Chairperson, hon Minister Collins Chabane, Deputy Ministers present, chairperson and members of the Standing Committee on Appropriations, hon members, esteemed guests, comrades and friends, and ladies and gentlemen, I have flu, so I hope I will be able to get through this.
In 2009, in response to the call for a more responsive and interactive government, President Jacob Zuma established the Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation, DPME. Since then the department has been implementing a number of monitoring initiatives, and the Minister has already referred to some of those initiatives.
Amongst the initiatives was the Presidential Hotline. The Presidential Hotline provides a platform for citizens to voice their complaints about the quality of services they receive from government. The Presidential Hotline is now three and a half years old. In its short period of existence, it has proven to be a valuable monitoring tool for citizens and government.
From its inception in October 2009 to 31 March 2013 the Presidential Hotline received a total of 160 914 cases. The case resolution rate is now at 90%, and I think Gen Bantu Holomisa has just confirmed that. This is encouraging, given that the Presidential Hotline started with a case resolution rate of just 39% in November 2009. Over the last year we have been working intensively with targeted departments and provinces to improve their responsiveness as government to hotline cases. As a result, the case resolution rate of the provinces has also improved, from 50% to 71%. Our work with provinces and national departments to improve their responsiveness to complaints will continue this year. The co-operation from both national departments and provinces has been encouraging, and it indicates that departments are beginning to understand the importance of being responsive to citizens. I agree with you, hon Holomisa, that the more we see fewer protests, the more it means government is functioning. We have to really work harder on that particular issue.
The visibility and profile of the Presidential Hotline is being improved. We are sending regular reports on case resolutions to the Forum of South African Directors-General, the Presidential Infrastructure Co-ordinating Commission, and Cabinet to ensure that departments take responsibility for putting our people first - Batho Pele, as we say.
In the context of the Presidential Hotline, "case resolution" means that a citizen has been contacted and has been given a response to his or her query or complaint. This does not always mean that the response we provide to a complaint will satisfy the caller. Some cases involve difficult and complex issues and are difficult to resolve quickly. However, in such cases the least that we can do is to assure the citizen that he or she has been heard and that we are working with the relevant departments to ensure that the issues are addressed.
The quality of complaints resolution is as important as the number of complaints resolved. We have started working with departments to ensure that, in addition to complaints being addressed quickly, citizens are also satisfied with the way in which their cases are resolved.
In this regard, since October 2012, we have been conducting interviews with citizens who logged cases on the hotline in order to gauge their level of satisfaction with the hotline services. Between October and December 2012 we called 3 211 citizens and asked them if they were satisfied or not satisfied with the services. Chair, 64% of the respondents that we called said they were very satisfied, whereas 34% rated the service they had received as poor. That is a concern that we will be dealing with. These surveys will now be ongoing and we will use the information to help us focus on those departments and municipalities which need assistance in improving the quality of their case resolution.
There are good stories to be told about the help that citizens receive through the intervention of the hotline. Let me mention just a few. Mr Vuyani Kholiwe from the Eastern Cape called to seek for assistance from the hotline after trying unsuccessfully to apply for a foster care grant for his nephew. The matter was referred by the hotline to the Office of the Premier in the Eastern Cape for investigation. Social workers made an assessment and assisted Mr Kholiwe. In January 2013 the grant was approved and the child is now attending a local preschool. [Applause.]
Another example is that of Mr George Mogale from North West. Mr Mogale reported that he could not register his new marriage, since his divorce application had not been processed by the Rustenburg Magistrate's Court. Through the intervention of the Presidential Hotline his case was resolved on 21 January 2013, and Mr Mogale is now married again! [Laughter.]
Mr Anele Dyongman called to indicate that in 2010 and 2011 he had received financial aid from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme, NSFAS, but in 2012 his fees were not paid, despite funding confirmation from NSFAS. With help from the Department of Higher Education and Training the student was able to be funded from the discretionary fund of the department to cover his registration fees, textbooks and accommodation for 2013, and the student is in school.
Ms Priscilla Mvuembe called the Presidential Hotline on 25 January 2013, reporting that she had applied for her child's unabridged birth certificate on 18 April 2012 but had still not received it. The births unit finalised the unabridged birth certificate on 28 January 2013.
There are quite a number of other examples that we could use to illustrate this and, if you ask the citizens about the services, they will say that they are satisfied. Then, obviously, there will be a few that say that they are not yet satisfied. However, we think we are on the right course.
Hon members, as mentioned in our budget speech last year, we are continuing with our programme of on-site monitoring of frontline service delivery, which we are implementing jointly with all nine offices of the premiers. I want to take this opportunity to thank all the offices of the premiers for the leadership that they have shown in their support for this important monitoring initiative.
I am pleased to announce that last year we monitored 215 frontline facilities, including 23 SA Social Security Agency, Sassa, facilities, 30 police stations, 37 schools, 51 health facilities, 19 courts, 14 driver's licence testing centres, 22 municipality customer care centres and 19 Home Affairs offices. As we said, the mandate is too broad and we can only go as far as we can, but we will continuously engage in this and ensure that we do monitoring and evaluation.
This brings the total of facilities we have monitored since the inception of the programme in June 2011 to 350. This type of hands-on monitoring at the coalface of service delivery is very important for government to gain insight into how citizens are experiencing service delivery in these cases. During these visits, a score card is produced and an improvement plan is agreed up on.
I want to take this opportunity to thank the departments responsible for these functions for the enthusiastic manner in which they have embraced the programme and for taking the findings very, very seriously.
Government will use the information gathered through the Frontline Service Delivery Monitoring visits and follow-up visits to catalyse improvements in the quality of the services our people receive in public facilities. This holds true particularly where simply improving the management and leadership at a facility can bring immediate improvements in the quality of services being rendered. From these visits we are beginning to see the positive impact of the efforts of government to improve service delivery.
I personally conducted a monitoring visit with the DPME team to the City of Johannesburg customer care centres in Midrand and Randburg. In the Midrand centre I found a well-functioning facility, with happy customers, but in the Randburg centre I found many frustrated citizens. I found their frustrations to be valid and they were happy to see us coming in. We were flooded with queries and complaints.
In meetings with the City of Johannesburg they promised that they would be looking at that particular issue, and I will be revisiting the city to see if they have really made any changes.
At Sassa in Mafikeng we observed a visible improvement in the speed of the registration of grant applications. This was a second visit just to see whether what we had said had to happen had indeed happened. Indeed, when we went back there was quite a lot of improvement.
In Montshiwa Clinic we found that all the improvements that we had suggested in the scorecard had happened, and so forth. Therefore, these visits are really helping in improving service delivery.
On the day we visited the Sassa offices in Gugulethu, our visit coincided with the re-registration of social grant beneficiaries. Many citizens were dissatisfied with the speed at which services were being delivered. They had been there since 4 o'clock in the morning and by 10 o'clock, when we arrived, the queues were very long - the people had just been waiting there. I think these are the things that our people experience daily. Therefore, these visits help in exposing these matters. They give attention to the departments and indicate to the Ministers that they need to do something.
In the Sassa office that we visited in Umzimkhulu we found that the management were very enthusiastic and they had acted on all our findings. We hope that this hands-on management style will ensure that the services are accessible to citizens and that the creative problem-solving approach will inspire a good many to want to come to government for services. [Interjections.]
In spite of some of the complaints about the less than helpful attitudes of some staff members at some of the facilities, we have often found exemplary management and leadership during these visits. We have seen managers who are committed to public service and who have developed excellent relationships with the communities they serve.
One of the objectives of our Frontline Service Delivery Monitoring programme is to encourage all service delivery departments and municipalities to carry out this kind of monitoring themselves, on their own. We want to see Ministers, Deputy Ministers, mayors and MECs visiting their own service delivery sites regularly. They should identify the problems and deal with them there and then; they must not wait for the DPME to do that.
The President has already set a good example in this regard with his recent visit to Eldorado Park, shortly after receiving a letter from a citizen in the area. The way in which the government has responded swiftly is the way that government ought to be functioning. As you have said, hon Holomisa, we need to see more of them on the ground where there are problems, dealing with those problems.
Through our Frontline Service Delivery Monitoring work we have found a gap in the manner in which we do monitoring: the absence of the voice of the citizens on whose behalf we are called upon to serve. In this regard, last year we promised to develop a citizen-based monitoring framework by 31 March this year. We have already done so, the Minister has announced it, and that is something we will begin to roll out now. In the coming two years we will definitely be piloting the process with the Departments of Police, of Health and of Social Development. Indeed, we will bring the report to Parliament.
The importance of the citizens' voice in monitoring performance cannot be overstated. We exist to serve the citizenry. To do this effectively, we need routine and systematic ways to measure government's performance from the citizens' perspective. As described in the National Development Plan, we need to increasingly establish a constructive dialogue between government and communities about their experience of service delivery. This will have two benefits. Firstly, it will assist us to improve our service delivery. Secondly, it will contribute to increasing the citizens' participation in governance and developing a more active citizenry.
Hon members, we have made sure that our monitoring and evaluation programmes are informed by international good practice, while being customised to suit our unique conditions. We have undertaken a number of study tours and some of the members have participated in some of them. We have established strong working relationships with international organisations with expertise in this area, such as the World Bank.
As a result, we are now starting to receive delegations from other African countries. They are coming to the Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation and they are interested in our work so that they can model themselves on us, and benchmark themselves against us. This in itself is a vindication that the President's decision to establish a dedicated unit for performance monitoring and evaluation in the Presidency was valid and is important.
As I conclude, I would like to leave you with the following anonymous quote:
Take life as it is but don't leave it as it is. Change is inevitable and is necessary. Change should not be about benefiting the few but should be about improving the lives of the majority.
The introduction of monitoring and evaluation systems is one of those changes that were brought in by the government of the ANC, and we hope that this government will continue improving the quality of the services provided to our people.
As we celebrate our 20 years of democracy and freedom next year, we will indeed be able to say ... [Time expired.] With those words I conclude. I wish to thank the Minister, Mr Collins Chabane, the DPME Director-General, Dr Sean Phillips, and all staff members in the department. I thank them very much.