public adm

1. Adherence to the values and principles
governing public administration
PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION
BRIEFING TO THE PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC
SERVICE AND ADMINISTRATION, PLANNING,
MONITORING & EVALUATION
03 March 2021
1

2. Introduction
• This presentation is delivered in accordance with the requirements of Section
196(4)(e) of the Constitution, which require the PSC to, amongst others –
 provide an evaluation of the extent to which the Values and Principles
(CVPs) set out in section 195 of the Constitution are complied with.
• Drawing on the work of the PSC ranging from monitoring, evaluations, research
to investigations and inspections, this presentation seeks to pronounce on the
implementation of the Constitutional Values and Principles (CVPs).
2
Promote Evaluate
Constitutional Values and Principles
Promote
Evaluate

3. Promotion of the Constitutional Values and
Principles (CVPs)
3

4. Character and form of the public service
4
• There is a need for a systematic programme to change the form and
character of the public service (to change the public administration
paradigm).
• To change the form and character of the public service would require a
collective effort where the central policy departments must play a key role.
• Our democracy has invested in institutions of
governance by promulgating laws and
regulations but has made less of an investment
in the internalisation of values at the level of
human consciousness.
• The public service follows a mechanistic,
rules-driven, compliance and regulatory
approach to public administration, so much
so that the intent of the Constitutional Values
and Principles – the ‘service’ part of service
delivery – lacks care and responsiveness.

5. Character and form of the public service
5
• The SA public service is characterised by institutional fundamentalism,
where governance frameworks and institutional policies and procedures
become the key measure of performance instead of responsiveness to the
needs of the citizens.
• The right balance needs to be struck between compliance and values-
driven performance.
• Even in the private sector the compliance industry could not prevent major
corporate failure.
• Political patronage and interference led to instability in the administration
and even fear of reprisal, resulting in retreat to the safety of compliance
with rules. This has stifled innovation.

6. Character and form of the public service (2)
The diagnostic on the previous slide can be illustrated by the following examples:
• In Supply Chain Management we ask the question: Have the SCM rules been
complied with – has a specification been prepared, a tender properly published
and evaluated by a properly constituted bid committee?
• Rather than - What is the best product, what are the ruling prices and who are
the suppliers and what are the market conditions so that we ensure a good
buy?
• In HR we ask: Is there a job description, has the post been job evaluated, has
the post been properly advertised and was the selection committee properly
constituted?
• Rather than - What is our recruitment strategy? or Did we make a good
appointment?
• In performance management we ask: Have we achieved the APP Plan targets?
• Rather than - What was the developmental impact or the quality of the service?
6

7. Character and form of the public service (3)
7
These have largely contributed to:
• Limited scope to think outside of pre-conceived planning frameworks.
• Disjuncture between institutional compliance/ due diligence and citizen
satisfaction.
• Communities that are largely faceless, with participation projects to legitimise
institutions.
Thus the discourse is developmental, but Public Administration is largely stiff.
So, a key question is:
Is public administration rules-driven or values driven?
The emphasis should be on a values-driven Public Service that
takes cognisance of the fact that regulatory framework exist to
enable service delivery and impact on society

8. High standard of professional ethics
The ethics framework is applied perfunctory (done because it is expected).
• Ethics is reduced to institutional issues like disclosure of conflict of interest,
appointment of an ethics officer, RWOPS, management of sexual harassment in
the workplace, and anti-corruption strategies.
• Such issues are removed from the daily experience of citizens of how public
servants conduct themselves in their dealings with them.
• There seems to be little feedback on behaviour of officials and the impact
thereof on service delivery and the citizens.
• There is minimal attempt by departments to apply the Code of Conduct in their
specific contexts. For an example –
 in a policy department its is independent advice;
 in a citizen-facing department such as Health, it is how health professionals
and support staff treat patients.
• Disciplinary procedures are inadequate to deal with unethical conduct; they
focus on specific breaches of regulations and ethical conduct cannot be
governed only by regulation.
• The Public Service should concentrate on selection criteria for entry into the
public service and socialisation into a public service value system and culture 8

9. High standard of professional ethics (2)
9
 One measure for dealing with ethical conduct is disclosure of financial interest
by senior managers.
 The compliance rate was 98% in 2019/20 compared to 97% 2018/19.
 This compliance rate seems to have no relation to the high levels of
corruption and unethical conduct in the public service.
2015/16 2016/17 2017/18 2018/19 2019/20
98% 99%
95%
97%
98%
These statistics are extracted from the e-Disclosure system where SMS
members file their disclosures.

10. 10
238
758
387
351
306
437
304
357
335
369
2015/16 2016/17 2017/18 2018/19 2019/20
Completed Not Completed
67
246
177
253
51
8 6 4
68
32
2015/16 2016/17 2017/18 2018/19 2019/20
Amount Involved
Amount not Recovered
Number of Financial Misconduct Costs Related in Millions (000 000)
 The amounts involved in financial misconduct (where someone was actually
charged) seem to have no relation to the amount of irregular expenditure (R62
billion in 2018/19).
High standard of professional ethics (3)

11. • The allocation of budgets to departments is meant to facilitate the
delivery of services to citizens in accordance with departmental
mandates.
• Ten lowest performing departments for the 2019/20 financial year, in
respect of the achievement of planned targets:
11
30%
46%
52%
52%
53%
61%
63%
65%
66%
67%
Efficient, Economic and Effective use of resources

12. • The performance on the previous slide is against annual targets.
• The performance against the medium term targets set in the MTSF
for 2014 to 2019 is shown in the next slide.
• A total number of 843 indicators were set in the MTSF 2014-2019
of which 40% were achieved.
12
Efficient, Economic and Effective use of resources (2)

13. Progress Rating as at September 2018
16
27
47
31
17
31 37
4 2
28 23 20
39
19
38
42
26
39
26
30
9
29
6
11
3 9
9
3
2
2
14 19
2
6
6
3
5
8
2
8
12
7
8
5
11 5
17
1
2
10
15
9
19
10
14
No data
No Substantial Progress
Substantial Progress
Target achieved, exceeded or likely to be achieved
Approximately 40% of the MTSF 2014-
2019 were achieved
Efficient, Economic and Effective use of resources (3)

14. 14
• Payment of invoices is an indicator of the efficiency of budget commitment,
procurement and payment processes.
• The following departments are the main transgressors contributing significantly
to the high cost of invoices older than 30 days not paid by end of Sep
2020 (Q2) and Dec 2020 (Q3):
Department Sept 2020 Dec 2020
Rand
value
Number Rand
value
Number
Water and Sanitation including Trading Entity R 544,8m 641 R 357,6m 480
Public Works (includes PMTE) R 40,4m 128 R 51,6m 116
Mineral Resources and Energy R 876k 2 R 4,3m 15
Women R 1,7m 1 R 1,7m 1
Home Affairs R 90k 8 R 636k 8
• This could be attributed to the a) non-availability of funds due to the reprioritization
of funds as a result of the budget cuts, b) lack of or weaknesses of internal
controls in SCM and c) ineffective procurement planning. Underlining this could be
purely corruption.
Efficient, Economic and Effective use of resources (4)

15. Public administration must be development-oriented
• Most departments struggled to build a complement of leading experts/ specialised
skills in their functional areas who can plan and implement key policy and
administrative changes that will drive development.
• Departments have the skills for routine operations but major leaps in efficiency or
effectiveness. Development outcomes or change in policy direction require deep
skills to develop the policy instruments and do the implementation planning.
• The depth of skills should at least be at the level of a nationally recognised expert
in the functional area.
• Leadership turnover and policy uncertainty militates against developmentalism.
• The majority of departments set targets at output level and use process evaluation
to measure progress, which gives an overrated level of achievement.
• Inconsistent reporting makes it difficult for evaluators to judge progress and
impact of the programmes over a five year period.
15

16. Public administration must be development-oriented:
Coordination in the post settlement support context
• The PSC recently conducted a research study on coordination in the land reform
post settlement support context that shed significant light on how departments
and their programmes are organized and the impact of this on development. The
PSC argues that:
• Coordination should happen at the district level. For this to happen, post
settlement support budgets should be broken down to the district level (be
spatially referenced) and district level officials should be given the authority to
adjust programme features to local conditions and the requirements of
coordination partners in a process of mutual adjustment. Support for district
coordination is given by the recently adopted District Development Model.
• The Post Settlement Support process ignores the provincial departments
completely. This creates overlaps and achieves no synergies.
• Complexity and consequently coordination, is increased with multiple,
overlapping programmes. All the funding programmes have different eligibility
criteria, application forms, application processes, approval committees and
implementation processes. The approach of the Post Settlement Support
policy is overly bureaucratic. 16

17. Public administration must be development-oriented:
Coordination in the post settlement support context (2)
• The Comprehensive Agricultural Support Programme (CASP) and
the Recapitalisation Programme (Recap), which are the main post
settlement support programmes, are top-down programmes and cannot
sufficiently respond to local conditions.
• The national department or even the province, does not know the
situation on the ground and cannot adjust to local requirements.
• Local officials, like the extension officer, do not have the authority and
agency to work with farming communities and be a change agent in the
local setting.
• The PSC therefore recommended district level coordination,
building on the District Development Model.
17

18. Service Must Be Provided Impartially, Fairly,
Equitably and Without Bias
• Overall, departments have policies in place that attempt to address equity issues
aligned to their respective departmental mandates.
• The challenge in determining the performance against this principle relates to the
unavailability and unreliability of data to measure trends, patterns and draw
inferences about actual implementation and impact over time on targeted
beneficiaries.
18

19. People’s needs must be responded to and Public
Participation encouraged
• Many departments have not transitioned from the traditional participatory
mechanisms to innovative ways that seeks to afford the disadvantaged and
vulnerable an opportunity to be heard.
• Departments use platforms such as Izimbizo, notice and comment
procedures, policy development and research in place.
• A weakness of participation processes is poor feedback on issues identified
by citizens, rendering processes superficial.
• In reflections by former DGs on building a capable developmental state
dated July 2020, the DGs noted that –
“the state is disconnected from the society within which it is located, with
public participation processes that are compliance-driven rather than
meaningful, and outdated communication tools that are unable to reach
people rapidly and effectively.”
19

20. People’s needs must be responded to and Public
Participation encouraged (2)
• Departments give a programmatic response when asked about
responsiveness, e.g., there is a housing programme responding to housing
needs.
• Programmes and the related formal implementation procedures need to be
designed in such a manner that local public servants can be responsive to
local contexts. They should be able to work with communities and promote
their interests – be the local change agents. This is largely not the case
because local officials implement pre-designed programmes with all the
features pre-decided, giving little choice to citizens.
• Development programmes are designed top-down and announced to
communities (supply-driven) instead of in a participatory manner with
communities (demand-driven).
• Responsiveness is related to management agency. To the extent that
managers (especially managers of service delivery units like a clinic or a
police station) do not have the power to make the changes to improve
services on their level, the public service will be less responsive.
20

21. Public administration must be accountable
• Accountability in the SA public service has been eroded. Contributing to
this erosion is a mechanistic compliance with the APP.
• The National Development Plan Diagnostic has argued that accountability in South
Africa has been eroded. The question is why this is so despite formal
accountability arrangements of Strategic and Annual Performance Plans, quarterly
and annual reporting against these plans, auditing of the performance information,
the signing of performance agreements and assessment of individual performance.
• 80% of the reporting effort goes into the APP reporting and producing the auditable
evidence for that. Only 20% of the effort is devoted to reflection on quality and
effectiveness, and this takes place outside the formal performance management
process and is not reported on.
• The increased role of monitoring and evaluation, as mediated by the DPME, and
the creation of monitoring and evaluation units in departments have assisted in
correcting this. However, many M&E units are almost exclusively used to support
the traditional formal reporting process described above.
• Accountability is also eroded by a poor management structure: the misalignment
of responsibility, authority and accountability.
21

22. Public administration must be accountable (2)
The PSC is of the view that:
• A large part of accountability is the human value of taking personal responsibility
for the quality of your work, your conduct, your decisions and advice.
• A public servant should never say “I was instructed” but should always apply
his/her mind and take reasonable and lawful administrative action. Similarly, a
minister should never say “I was advised”.
• Personal accountability thrives more in an environment of reflection than in the
context of a mechanistic process of checking against narrowly defined targets.
• A new accountability framework should provide more room for direct
accountability to citizens.
22

23. Transparency must be fostered
• Most departments only provide
information that complies with minimum
requirements such as information
required by legislation or regulation,
including its strategic plan, annual
performance plan, annual report, service
delivery charter, etc.
• Often, there is lack of information that
would assist citizens to scrutinize the
affairs of the departments and hold them
accountable.
23

24. 24
• There is slight decline in the number of employee grievances reported by
departments from 2018/19 to 2019/20:
• The inability to maintain a healthy relationship between employer and
employee has frequently contributed to poor productivity in the public service
due to low staff morale, litigation and related costs, as well as time
commitments of managers in attending to conflict management.
2016/17 2017/18 2018/19 2019/20
9 031 8 770
11 244
10 216
Good Human resources management and career
development practices

25. Good HRM and career development practices (2)
• Most departments experience a high vacancy in the “Professionals and
Managers” category, which comprise highly experienced officials with technical
skills.
• Vacancy rates may not reflect shortages of specialised personnel, even if
differentiated by occupation. For example, within the category of prosecutor
there may be enough criminal prosecutors but huge shortages of prosecutors for
commercial crime and corruption.
• The occupational classification system is in need of review and the existing
system is not properly applied across departments, which negatively
impacts on HR Planning, career management or skills development.
• Data on skills should change from “courses attended” to “tasks that employees
are proficient in”.
• There is no evidence as to whether the exposure to training has addressed the
skills gaps identified in the HR Plan. As a result, no correlation could be drawn
between the training provided and the skills acquired.
25

26. • Overall departments are doing well in meeting representivity targets
related to appointment of Africans.
• However, targets related to appointment of women in senior
management positions and people with disability remains a challenge.
• It is also worrisome when citizen-facing departments are found to be
unrepresentative of the majority of the population including gender. This
raises a question on which societal views are represented to advance
policies in those departments.
26
Representivity in the Public Service 31-Mar-19 31-Mar-20
African 80% 82%
Women in SMS positions 44% 43%
People with disabilities 1,4% 1%
Public administration must be broadly representative

27. 27