SPEECH BY ANC TREASURER GENERAL MATHEWS PHOSA TO THE EOH CLIENT BREAKFAST SEMINAR, JOHANNESBURG, THURSDAY, February 24 2011

The Establishment of an Efficient Civil Service

A. To put the achievements of transformation of civil service in perspective, we need to start at the beginning.

When the ANC Government took over the civil service in 1994 we found a service that was compliant with what came before it, for years since the establishment of a professional civil service by the British early in the 20th century.

Legislation was out-dated and not synchronised with the vision of the ANC.

Our vision was to establish an efficient, effective and empowered civil service that could serve the entire population, meeting the needs of all people, irrespective of colour or where they find themselves on the economic development scale (rich vs. poor).

Matching the civil service of the mid 1990's with our vision forced us to take a critical look at what we want to achieve and comparing it with what we had at our disposal to get the job done.

Tony Blair, in his book The Journey, said the following about the need for change in the civil service and the ability of civil servants to deal with the unconditional agenda of change that the new government brought to office with it:

"People can go over this endlessly, but it amounts to this: the system does not fit the reality of modern living. It's a horse in the age of the motor car. It's a wonderful thing but it doesn't take you far enough, fast enough."

We were clear about our objectives to change - it was not negotiable. Government is often accused of allowing valuable skills to leave and to replace them with people that are not adequately trained or skilled to continue with doing the job at hand.

They are right, in some sense, as we needed different skills to achieve our objectives. We also needed to create a different legal framework to be able to implement the components of our vision successfully. So, what did we do?

• We critically looked at all existing legislation - where it was out of date, we changed it or replaced it
• We searched the world in pursuit of best practice legislation that will take us forward, we adopted the "best practice" ideas that we found and aligned it with South African practice, then we relentlessly implemented it.
• We created a Constitution that is today seen as the best in the world.
• We wrote the most progressive financial legislation in the world applicable to all levels of government.
• We implemented an Auditor-General Act and supporting Audit Standards in line with the best that private sector had to offer and, in many cases, better even that.
• We are holding officials and politicians accountable for their actions - we now produce audited financial statements of departments, municipalities and other government entities within six months of year end. When the ANC came into power in 1994 we found many instances where books of account have not been closed and audited for up to ten years - this could clearly not continue ...

B. How did we do so far?

For starters, we transformed the civil service away from being predominantly white and male to a professional body that is representative of our objectives of change and also the demographics of the population in general and specifically those that we intent to serve.

We are challenging our civil service corps - on a daily basis - to meet the high standards that we have set in the legal framework that we have established in the post 1994 era.

Our transformed Civil Service - from the most junior official to the most senior manager - is focussed on delivering an efficient  and fair service in all aspects of government to an increasing population with many challenges that come with this (Population 1994 approximately 36 million - latest estimate approaching 50 million)

Political decisions implemented by our officials protected our country from the economic turmoil that besieged the world since early in 2008. Without their support, our efforts of establishing a free and just society will have faltered before we left the starting blocks.

We are often criticised for the loss of skills, as I already referred to in the above, but it is abundantly clear that the new car we designed and build over the past 17 years would not have existed if we did not boldly implement our strategies and changes, sometimes pushing forward with changes that challenged our officials to near breaking points.

That we are not always on target with empowering our officials to act and with the necessary skills is a reality that we cannot wish away. It's a reality which we have to accept in our quest to become a leader amongst nations.

With ever present budget challenges and funding for key staff often not available, we continuously ask more from our officials. I am grateful towards all of those - and there are many - that continuously meets and exceeds our high expectations in this regard.

For those that work in challenging conditions - our police, health care workers, prison guards, frontline administrative staff - where policy become reality in governments interaction with the people - and other key posts I can only thank you because we don't have the means to reward you for the value you add to the sick grandmother, the victim of crime or the child that is experiencing the first day at school.

I can continue mentioning examples, but with all the achievements of the past 17 years, we are not there yet. There are still too many stories of underachievement and service delivery standards - those set by ourselves - that has not been met in our quest to change the conditions of every South African.

C. Where to from here?

Resting on our laurels is not an option! While there is still one person out there experiencing poor service delivery, we would have failed! There will always be constraints that will keep us from meeting our high self-imposed service delivery standards, but this should not stop us from working even harder to attain those standards. If they were unachievable in the beginning we should not have set them in the first place!

Looking around the world, we regularly experience service delivery failures, but this does not stop those involved from investigating the failure to determine its true reason. It is important that we can stand back at times, critically evaluate our achievements and if they fall short, presenting an alternative that will change it for the better.

We must guard against bringing changes to processes to soon! We must allow our well thought out changes to manifest itself before we write it off as a failure. It is often better to accept initial failure if we designed our processes robust enough to produce the desired results over the longer term.

D. Summary

The lives of all South Africans are ultimately better than what it has been before 1994 - our economic policies, growth rates and budget allocations attest to this - social spending now higher than ever before. We, the people, expect a lot from our officials at all levels - you have not failed us, nor have you failed the people of South Africa, although many challenges still remain.

Resources for training is available to establish the most progressive civil service and delivery structures that we have seen - let our children access the monies available for training - we can always employ them to assist us in our service delivery quest. We need engineers, doctors, dentists, teachers, lecturers, researchers, technicians, etc.

Let us be proud of our achievements and celebrate it as such, but let us not forget that there is more to achieve.

Thank you

Issued by the African National Congress, February 24 2011

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