New bills key to building trust relationship between state and citizens
Legislation driven by quest for greater state capacity and better service delivery
South Africa faces a twin challenge of enhancing the capacity of the state while ensuring appropriate levels of service delivery. Continuous efforts and interventions to enhance the capacity and capabilities of the state must inherently be matched by improved and sustained quality of service delivery. In fact, the attainment of the National Development Plan (NDP) goals, either before 2030 or beyond, mainly depends on the levels of state capacity and government capabilities.
Recently, the National Assembly approved two bills the Public Administration Management
Amendment (PAMA) Bill and the Public Service Amendment (PSA) Bill to enhance state capacity. Both bills are sponsored by the department of public service & administration (DPSA), collaborating closely with the National School of Government (NSG).
The bills are still to go through the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) for consideration. Once they become law, they will have far-reaching impact on how the state is organised and structured, and on governance within the public service.
There are several reasons these bills are essential to the consolidation of a professionalised and capacitated state.
The PAMA bill draws a three-pronged synergy for a professionalised bureaucracy: the knowledge and skills set, the value system, and an institutionalised performance governance mechanism. It affirms the necessity for qualifications, but recognises that having qualifications, knowledge and skills is not in itself sufficient. One still must manifest values and attributes associated with being a professional public servant.
This would include a values commitment to the Batho Pele principles. This is a public servants’ values system that ascertains that everything public servants do must place the interest of the public first, either individually or collectively. It is partly for this reason that the professionalisation framework commits members of the bureaucracy to belong to professional bodies. While the mechanisms for membership of professional bodies for bureaucrats has not been concluded yet, the evolution of state capacity building makes this commitment an imperative to be achieved. Given the multidisciplinary character of the modern public service, a synergy will have to be made between what ought to be a professional body for civil servants and existing bodies, such as in finance, engineering and medical practice, among others. This is a commitment to building a public service with high values of ethics and integrity.
Another important objective of this legislative amendment was well articulated by the minister for public service & administration, Noxolo Kiviet, when she introduced the bill to the National Assembly: “The amendment bill seeks to improve state capability by ensuring that there is an enabling governance process and systems that enhance public servants to effectively deliver on their mandate.”
This is important because, over time, state capacity building initiatives have been dominated by human resources training projects and the filling of vacant posts. This legislative amendment, therefore, presents a holistic account of a well-capacitated state; one that goes beyond aspects of human resources to include enablers that facilitate public servants to deliver on the state’s commitment. These include systems, structures, processes, governance instruments, technologies and innovation initiatives to assist public servants in accelerating service delivery.
The legislative amendments also address the frequently sensitive matter of the relationships between political executives and senior bureaucratic management. This has enjoyed various descriptions in different instances: “political/administrative dichotomy”; “political/administrative interface”; “political/administrative relationship”; and, at worst, “political interference”.
In the current evolution of state capacity building, the terms “political/administrative dichotomy” and “political/administrative interface” are preferred terminologies.
Nevertheless, what is key here is the constructive collaboration between policy development and the strategic implementation of government programmes and projects. Policy development is the preserve of the political executive, and the implementation is a bureaucratic matter. Political executives still have to provide oversight over departments.
Thus, while the bill provides for clear distinctions in the roles and responsibilities of the two, the key is to ensure an appropriate interface between them. To some extent it is the importance of emotional intelligence in managing the dichotomy inherent in the political/administrative relationship.
The PSA Bill, as approved by the National Assembly, proposes that administrative powers be vested directly in heads of department (HoDs) while ensuring that proper oversight responsibilities lie with the
executive authority. Moreover, it gives clear direction on the roles of the president and provincial premiers in the appointment of directors-general (DGs) and HoDs. Provisions are also made on the role of the DG in the Presidency in supporting the president and the broader public administration.
Furthermore, the proposed amendments to the Public Service Act prohibit the HoDs from holding political party positions. The prohibition is also extended to the public servants directly reporting to the HoD, such as deputy directors-general (DDGs). Once the proposed amendment becomes law, these categories of senior bureaucrats will not be able to hold the positions of chair, deputy chair, secretary, deputy secretary and treasurer (or equivalent position) in a political party.
The South African state, and its government machinery, is a living and evolving organisation. Hence, periodically, legislative and policy adjustments are made to enhance the capacity of the state. These legislative amendments are far-reaching in their intended impact. They firmly position the development of bureaucracy to be fundamentally on a merit basis and institutionalise bureaucratic performance management systems. They provide legally well-defined roles and responsibilities on both the political and bureaucratic leadership and the interface between the two.
With the series of state capacity interventions undertaken in the last few years, it is now imperative to ascertain the current level of state capacity and government capabilities. There must be a direct correlation between enhancements in state capacity and the intended improvement in service delivery.
The NDP commits the state to build a relationship of trust with the citizens. Such a trust relationship will depend on the link between heightened state capacity and improved service delivery.