Public Service and Administration Director-General (DG), Ms Yoliswa Makhasi, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the CEO of the Chandler Institute of Governance (CIG), Mr Wu Wei Neng, yesterday morning, 1 August 2024, at the DPSA offices in Pretoria.

The MoU provides a framework for cooperation between the DPSA and the Singapore-based institute. It focuses on several areas of public administration, including knowledge-sharing and capacity-building support.

At the meeting attended by DPSA executive management and their CIG counterparts, DG Makhasi singled out help with digital transformation as one of the areas with the greatest need.

Alongside Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan, Singapore is part of the so-called “Asian Tigers” that have seen exceptional industrialisation from the 1950s onwards. Moreover, in the 2022 edition of the United Nations e-Government Survey of 193 countries, Singapore was ranked 12th globally.

“The DPSA is also responsible for electronic government. This is an area where we could be doing better. I hope to use this MoU to learn more about how we could improve in line with our digitalisation agenda. We spend millions of rand on digitalisation, but we are not getting value for money,” DG Makhasi explained.

The MoU signing ceremony took place on the sidelines of the South Africa leg of the 2024 Strong Nations for Africa Fellowship Programme (SNFAP), which CIG is hosting in partnership with the African Association for Public Administration and Management (AAPAM).

Launched in 2023, the SNFAP is a professional development and capacity-building intervention that supports senior African public service leaders in building “strong nations for the next generation.”

According to its CEO, Mr Neng, CIG is an international non-profit organisation that works with governments and partner organisations worldwide in areas ranging from institutional development to process engineering to training.

The 2024 SNFAP cohort of senior public sector managers and leaders was hosted at the North-West University (NWU) in South Africa for the first of three segments of the programme, which focused on the following objectives:

  • Develop and nurture a community of African public sector leaders, who are committed to building strong nations through improving national governance.
  • Provide a platform for the sharing and propagation of good practices and practical tools for implementing these good practices drawn from Africa and around the world.

On 1 August 2024, the 2024 SNFAP participants were treated to a site visit to the South African Government’s flagship on integrated service delivery access, which is the Thusong Service Centre at Maponya Mall in Soweto, Johannesburg. They also attended a knowledge-sharing session at the DPSA’s Batho Pele House, where the DPSA, the Centre for Public Service Innovation, and the Department of Science and Innovation showcased South Africa’s electronic governance and digitalisation journey, from policy to practice.