of R2 million each respectively. The Agency was currently undertaking consultations with young people on the Integrated Youth Development Strategy. Once completed the IYDS would provide a blueprint and all-encompassing youth development approach. It was proposed that it also placed the Agency at the forefront of the Monitoring and Evaluation of youth development in South Africa.

The agency sought to provide socio-economic empowerment for young people by increasing the number of youth-owned enterprises supported through the Grant programme to 920 for the 2020/21 financial year, increasing the number of jobs created and or sustained through supporting entrepreneurs and enterprises as well as establishing the NYDA Youth Fund.  The project plan for the fund would be developed and implemented in the 2018/19 financial year and the fund would be implemented in the 2020/21 financial year.

In terms of skills and education development, the objective was to facilitate and implement educational opportunities to improve the quality education attainment for the youth with the key performance indicator being the Solomon Mahlangu Scholarship Fund. The Agency would continue to support and monitor tertiary students. On universal access to young people, 25 service delivery channels would be operationalised for young people to access NYDA information in the current financial year and 26 in the next. The number of public and private key stakeholders lobbied to implement youth development programmes was targeted at 32 for the 2020/21 financial year, and 18 for the current financial year.

The agency aimed to engage young people in service activities geared towards fostering patriotism, social cohesion and nation-building. The key performance indicators were protocols, procedures and a coordination tool developed and implemented for national, provincial and local government. By 2019, the tool should have been developed for local and provincial government and by 2021 national government would be integrated. The Agency would facilitate the development of annual plans by government departments for 2019/2020 and register an increased number of National Youth Service Programme (NYS) projects.

The division of the budget per functional area was as follows for the 2018/19 financial year: economic participation - R73 853 745; education and skills development - R65 374 415, and for universal access to opportunities - R54 604 949.

The Agency employed 57% females and 43% males.  The NYDA was on track with the 4th quarter performance to reach 100% on expenditure. Most of the budget was spent when the interim audit was conducted. The auditor general had not found anything amiss,985 but that would be confirmed in the final report.

DELIBERATIONS

Mr M Khosa (ANC) thanked the agency for the presentation. He asked what the focus areas of youth-owned enterprises were. The agency planned to employ 400 people. How many had been employed in the previous years and were they permanent or temporary employees? Further, how did the Agency assist in finding employment and did it offer any assistance to matriculants regarding the choices they might have post-Grade 12?

Mr M Ntombela (ANC) stated that the NYDA needs to have more than two departments participating in order for it to be viable. Sasolburg was a more centralised town in the Free State in comparison to Parys and would make a suitable location for a district office. He asked about the geographic concentration of the activities for socio-economic empowerment for the youth.

Ms Z Dubazana (ANC) congratulated the agency for having increased its donor fund. She said that the agency should stop duplicating. When the decision to integrate NYDA, Stats SA and DPME was taken, it was to reduce the level of duplication within the entities.

Ms W Druchen (ANC) said that the entity had 391 staff but none of them were disabled. Did youth with disabilities receive the Solomon Mahlangu budget? Deaf people found it hard to enter university. Did the NYDA assist with that? Sign language interpreters needed more training so the NYDA should work with deafSA because the NYDA was not the agency to employ deaf interpreters. Deaf people should get training and work in organisations for the disabled and not have interpreters take their jobs. Most deaf teachers were not even trained for their jobs and that had to be considered. On funding, she asked whether donors funded specific areas or general funds?

Ms Z Jongbloed (DA) noted that the draft framework for integrated youth development had been approved and asked what the next step was. Did the agency track dropouts on tertiary level and how was the grant programme different from the youth fund?

The Chairperson asked what the difference was between the two funds and who the beneficiaries were. She said that the focus should not only be on the deaf, but on all disabled people. She asked what the Department was doing about what was currently happening at the Durban University of Technology.

Mr Waseem answered that the focus areas for business start-ups were vast, but a large portion of the budget went towards areas identified as priorities. There were four staff members with disabilities, making up about 1% of employees, but the agency would work towards reaching the 2% mark.

On donor funding, he said some donors funded specific areas while others funded general areas. It depended on the contractor. The agency would start tracking dropouts at tertiary level. The agency worked closely with StatsSA to obtain information but did not conduct its own research.

Statistics SA

Mr Risenga Maluleka, Statistician General of the Department, presented the Annual Performance Plan. Legislative reform was a work-in-progress. The Department had obtained a clean audit for 2016/17 with no material findings. The Audit mitigation plan has been compiled for 2017/18 and was being monitored monthly. Abuse of sick leave was a work-in-progress and the average days’ sick leave per employee remained below 12 days per annum. An educational programme on sick leave had been rolled out in 2017. In the Budget Review and Recommendations Report, the Committee had raised its concerns on the budget.

StatsSA measured health, poverty, access to water, population rates, labor, access to transport and electricity to name a few in society.  Economically it measures manufacturing, GDP, employment, mining, prices and the likes. Collective leadership involved a strategic analysis of internal and external situations, work force analysis and financial analysis. Strategic formulation involved reviewing strategic outcomes and objects.

Demand has been identified as a risk because there was an increase in the demand for statistical information in the national, continental and global arena. There had been severe budget cuts and warm bodies were not affordable. IEC and LCS are not fully funded and poverty would be impacted.  The declining skills base had resulted in critical vacancies not being filled. Stats SA had a current staff of only 104 people who were overworked and prone to committing errors. Basic statistics were at risk and the quality was declining.

DELIBERATIONS

Ms Druchen stated that the presentation does not say anything about Parliament yet Act 6 of 1999 mentioned Parliament. Did the 170 employees who had left do so because of budget cuts?

Mr Motau (DA) said that the presentation was disturbing. How did the Department lose over 100 employees with critical skills and not have a contingency strategy in place? What was the Department doing about severance packages? When workers were overworked, they were prone to making mistakes so something had to be done to curb the staffing crisis. Collective leadership was problematic because it made it easier for people to abdicate their duties and no one would want to take responsibility.

Ms Jongbloed asked whether the digitalisation and re-skilling of staff process had started. The loss of technical staff was concerning because staff played an important role in the task of the Department.

Mr Y Cassim (DA) asked how costly the digitization process was. On the re-prioritisation process, was it possible to have an analysis of non-critical reports and the risks thereof?

Mr Khosa asked whether the Department was in a good position to produce good products when people were overworked. Under which category was the staff who had left and had any of them been replaced? Did the Department have an effective retention strategy and how many jobseekers were there?

Mr Ntombela commended the Department on its involvement on international affairs and asked what the financial implication of that involvement was.

Ms Dubazana said that when the Department looked at the Amendment of Act 6, it should pay special attention to the census clause. On human capital, he suggested that the SG should prioritise training.

The Chairperson said that in the interest of time elaborate questions would be answered in writing.

Mr Maluleka said that the Department had not been able to fill positions from October 2016 and the only position that had been filled was that of the SG.

The digitalisation process would cost a lot of money but it would help with data for generations to come. No country could skip an industrial revolution. If it did, it would encounter many problems. South Africa was behind by two revolutions and was trying to catch up.

 

The DPME

Ms Mpumi Mpofu, the Director General of the Department, took the Committee through the presentation. The DPME`s mandate was to undertake national planning, monitoring and evaluation focusing on the implementation of the National Development Plan (NDP) in government and in the rest of society.

The key purpose of DPME was to ensure the implementation of the development goals and objectives of government as embodied in the NDP through effective and dynamic planning, monitoring, evaluation and implementation support. Strategic roles to achieve that purpose included coordinating the setting of the strategic agenda of government, based on the NDP, the SDGs and Agenda 2063, and its expression in government plans, leveraging the budget process to achieve strategic agenda across the spheres of government, coordinating strategic sector-specific interventions. The aim was to ensure attainment of specific priorities, monitoring, evaluating and reporting on the achievement of the strategic agenda.

The DPME sought to address the lack of long-term planning and sustained focus, the culture of doing things the way they had always been done, as opposed to a culture of continuous improvement. It wished to address the practice  of focussing on activities without assessing the results or impact of the activities,  insufficient measurement or collection and analysis of data to inform improvements. Other issues included monitoring and reporting for mere compliance rather than for improvement, poor programme planning, weaknesses in setting of indicators and targets and weak logic models/theories of change. Challenges also included weaknesses with design of data measurement and collection processes, a lack of re-engineering of plans and business processes based on analysis of data, and evidence-based planning and decision making. Those processes were not sufficiently valued.

The DPME had three functional areas:

-the planning area which coordinated macro and transversal long term, short- and medium-term plans planning across departments and spheres of government;

-the monitoring area that monitored the implementation of the NDP 2030, MTSF, Nine-point Plan and SONA commitments, and

-the evaluation area that evaluated the impact of government programmes and generated evidence for PM&E by asking why programmes worked or did not work.

The key highlights for planning was that the DPME had initiated the development of the PM&E Bill.  It had developed a Budget Prioritization Paper, and the process to develop a Budget Mandate Paper for 2019/20 was underway and would be finalised in April 2018. In respect of monitoring, DPME had completed and published a Midterm Review of Progress towards the NDP 2030 during the Fifth Administration and had initiated the review of the POA Reporting System. 67 evaluations had been completed or were underway, including eight evaluations planned for 2018/19.

The key challenge for administration was the vacancy rate because of the revised organizational structure. The current structure had 430 funded posts of which 347 posts were currently filled. 83 posts were vacant, and the vacancy rate was at 19%. The current focus was to intensify the implementation of the revised organisational structure to create capacity to implement its programmes and implement a change management process to enhance efficiency, effectiveness and accountability.

The key challenge for National Planning was that the planning processes did not always lead to better plans, greater policy coherence and clear articulation of long term goals and aspirations.  The focus was on improving government planning and coordination by developing PM&E legislation and a framework for the revision of the Medium-Term Strategic Plan (MTSP) 2019-2025. The Department was also working on

-a review of planning cycles, institutional arrangements and structures for government;

-development of guidelines for Draft 5-year NDP Departmental and Sectoral Implementation Plans;

-collaboration with the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform (DRDLR) to finalise the transfer of the spatial planning function to the DPME;

-developing a Budget Prioritisation Framework and budget priorities for 2019/20 to align the allocation of financial resources to government national strategic priorities;

-assessment of Strategic and Annual Performance Plans of departments to ensure alignment with the priorities of the NDP/MTSF, and

-conducting socio economic impact assessments on new proposed legislation and policies to ensure alignment with the NDP and mitigate against unintended consequences.

 

The main challenges with frontline monitoring were

-monitoring systems that were not configured to identify early warning signs, e.g. Community issues,

-unintended consequences of policy implementation,

-monitoring reports that do not always provide useful and relevant information,

-uncoordinated duplication of programmes leading to reporting fatigue and weak partnerships with other institutions.

 

The plan was to focus on the performance and effectiveness of State-Owned Enterprises, conduct on-site monitoring, build partnership platforms and strengthen stakeholder engagements, build monitoring capacity for sustainability within communities, capitalize on technology innovations for data collection and feedback.

 

DELIBERATIONS

Mr Motau asked about the review of departments, what was the most urgent matter that needed to be dealt with. What could be done to deal with the lack of skills and competencies?

Ms Druchen commented on front line monitoring at Home affairs. There had been complaints in Western Cape about security guards counting the number of people to be serviced per day regardless of how many people were in line or how early they had arrived. What was DPME doing about it and why was it happening?

Ms Jongbloed said that she had had a similar experience at Home Affairs. Further, there was often one person serving at the payment counter when there was a long line of people waiting. What was being done about the 19% vacancy rate?

Ms Dubazana congratulated the DPME and commented that monitoring should not be done only after five years; there should be interim evaluations every year to ensure that the Department was on par with its mandate.

Mr Khosa asked who the stakeholders were for Programme four implementation forums, how often they met up and who the facilitators were at those meetings. On expenditure, 23% is of the budget was used on consultants. Who were these consultants and why was so much money spent on them?

The Chairperson stated that she was happy that the Department took heed of the Committee’s recommendations. On SOE’s, what criteria would the Department be using? Who was the intended audience at the izimbizos? What was the difference between the information hub and the depository hub?

Ms Mpumi answered the question on the review of officials. Before the end of the year, the Department would get cabinet recommendations. The programme would be completed over two phases. Officials had to be reviewed to ascertain that they were doing their jobs. Some officials are under-performing, and it begged the question of whether they were entitled to privileges, such as getting private assistants.

The Home Affairs crisis was not only in the Western Cape. Gauteng was also faced with that crisis. The challenge was compensation of employees because they were swamped with work and there were only a few people working, so they regulated the queue outside. On the vacancy rate, the problem was with internal recruiting as it did not reduce the vacancy rate. The most suitable candidates were often the ones already working in the Department so when they were assigned to new positions, their old positions remained vacant.

The PSC

Dr Dovhani Mamphiswana, the acting Director General of the PSC, presented the Annual Performance Plan to the Committee. The Department aimed to make a positive impact on the attainment of an efficient, economic, effective and development-oriented public service.  The goal was to be people-centered, value-driven and be a capable and professional public service to ensure the optimal use of resources. The PSC sought to strengthen institutional capacity and that entailed being an independent, impartial and knowledge-based institution that promoted a development-oriented public service.

Expenditure trends showed that the PSC’s budget was R 264.4 million for the 2018/19 financial year.  R202.7 million was allocated to compensation of employees and R55.8 million to goods and services. The PSC was a knowledge-based institution and did not outsource its work. As a result, most of the budget was allocated to compensation of employees.  That had created an imbalance in the budget in the sense that an average of about 75% was allocated to compensation of employees and 23% to goods and services. Out of the amounted allocated to goods and services, mandatory and operational costs took up 97% of the budget, leaving only 3% for the implementation of the mandate of the Department.  With the remaining amount, the Department would not be able to execute its mandate effectively. That was a result of budget shortfalls in the baseline allocations and budget cuts that had been implemented by the National Treasury.

The Department had advised the DPME and National Treasury that the APP was premised on the fact that it would not be able to pay for basic operations such as travel, inspections, advertisement of vacancies, maintaining the current ICT system and other operations.

For Programme One the Department had been given an unqualified audit report. 100% of valid invoices had been paid within 30 days of receipt.  One risk management report had been produced quarterly.

80% of employee grievances on salary levels two to twelve were finalized within 30 days from date of receipt of all relevant information during the fourth quarter. 80% of grievances of SMS members were finalized within 45 working days from date of receipt of all relevant information in the fourth quarter.

In order to comply with legislative requirements, including the Constitutional right to fair labour practices and administrative action, grievance investigations required interviews with affected and interested parties so as to ensure that they were heard. Due to financial constraints, the PSC would only conduct desk-top audits ofinformation provided by departments and affected parties.

In Programme Four, one fact sheet on financial misconduct was produced during the third quarter.  85% of NACH cases were referred within seven days of receipt of case reports.

 

DELIBERATIONS

Mr Khosa stated that the Department had utilized most of its budget so there was very little that could have been achieved with the remaining amount. What were the requirements for the appointment of CEO’s in hospitals because some hospitals had juniors or people with no medical background as CEO’s. How would the budget cuts affect the Department?

Mr Ntombela asked about the status of outsourced workers.

Ms Dubazana asked why the Department blamed National Treasury for budget cuts because if it were to provide National Treasury with empirical evidence that the Department needed the money, Treasury would provide the money.

Ms Druchen asked about the number of staff at the PSC. Were there vacancies and were there are any staff with disabilities?

Mr Motau said that something should be done about the bankruptcy of the Department.

Ms Jongbloed asked whether the Department would be able to fulfil its mandate without doing inspections. What was the status of the wage negotiations?

Mr Ntombela asked which items had been shelved and not dealt with.

The Chairperson said that the PSC should be disbanded. The Committee kept asking the same questions but saw no improvement.

On the issue of hospital appointments, Dr Mamphiswana stated that various Departments required both generic skills and specific qualifications. The Department of Health process of deciding the skills it needed was quite advanced. By the following Tuesday the Committee would get a detailed report of answers to the questions.

The NSG

Professor Richard Levin, Principal at the NSG, presented the Annual Performance Plan for the NSG. The NSG had convened a strategic planning workshop on 5-6 December 2017 which had focused on building and positioning the NSG brand, strengthening the NSG core business and making the NSG an employer of choice. The NSG had also taken cognisance of the resolutions of the national conference and lekgotla of the ruling party, which had called for the NSG to play a central coordinating role in capacitating employees in all spheres of government and to provide support for talent management across the spheres of government. NSG was also to provide guidance for appointments, succession planning and career development.

The Rutanang Ma Africa campaign aimed at creating a pool of committed, motivated, qualified retired and serving public servants, as well as reputable private providers and HEIs, to work with the NSG to achieve its mandate and its training targets. Three-year contracts would be signed, e.g. induction or curriculum development, a database created of individuals and organisations that could be used in future and a pool of eminent persons/ guest lecturers who could be approached by the NSG from time to time. Contracts would be signed. Areas to be covered would be thought leadership, curriculum and programme design. In the previous financial year, the NSG had received 667 applications from individuals and 143 from organisations. Engagements were being undertaken with the DPSA to align the policy of releasing public servant trainers to Rutanang Ma Africa.

 

DELIBERATIONS

Ms Dubazana thanked the Department for the presentation and asked why it had spent so much money on legal fees. Travelling and outsourcing costs should be monitored and possibly reduced.

Mr Ntombela asked whether there had been a public participation programme and, if so, what the response was.

Mr Khosa asked whether the Department was planning to partner with BRIC countries and the financial implications thereof.

Ms Jongbloed asked whether the Department planned on being a high-performance center and if so, what was it benchmarking itself against.

Mr Motau said that the Department had promised to ensure that the new discipline of Batho Pele was instilled in all public servants.  Was something being done and how was it being done?

The Chairperson said that the departments were not responding positively to sign language and asked whether the Department had received a request from departments to teach people sign language. She also asked how the Department was helping Home Affairs to solve its problem

 Response

The NSG had a proposal for Home Affairs. It might take some years to implement and participation from Home Affairs was crucial. The Department could look at the possibility of training that Committee on sign language. The NSG benchmarked itself against international entities.

The CPSI

Mr Pierre Schoonraad, Chief Director: Research and Development at the CPSI, made the presentation on behalf of CPSI as he was acting in the place of Ms Thuli Radebe who was Acting Director-General at DPSA.

He acknowledged that the Committee understood the mandate of the CPSI and spoke about the 4th Quarter achievements. Two targets had not been attained because of funding difficulties. The main project that could not be completed was a wonderful facility at Alexander Mall which enabled patients to access medication. CPSI would work with the funders in the hope that funds could be made available to complete the project.

CPSI partnered with various sectors, including Health, Safety and Security, and Governance and Administration to deliver on MTSF and National Development Plan targets by collaborating with service delivery departments on the development of prototypes, mapping and revamping of innovative processes and models to innovatively address identified service delivery challenges in line with government’s priorities. It facilitated the replication of identified innovations and inculcated the culture of innovation through various knowledge-sharing programmes and platforms.

Working closely with Departments, CPSI found that a major challenge was getting approvals from all the relevant authorities in a timeous manner. He could report very positively on the schools project which was complete and being monitored. There had been zero theft of IT equipment and responses to the alarms at schools was an average seven minutes. 750 officials in various departments had been capacitated by CPSI. The hospital-based initiative had started showing positive results. The South African Public Sector Innovation Journal had been published and CPSI had participated in two SADC innovation programmes.

Not all funds had been spent in the quarter owing to the leadership instability in the last quarter of the financial year. No personnel had been appointed.

In 2018/19, one of the major cost drivers would be the engagement with departments. The main target for Programme 1 was an unqualified audit. In Programme 2, CPSI would streamline reporting and deliver on two major projects.  The funding model was to being devised so that CPSI could support departments that were doing innovative work. One project would be ensuring that patients received the right level of care at the right time. A dashboard system was being developed for Home Affairs for managers to be able to monitor activities of the Department in real time. CPSI was working with departments that had employed IT developers and saved millions of Rand by developing IT systems in-house to find a way of sharing that expertise. None of the IT coordinating bodies were achieving the intended outcomes and CPSI was working with SITA on a functional body to coordinate IT across government departments. CPSI had begun the hand-over as the Minister was very keen for that to be done.

The budget for 2018/19 was R36 million and it went up to R40 million in the outer years.

DELIBERATIONS

Mr Khosa asked for clarity on what it meant to have zero theft.

Mr Ntombela asked how often the identification of innovative projects occurred. How did one identify the inefficiency of a particular system?

Ms Druchen noted that the Home Affairs system had been fluctuating and asked what the Department was doing to assist Home Affairs. She asked whether the Committee had seen what the pocket guide looked like.

The Chairperson asked whether the frozen projects had been re-commenced. Were innovative employees rewarded?

Response

Mr Schoonraad said that the IT solution has been tested in 23 schools and in those 23 schools there had been no theft of IT equipment and that had been used as a benchmark.

The Department had refined its targets in respect of regularity of projects. There had been some involvement with the Department of Home Affairs. Currently management in the Department did not know what was happening in the Home Affairs offices. Therefore, CPSI was working on giving Home Affairs a system that operated on a real-time basis that would allow it to see what was happening at Home Affairs as it was happening and where it was happening.

The pocket guide was available on the website. In respect of trailblazers, there was legislation in place that allowed departments to reward innovative employees.

The DPSA

Ms Thuli Radebe, Acting Director-General took the Committee through the presentation.

For the 2018/19 financial year, the Department had 40 annual targets, which were further broken down into quarterly targets. Of the 40 annual targets, 17 (43%) of the targets were from the 2014 – 2019 Medium Term Strategic Framework. The overall achievement against the 2018/19 annual targets would be reported in the 2018/19 Annual Report of the Department.

The purpose of the Administration Programme was to provide strategic leadership, management and support services to the Department, and coordinate the department’s international relations. The submission of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd  Quarter Interim Financial Statements and the Annual Financial Statements to National Treasury had been complied with. Two bi-annual reports on the compliance with the BBBEE status level of had been submitted to the CFO. Four quarterly progress reports on the implementation of the Internal Audit and Risk management plans had been submitted to the Audit and Risk Committees.

For Programme 4, the annual report on support provided to departments to implement the graduate recruitment scheme framework had been submitted to the Director-General. The annual report on the appointment of persons into developmental programmes within the Public Service had been submitted to the DG and four quarterly reports on the average number of days taken to resolve disciplinary cases by national and provincial departments had been submitted to the Director-General.

The budget allocation for the 2018/19 financial year showed that 26% was allocated to administration, 28% to the public service commission, 3% to policy development, 9% to public service employment, 18% to the NSG, service delivery and governance of public administration both have 5%, government CIO was allocated 2%.

DELIBERATIONS

Ms Druchen said that she needed clarity on whether the 40 annual targets fell outside the 2014/19 period.

Ms Dubazana asked that the CFO email the details of the budget because it showed that there are transfers but did not give a detailed account of where the money was going. She said that Ms Radebe might not have the answer but the CFO should email the details. She mentioned that Programme 6 showed that there had been a transfer but there was no indication of where the money was transferred to.

Mr Khosa noted that certain posts had been frozen. Which ones were they and was the Department going to review its organogram? On the housing project, what were some of the challenges and how were they going to be resolved?

Mr Ntombela said that projects about integration of PERSAL and IMFs had been pending and a lot of money had been spent on it. What were the conditions to keep the programme going?

Ms Jongbloed asked what the Department was doing to prevent government employees from doing business with the departments despite regulations preventing it. That question was directed to the DDG’s.

The Chairperson asked for a breakdown of the budget on consultancy. The Department had to focus on middle management as well because politicians were not the only officials who were corrupt. What were the implications of the Steinhoff issue on public servants? Furthermore, the Department hads to stop restructuring and build on the existing structure. If the Department kept restructuring nothing would be achieved.

Response

The Acting DG stated that, in respect of frozen posts, there were vacancies but the challenge was the compensation budget, so those vacancies would not be filled. The vacancies were for both senior management positions and below. That did not mean that the Department had savings.  The money was there because those posts had not been filled. The Department has not been restructured since 2013 but a restructuring process had started. The Department has been using the same structure for five years.

On the housing scheme, the constraint was money and the National Treasury had been unable to provide the money. The project was ongoing.

The Chairperson said that the responses to the elaborate questions should be sent to her by Tuesday the following week.

Meeting was adjourned.