Cape Town - Acting Public Service and Administration Minister Thulas Nxesi on Tuesday denied that the government was trying to introduce a super director-general (DG) by centralising key government functions in the presidency.
This comes after reports that President Cyril Ramaphosa has centralised key government functions in his office and has taken some responsibilities away from ministers.
Last week, the Cabinet approved a framework that provides for the DG in the presidency to be designated as head of public administration (Hopa) and DG in the office of the premiers will play that role.
“Are we forming a super DG? No. The practice is that the DG is the chair of the Forum of South Africa Directors-General (Fosad) and is already co-ordinating the other DGs.
“It is a practice which has been there so she chairs Fosad, which means she is heading all other DGs,” Nxesi said.
He made the statement when responding to a question during a media briefing on the framework towards professionalisation of the public sector.
The framework, approved by the Cabinet last week, is dubbed a public sector-wide approach to a single public administration that includes national, provincial and local government and state-owned enterprises.
Nxesi said Hopa would assist the president and premiers in the management of career incidents involving heads of departments and serve as a mediation mechanism to stabilise relations between the ministers and heads of departments (HoDs).
“This is part of overall efforts to improve the retention of HoDs and create stability at the HoD level with the objective of improving the capacity of the government to deliver public services,” Nxesi said.
However, Public Service and Administration DG Yoliswa Makhasi said there was nothing stopping the president from delegating the responsibilities to the DG in the presidency.
“We use the opportunity of the performance contracting period to delegate some of the issues that are related to career incidents to the DG, of course, through precedence processes.
“It is the work the DG has been doing in any case. If a DG has a challenge in terms of relationship with a minister or a minister has a challenge, the first person they are likely to talk to is the DG in the presidency,” Makhasi said.
“There is a chief directorate at the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, which is responsible for and which supports the DG.
“So we have not created new structures for this work to be undertaken.”
Makhasi was adamant that they did not necessarily see the move as providing additional super DG roles, because it was a role the DGs had been playing but which was not properly accounted for in the system in terms of the performance management system.
Nxesi said the Cabinet had agreed that the tenure of HoDs be increased to 10 years, subject to rigorous processes for recruitment, selection, training and development, performance management and consequence management for compliance.
“This is aimed at ensuring administrative stability in public sector institutions, which is critical to service delivery.”
“ The tenure of municipal managers would be de-linked from the political term of office-bearers for continuity of administration and improved service delivery.
“The Department of Cogta will work on the measures to ensure that there is uniformity to the conditions of services of HoDs and municipal managers,” he said.
Nxesi said the Public Service Commission would play a role in the performance evaluation of HoDs to strengthen objectivity.
Cape Times