Page 32 - Service Delivery Review

National Development Plan and State Capacity Conference

dian. For this reason, the DPSA is currently driving ties of oversight and Chapter 9 institutions in
the State Capacity Project as an intervention project monitoring the Government’s performance
to build and sustain the capacity of the Government and addressing the perception that State
to deliver on its objectives and goals and improve the organs are either slow or non-responsive to
lives of all South Africans. the remedial recommendations by oversight
institutions such as the Office of the Public
As a public service-wide and multi-agency interven- Protector.
tion, the State Capacity Project aims to help govern- • Streamlining capacity-building programmes
ment departments and agencies build their ability to and projects across the three levels of Gov-
provide services effectively and efficiently, ultimately ernment and leveraging planning and mon-
improving people’s lives. To reach this goal, the Na- itoring efforts in partnership with the Gov-
tional Development Plan and State Capacity Confer- ernance, State Capacity, and Institutional
ence in November 2022 gave us a lot of feedback and Development (GSCID) Cluster, which the
ideas for improving the State Capacity Project. DPSA and DCOG co-chair,
• Moreover, the DPSA should consider the
Reflection, in my opinion, is a crucial component of NDP and State capacity building within the
effective leadership, as I mentioned during the Con- context of the Southern Africa Develop-
ference. According to the Chinese philosopher Con- ment Community (SADC) region, the African
fucius, who I paraphrase, learning without reflection Union’s (AU) Agenda 2063, and the United
wastes time and is dangerous to reflect without learn- Nations (UN) Agenda 2030 for Sustainable
ing. To advance, we must continually consider our Development Goals (SDGs). This is because
leadership responsibilities and roles and pose chal- South Africa cannot grow in isolation in the
lenging and unsettling questions to ourselves.
sea of regional poverty.
• Strengthening and accelerating the imple-
Conference lessons and recommendations mentation of the Professionalisation of the
The lessons from the Conference are captured in a re- Public Service Framework.
port along with valuable recommendations and point-
ers for implementing Priority 1 in the remainder of the
MTSF period. The DPSA and its partners are currently A sense of urgency
crafting these into tangible change initiatives. Some The Conference also made it clear that we needed
of these recommendations include the following: a sense of urgency to get to work right away. Giv-
en high levels of poverty and unemployment, South
Africa is at an increased risk of unrest and instabili-
• Prioritising building a capable developmen-
tal State and focusing more on Chapter 13 ty. Crucially, we must determine what this sense of
of the NDP as the basis for the development urgency would mean for governance, policy-making,
agenda. and policy implementation. As the DPSA, some of our
• Rethinking how we do monitoring and first ideas about these include making useful policies
evaluation (M&E) and impact assessments, that can be implemented. In addition, as Govern-
with particular attention on education, pub- ment, we must be more appreciative of the role of
lic health, and provincial and municipal road reliable evidence in policy-making. In this regard, our
infrastructure. M&E capabilities should allow for the extraction and
• There is a need to consider the relationship use of quality evidence for analysis to help improve or
between auditing and service delivery to ad- discard policies that do not work.
dress the perception that the pursuit of clean
audits sometimes comes at a cost to service Lastly, I would like to commend all the Conference
delivery. To do this, we will look to the Office participants. The Conference format deliberately al-
of the Auditor-General for leadership, partic- lowed for more speakers outside of Government
ularly in auditing the performance of State to avoid the situation in which Government found
organs. We will seek advice on the relation- speaking to itself by opening up an avenue for ad-
ships between financial and non-financial vice and constructive criticism from academia and
performance and how it could be delibera- civil society. We hope that a similar spirit will prevail
tively aligned for strategic-level impact. as we roll out some of the key recommendations for
• Strengthening the role, status, and capaci- implementation.

32 SERVICE DELIVERY REVIEW | Volume 15. No. 3 of 2023