Cape Town – The Department of Science and Technology tops the list as the best managed national department, a report released by The Presidency today reveals.
Releasing the 2012 State of Management Practices in the Public Service – the second of its kind – the Minister in the Presidency responsible for Performance Monitoring and Evaluation, Collins Chabane, said although there had been some improvements in the 2012/13 standards from the 2011/12 standards, more needed to be done by departments to improve management practices.
The improvements made by departments were in the area of strategic management and financial management, including an improvement in paying suppliers within 30 days.
However, Chabane pointed out that the average scores for management standards related to human resources management, governance and accountability were worse in 2012/13 than in 2011/12.
The report covers all 156 national and provincial departments and aims to help departments to improve their management practices.
The results are derived from officials from departments who are asked to make self-assessments against 29 management standards, which consider, among other things, compliance with governance rules, payment of suppliers on time and whether proper recruitment practices have been adhered to.
Among the other top placed national departments following Science and Technology, are Trade and Industry, Environmental Affairs, National Treasury and Government Communication and Information System (GCIS), respectively.
The report also found that the best-run provincial departments were in the Western Cape, Mpumalanga and the Free State – with the North West and the Eastern Cape at the bottom of the list.
Chabane pointed out that the report found a strong relationship between the stability of senior management in departments and good management assessment scores.
He said it was now up to directors-general and heads of department to implement improvements, adding that the report contained case studies of certain good performing departments that managers in the public service could learn from.
“What we are looking at … is the relationship with the results we get – the results of the Auditor-General – the results of the outcomes and the actual service delivery and impact,” he said.
He added that the Presidency was currently conducting evaluations of a number of government programmes and that it would then be possible to tell to what degree problems in management practices are linked to service delivery problems.
Ismail Akhalwaya, the deputy director general of outcomes facilitation, said some departments had already made improvements by using the first 2011/12 standards to help them identify management weaknesses.
However, he said it was difficult to compare last year’s results with this year’s, as the first report contained only self-assessment, whereas the second one also contained moderated assessments.
“I think for us, the next assessment will be quite critical because then we would be able to compare moderated scores with moderated scores, and I think we would be in a much better position to look at real improvements,” he said.
He said the Presidency had benchmarked the standards against Canada’s management accountability framework and that the experience there revealed that it took at least two to three years before improvements begun to become visible. – SAnewsgov.za
