By Lavinia Mahlangu

The establishment of a governance framework for a single public service, updates to the online portal and site visits by senior officials, are among the latest government initiatives set to boost service delivery.

Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi outlined these and other initiatives in Pretoria on Tuesday 26 September, at a media briefing on progress of the Governance and Administration Cluster.

Fraser-Moleketi said the Single Public Service Project aimed for "seamless service delivery". The minister said a sound governance framework had been put in place for the project's management.

She said the following five work streams report regularly to the Governance and Administration Task Team on the Single Public Service:

"The first draft of the legislation for the Single Public Service has been developed for submission to Cabinet in November."

However, this was not with the aim of changing laws. "At this point we are not looking at constitutional change," the minister said, explaining the current route was in pursuit of an improved environment for service delivery, with regard to human resources and access to services and information amongst others.

In terms of access to information, the existing eGovernment project, the Batho Pele Gateway portal, would be updated by March next year to provide service information in an additional four languages.

The online service, which is available free of charge at government's one stop Multi Purpose Community Centres, currently offers government information in seven of the country's official languages.

"Cluster work on the portal in the medium term will focus on incorporating the information about services of provincial and local government into the portal," said the minister.

Another identified ICT project is a "Track and Trace" application which would literally put information in the public's hands.

This would allow people to access their service status information via SMS.

Fraser-Moleketi also announced upcoming site visits to various government centres in the Free State, as part of this year's Public Service Week (PSW).

This is to take place between 6 and 10 November and will comprise "mystery shopper" visits, as the minister described them, by MECs and other senior officials to various centres, in order to experience the state of service delivery there, first-hand.

The PSW will build on issues emerging out of the Imbizo Focus Week, which is to take place in the province from 26 to 31 October.

A further initiative to improve service delivery is the training countrywide of officials through the Batho Pele Change Management Engagement Programme rolled out this year.

The programme, which the minister said was yielding results, aims to inculcate a positive organisational culture that enhances service delivery.

"A total of 139 public servants went through the programme during July and August 2006, bringing the total number trained during this financial year to 639."

Source: BuaNews