Address by the Minister for Performance, Monitoring and Evaluation, Mr Collins Chabane on the Budget Vote for The Presidency for the 2009/2010 financial year
24 June 2009
Mister Speaker,
Madam Deputy Speaker,
His Excellency President Jacob Zuma,
His Excellency Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe,
Honourable Members,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen:
Today, I am once again privileged to address Honourable Members in tabling the Budget of yet other critical component of our government, the new Ministry of Performance, Monitoring and Evaluation.
It is important to highlight that the birth of this ministry was a deliberate response to the needs and aspirations of millions South Africans who through their ballots gave us an opportunity to govern the country.
In the 2009 general elections, our people have reaffirmed their confidence in the policies of this government and renewed our mandate with hope that these policies will help improve their lives for the better.
Given the responsibilities placed on our shoulders by the electorate, it can no longer be business as usual. Our priority will be to strengthen and stimulate the performance of government in a relentless effort to ensure that government programmes yield the desired outcome.
This will necessitate that we change our approach by consistently assessing the performance of our initiatives in all spheres of government. Accordingly, this will help government continuously improve its service delivery capacity while promoting accountability on the part of those charged with the responsibility to deliver.
While we have performed reasonably well in rolling out government's programmes and initiatives since 1994, we are the first to acknowledge that the state has not performed as optimally as we desired. As a result, we are determined more than ever before to improve the quality and standards of the services we deliver to our people.
This can only be successful if we have efficient monitoring and evaluation machinery within government to assess the impact we make in key priority areas.
In rolling out our duties in terms of monitoring and evaluation, we will develop a set of 30 to 40 main outcome indicators, which will be determined by The Presidency and Cabinet on the basis of government's priorities.
These will comprise politically determined policy outcomes upon which the mandate of our government is based. As a result, we will then develop simple and straightforward measures to assess whether we are indeed achieving those outcomes.
It is our intention to ascertain that all government departments involved are alerted beforehand about the type of assessments undertaken in relation to their work. This will ensure that they work hard to meet the set delivery targets in a quest to improve the broader performance of the service delivery machinery of government.
We must bear in mind that this assessment is not only an internal measure within government. Through this process, we also want to bring our people on board to ensure that they are continuously aware of the progress we make and challenges we face in the implementation of government's Programme of Action.
In this context, we will avail to members of the public all the results of our assessments in a bid to promote transparency and accountability. As part of our work, we will also identify the type of activities per sector that are required to produce positive results needed in that particular sector.
This will help us ensure that we put the necessary plans and mechanisms with great potential to assist us meet the set targets in that particular sector. Therefore, this will be a two-fold process in that we will put systems in place and then expect departments to meet the deadlines.
We have already started collaborating with key public institutions with wide range of expertise. We will also use more of the expertise in universities and other institutions
These institutions will play a crucial role in helping us identify the measures needed to improve the performance of government programmes. Consequently, the Ministry will put in place measures to check whether all the required activities do take place in our departments - that we are indeed focusing our energies on activities that will ensure change.
This new culture of performance will be inculcated within the executive and administration. In this regard, we will design a performance contract between the President and the Ministers. This contract will primarily outline the required performance in two to three policy outcome areas and indicate, per outcome, the measurements of success.
On a quarterly basis, all Ministers will report back on the basis of a straightforward one-page report card. Therefore in discussion with the Ministers, the President will provide feedback and guidance with the view to assist in removing the identified obstacles, if any, to ensure improved performance and delivery.
As political heads of respective departments, the Ministers will also sign delivery agreements with their officials with regard to activities and plans to stimulate delivery as well as the required outputs. For this reason, we are confident that this endeavour will help government reward good performance and detect bad performance as early as possible to ensure that corrective measures are implemented.
We must outline that our initial focus in monitoring and evaluation will be to develop a performance management system for the seven priorities of basic education, health, safety, rural development, housing, job creation strategies and public sector capacity.
The outcome measures and accountability matrix for these priority areas will be discussed by Cabinet towards the end of July this year. This will pave the way for a concept paper and draft Green Paper on the enhanced Monitoring and Evaluation and Performance Management system, which will be ready by September 2009.
Beyond these seven priorities, the usual monitoring through the government's Programme of Action will continue. In a quest to enhance the output of our work, the Presidency is in the process of establishing a Service Delivery Unit, whose task will be to ensure that incidents of non-delivery and blockages are turned around.
Consequently, the Presidency will also source outside capacity and management expertise on turnaround strategies, whose knowledge will help our strategies yield a positive impact.
In terms of the required data to inform the performance management system, this will have to be carefully chosen and verified. For this reason, the Presidency will soon launch a major project on piloting the data architecture of government administrative systems and available datasets.
Another critically important task of this Ministry is to oversee activities relating to the development and empowerment of young people in our country. As we all know, our government has ushered a new dawn in the trajectory of youth development through the launch of the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) this year on the National Youth Day, June 16.
Among others, it will fast-track the implementation of programmes that affect young people in areas of entrepreneurship, skills development, education, rural development, health as well as the fight against crime. In all these efforts, the NYDA will lobby various stakeholders in civil society, business and government to ensure a generic and common approach to issues of youth development in South Africa.
Necessarily, this will require that additional funding be appropriated during the adjustment process in order to complete the merger of the collapsed institutions and strengthen the capacity of the NYDA to deliver.
We will introduce to Parliament amendments to the NYDA Act, with the view to transform it into a Section 76 Act in order to incorporate the Provincial Youth Commissions.
This agency comes into being under difficult economic conditions, which to a particular extent will have an impact of its work. This includes the challenge of job losses, which also affect the youth thus contributing towards the unemployment rate of young people. Therefore, it is necessary that we appeal on government, the private sector, civil society and young people themselves; to support this agency in discharging its mandate.
The success of the NYDA lies in the collective hands of our nation. Early this year, government adopted the National Youth Policy 2009-2014 which details a number of policy imperatives. This policy will be followed up with an Integrated Youth Development Strategy that sets out specific plans that will give effect to our policy propositions.
We are aware that many issues affecting young people are not only limited to the mandate of the NYDA but rather speak to the work that the entirety of government must undertake to address the challenges faced by the youth.
Therefore, we hope that government departments will reflect in their plans on how they intend to address the issues of youth applicable to them as per their mandate.
For instance, the NYDA is currently in discussions with the Public Administration Leadership and Management Academy to implement a Public Service National Youth Service Programme aimed at providing unemployed graduates with the opportunity to fill existing government vacancies or internships in government to gain experience.
This gesture will open job opportunities for thousands of unemployed young graduates. We anticipate that government departments will place the development of young people as agents of change at the heart of their public service responsibilities.
The NYDA will be accountable to The Presidency. It is therefore important that we strengthen the capacity of the Youth Desk in The Presidency to monitor the performance of this agency thus ensuring continuous service improvement and accountability.
The Youth Desk will also carry out some of the functions which were traditionally performed by the National Youth Commission such as policy development and the co-ordination of youth development activities across government spheres. This would ensure a co-ordinated approach and provision of comprehensive services to the youth of South Africa.
At this juncture, it is fitting that we thank the staff and leadership of the collapsed National Youth Commission and the Umsobomvu Youth Fund for the foundation they have laid, for NYDA.
I am hopeful that the NYDA will have a good relationship with Parliament, which will be guided by our collective desire to serve the youth of our country. Indeed, the Ministry is looking forward to working with Members of Parliament as they execute their oversight role to ensure that we deliver on the promises made to our people.
We will during the next two months present our adjusted budget for this financial year to treasury and budget estimates for the 2010 - 2013 MTEF period during budget process.
I thank you.
Source: The Presidency
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