Cape Town - The Western Cape government has the best public service management practices in the country, the DA says.
According to a report released by Minister in the Presidency Collins Chabane on Wednesday, 80 percent of government departments did not comply with service delivery requirements.
“This situation is an anomaly, given that improving service delivery is a priority of government,” the Management Performance Assessment Tool found.
The report, which measures the state of management practices in the public service over the past financial year, includes an assessment of all 156 national and provincial government departments.
Four “key performance areas” were governance, strategy, human resources and finance, and last night the DA said the Western Cape was ranked first among the provinces and national departments in all four areas.
“This excellent result by the Western Cape shows that with effective and efficient management practices, service delivery improves. For this reason the Western Cape continues to lead in the provision of basic services and jobs, as revealed in the results of Census 2011,” said John Steenhuisen, DA spokesman for co-operative governance and traditional affairs.
He said highlights of the report included:
* At 21.6 percent the Western Cape has the lowest narrow and expanded (29.3 percent) unemployment rate in South Africa.
* 99.1 percent of Western Cape residents have access to piped water both inside and outside.
* 91.1 percent of Western Cape residents have refuse removal.
* 93.4 percent of Western Cape households have electricity.
* 96.9 percent of Western Cape residents have toilets.
Releasing the report in Parliament, Chabane, who is responsible for performance monitoring and evaluation, told reporters that departments’ management practices had been assessed against 29 “generic management standards”.
These included planning, monitoring and evaluation, service delivery improvement, functionality of management structures, accountability, ethics, internal audit and risk management, financial and human resource management delegations, human resource planning, organisation design, recruitment and retention, performance management, management of discipline, supply chain management, procurement and expenditure management.
On a chart included with the report, 28 of 42 national government departments were red-flagged for “service delivery improvement mechanisms”.
Nationally, the five best-managed national departments were Science and Technology, Trade and Industry, Environmental Affairs, the national Treasury, and Government Communication and Information System, which scored at levels three and four (the top levels) across many of the categories.
According to the report, level three means the department is “fully compliant”, while a level four department is one that has taken this a step further and is “operating smartly in terms of its management practices”.
The three worst performers were Water Affairs, Public Works, and at the bottom of the list, the Department of Women, Children and Persons with Disabilities.
This last department was red-flagged for its “management of diversity”, which among other things, meant it did not submit a report dealing with disabled people and their access to the workplace.
The State Security Agency was red-flagged 20 times for its management of strategic planning, risk management, pay sheet certification, and “unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful” spending.
The Department of International Relations and Co-operation, the government’s face to the international community, was also given a red mark for its failure to implement systems and policies “to promote ethical behaviour and discourage unethical behaviour and corruption”.
The Management Performance Assessment Tool measures departments against each of the 29 management standards, awarding level one (red), level two (orange), level three (yellow), or level four (green) scores.
A department that scores at level one or two for a particular management area is non-compliant with the minimum legal prescripts in that management area.
The findings come a month after the 2012 Development Indicators Report showed that half of South Africans think the state is not performing well when it comes to delivering basic services.
The report also found that the number of service delivery protests hit a high last year - there were 113 up to July 2012 - compared to only two during the whole of 2006.
It red-flagged 29 national departments for their management of disciplinary cases, while a further eight received an orange marker. The departments flagged did not finalise disciplinary cases within policy requirements. Among the more incongruous results was the justice department’s red mark for “professional ethics”.
According to the report, departments must have systems and policies in place “to promote ethical behaviour and discourage unethical behaviour and corruption”. However, less than 25 percent of senior managers in the department had completed financial disclosures properly and on time.
Cape Argus