Best Practice: Home Affairs
Ministers: 2 Deputy ministers: 2 Permanent directors-general: 2 Acting directors-general: 0 Current minister: Naledi Pandor (appointed October 2012) Current director-general: Mkuseli Apleni (appointed March 2010
THE Department of Home Affairs constitutes a powerful example of a department with a stable leadership, good working relationship between the ministry and the department and thus high-quality outcomes.
Because directors-general work on three- or five-year contracts, at least one change is inevitable during a presidential term. How a department handles that change goes a long way towards ensuring continuity and best practice. The contract for the previous home affairs director-general, Mavuso Msimang, expired in March 2010, but the department planned ahead and avoided an acting director-general by immediately appointing Mkuseli Apleni in his place.
The result is an efficient department that, during the past 52 months, has delivered a series of highly impressive outcomes. They include:
More than halving the average time it takes for a person to get an identity document. It is now fewer than 45 days;
The introduction of an online verification system for fingerprints so temporary certificates can be issued immediately;
The clearing of 250 000 backlog records; and
The introduction of a smart identity card system to replace traditional IDs.
Significantly, the department has turned around its financial management. One of the core responsibilities of any directorgeneral, who acts as a department’s accounting officer, is the ability to manage its budget in line with its strategic plan and without misspending monies assigned to it.
The department has, during the past 52 months, seen a systematic improvement in the quality of its audit outcomes, as evaluated by the auditor-general, from a series of disclaimers and qualified audits to its first unqualified audit in 16 years at the end of 2011.
All in all, the department has transformed from being one of the government’s worst performers to one of its best.
It still faces a number of challenges — its poor handling of asylum seekers being one of the most pressing — but the turnaround has been fundamental. And central to that has been the continuity and performance of the two ministers and directors-general in charge of its administration.
Things were not always this way. Before 2009, the ministry and department suffered a poor relationship, with the directorgeneral and previous minister at odds with each another and the portfolio committee, so much so that MPs had threatened to block the department’s 2008 budget.
The department now boasts a well-established team, and the minister has singled out for particular praise the director-general and chief financial officer.
The department is regularly cited as an example of how to implement a successful turnaround strategy, which other departments should emulate. — Gareth van Onselen