31 August 2007

By Seshnee Govender

THE Batho Pele Change Management Programme, aimed at improving the quality of service given to the public, has reached 182 municipalities countrywide.

"A target of 100 municipalities was set for training the trainers in the Batho Pele Change Management Engagement for the 2007/08 financial year. Already 182 municipalities have been reached and 15 high level management presentations have been made," said Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi.

Fraser-Moleketi outlined these and other initiatives in Cape Town, Tuesday 28 August, at a media briefing on the progress of the Governance and Administration Cluster.

The programme is identified by a slogan "together beating the drums of service delivery", which entails working together in teams to ensure that outputs are maximised, duplication is avoided, flaws and weaknesses are identified and addressed before they escalate.

A monitoring and evaluation system, Fraser-Moleketi said, is being developed to ensure further rollout of the programme within municipalities.

Further to this, a model and implementation plan has been developed for a mass induction of 100 000 new public servants.

"The core budget has been approved and the first draft of the manual for junior and middle managers' induction has been completed and is being circulated for comments," Fraser-Moleketi said.

Training will begin, with a pilot in two provinces, namely Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal, in November 2007 and will be rolled out to all national and provincial departments early in 2008.

To date, the minister said, 3030 officials had been trained by the South African Management Development Institute and 32 956 by other service providers using the common learning framework.

The President's State of the Nation Address remarks about the state of public servants in the Public Service could not better capture the seriousness of the matter and thus the need to have a systematic approach to address it.

"What has emerged, among others, as a critical area for strategic intervention is the content of training that public servants receive in various institutions and the role of the SA Management Development Institute (SAMDI) which in actual fact should be the major service provider including in the mass induction of public servants," said President Thabo Mbeki at the time.

The change management programme is therefore a culture change process to foster appropriate behaviours and attitudes among public servants to reinforce the ethos of Batho Pele.

This programme recognises the influence of organisational culture on service delivery and highlights people issues in the attainment of organisational goals.

Some of the objectives of the programme include introducing and rolling out the Belief Set - "We belong, We care, We serve," through a series of workshops and leadership engagements in national and provincial departments, as part of a broader process of culture re-orientation in the Public Service.

The minister emphasized that a service-centric culture is a prerequisite for effective service delivery and therefore successful implementation of Batho Pele.

The Governance and Administration Cluster strives to improve the quality of life of the people by improving governance, the capacity and organisation of the state and its underlying systems.

The Cluster's priorities derive from government's commitment to improve its service to the people as embodied in the 2004 electoral mandate.

Source: BuaNews