Media statement by the Minister in The Presidency responsible for National Planning Trevor Manuel on the release of the Green Paper on National Strategic Planning
Today government is releasing two discussion documents, one a Green Paper on National Strategic Planning and the other a Policy Document on Performance Monitoring and Evaluation. The decision by President Zuma to appoint Ministers in the Presidency responsible for National Planning and Performance Monitoring and Evaluation is designed to improve the overall effectiveness of government, enabling government to better meets its development objectives in both the short- and longer-term.
These two discussion documents must be seen in the context of wider efforts led by the President to improve the performance of government through enhancing coherence and coordination in government, managing the performance of the state and communicating better with the public.
The Green Paper on National Strategic Planning is a discussion document that outlines the tasks of the national planning function, broadly defined. It deals with the concept of national strategic planning, as well as processes and structures. Once consultations on these issues have been completed, the process to set up the high-level structures will commence; and this will be followed by intense work to develop South Africa's long-term vision and other outputs. In other words, the Green Paper does not deal with these substantive issues of content.
The rationale for planning is that government (and indeed the nation at large) requires a longer-term perspective to enhance policy coherence and to help guide shorter term policy trade-offs. The development of a long-term plan for the country will help government departments and entities across all the spheres of government to develop programmes and operational plans to meet society's broader developmental objectives. Such a plan must articulate the type of society we seek to create and outline the path towards a more inclusive society where the fruits of development benefit all South Africans, particularly the poor.
The planning function is to be coordinated by the Minister in The Presidency for National Planning. There are four key outputs of the planning function. Firstly, to develop a long term vision for South Africa, a Vision 2025, which would be an articulation of our national aspirations regarding the society we seek and which would help us confront the key challenges and trade-offs required to achieve those goals. A National Planning Commission comprising of external commissioners who are experts in relevant fields would play a key role in developing this plan. The development of a National Plan would require broader societal consultation and existing forums would be used for this purpose. The Minister in The Presidency will coordinate these engagements. A National Plan has to be adopted by Cabinet for it to have the force of a government plan. The Minister would serve as a link between the Commission and Government, feeding the work of the Commission into government.
The next set of outputs cover the five-yearly Medium Term Strategic Framework (MTSF) and the National Programme of Action. These are documents of national government, adopted by Cabinet, drawing on the electoral mandate of the government of the day. The Minister in The Presidency for National Planning, supported by a Ministerial Committee on Planning, would coordinate the development of these documents with input from Ministers, departments, provinces, organised local government, public entities and coordinating clusters.
Further, it is envisaged that the planning function in The Presidency will undertake research and release discussion papers on a range of topics that impact on long-term development. These include topics such as demographic trends, global climate change, human resource development, future energy mix and food security. The Presidency would also release and process baseline data on critical such as demographics, biodiversity as well as migratory and economic trends. This work will be undertaken by the Minister, working with the National Planning Commission. and the Minister, working with the NPC would, from time to time, advise government on progress in implementing the national plan, including the identification of institutional and other blockages to its implementation.
One of the functions of The Presidency in respect of national planning is to develop frameworks for spatial planning that seek to undo the damage that apartheid's spatial development patterns have wrought on our society. This includes the development of high level frameworks to guide regional planning and infrastructure investment.
The national planning function will provide guidance on the allocation of resources and in the development of departmental, sectoral, provincial and municipal plans.
The Minister in The Presidency responsible for national planning will be supported by a Planning Secretariat, which will also provide administrative, research and other support to the National Planning Commission.
National Strategic Planning is an iterative process involving extensive consultation and engagement within government and with broader society.
It is envisaged that Parliament will play a key role in guiding the planning function through its oversight role but also through facilitating broader stakeholder input into the planning process. For this reason, it is appropriate that Parliament should lead the discussion process on the Green Paper.
This Green Paper is a discussion document. Government welcomes comment, advice, criticisms and suggestions from all in society.
Issued by The Presidency, September 4 2009
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Media statement by Minister for Performance Monitoring and Evaluation, Mr Collins Chabane on the release of the Green Paper on Performance, Monitoring and Evaluation
Today, we are pleased to finally release the Green Paper on Performance, Monitoring and Evaluation for public comment and discussion (see here - PDF). The green paper paves way for our single and a very focused desire to deliver on our mandate to the people of South Africa.
The paper describes a process that ensures that we translate our mandate into a very clear set of outcomes and a few crucial output measures that will help us deliver on our commitment. The paper has been put together after long and elaborate discussions and consultation to come up with agreed outcomes and an approach to measure our performance.
Since the establishment of the ministry a lot of questions have been asked about our mandate and the capacity of government to monitor its own performance. Today we outline in our paper titled "Improving Government Performance" our approach and the process we will follow in delivering on our mandate. We also call on society and the country to participate in a process of consolidating this mandate.
The establishment of the ministry is a clear demonstration of commitment by this government to ensure that we have an outcomes based performance that makes meaningful impact in the lives of our people.
The paper recognises that while we have made many advances since 1994 and while we have improved access to basic services, the outcomes we have produced have often been below standard. Massive increases in expenditure on services have not always brought the results we wanted or our people expected.
We need to understand and accept why we have too often not met our objectives in delivering quality services. The reasons vary from amongst others lack of political will, inadequate leadership, management weaknesses, inappropriate institutional design and misaligned decision rights. The absence of a strong performance culture with effective rewards and sanctions has also played a part.
While building on work already done, we need to focus more on positive outcomes as we use our time, money and management. We are concerned with what we have identified as priority areas: Education, Health, Safety, Economic growth with the creation of decent jobs and Rural Development. We believe that if we deliver and achieve desirable outcomes on these priorities in a focused manner we will make a meaningful impact.
To assist us in focusing on a few things and getting them to work better the Medium Term Strategic Framework (MTSF) has identified ten priorities that we believe will place South Africa on a new developmental path.
To be fully effective we chose five priorities that include rural development, health, education, safety and jobs. Collectively these five priorities constitute over 60 per cent of our budget so we must derive value from them.
Our task is not to police performance but to facilitate a focus on the government's mandate and ensure the attainment of concrete positive outcomes. This will involve facilitating a process through which the Cabinet and the other spheres of government agree on outcome and output targets. We recognise that this approach will require principled and firm leadership, making tough choices and holding people accountable for delivery.
To assist us achieve our goals we recommend the creation of a Delivery Unit to respond to a few carefully selected areas of blockages in delivery.
It will partner the appropriate delivery institutions in working towards a turn around. More importantly its interventions would create models for improving delivery that can be followed by others. The Delivery Unit would consist of a small team of experienced officials who can facilitate change at national, provincial or local level.
The Unit will analyse failures in delivery and lessons from successes. In partnership with all relevant role players, it will identify at most five areas where it will partner with the political head and officials to drive change that brings significant and sustained improvements in delivery.
The ministry will identify a limited number of delivery requirements which will be monitored periodically and serve as the basis of engagement between the President and Ministers or groups of Ministers and MECs. The delivery requirements will be set out in a performance letter from the President to a Minister, group of Ministers or Sector including the MECs. Report-back meetings with the President every six months will evaluate progress and provide guidance on how to overcome obstacles to delivery.
The historical shortcoming is that we have developed sound plans and policies, but not effective implementation plans (resources inputs, budgets, roles and responsibilities, performance measures and indicators and lines of accountability). The delivery agreement will ensure a focus on implementation plans.
We will develop a set of Outcome and Output measures for all of government but the focus in the initial period will be on the Strategic Priorities identified in the MTSF.
We hope to have finalised all our Performance requirements by the end of the year. In this regard, the PM&E function will work very closely with its planning counterpart.
We are convinced that this focused approach of measurable outputs and outcomes will improve the quality of life of all the people of our country, especially the poor.
Issued by The Presidency, September 4 2009
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