The objective of the Well-governed Cities programme is to provide information and mechanisms that will facilitate integrated, inclusive and pro-active decision-making and monitoring.

• Peer review project
• Indicators project

• Well-Governed Cities reference Group Meeting[PDF, 348kb].
• Presentation: The Impact and Effectiveness of Incentives in South Africa[PDF, 5.2Mb].
• Presentation: David Schmidt[PDF, 177kb].

• Report [PDF, 122kb]
• Silimela Development Services presentation [PDF, 264kb]
• eThekwini presentation [PDF, 1.6Mb]
• City of Johannesburg’s comments: Lebo Ramoreboli [PDF, 117kb]
• Polokwane presentation [PDF, 1.7Mb]
• Buffalo City presentation [PDF, 445kb]
• Old Mutual presentation [PDF, 494kb]

Recognising that there is an increasingly favourable environment for urban development partnerships in South Africa, there is a need to step up the identification and design of suitable projects led by local government in anticipation of new funding for urban infrastructure, Financial Sector Charter targets and continued growth in the property market. This one-day seminar gave participants the opportunity to discuss the potential for urban development partnership projects and the support and incentives that are available for these projects.

Household impact assessment survey

A brief overview of the report on the status of the husehold impact assessment survey was provided. This pointed to the considerable variability of capacity and approach across cities and the need for survey and research harmonisation at a national level. It pointed out that the proposed questionnaire for the household impact assessment survey was now essentially complete.

The reference group noted the following:

• The finalisation of the survey represented an important step forward. Key general information on the impact of municipal action on households was now part of a national process with national government as a driver and that incorporated city needs.
• The survey was a good integration of current surveys and generally addressed the areas agreed upon during the process.
• However, cities often needed information of a finer grain than indicated. It was thus important that cities undertook their own research to supplement the survey and that there was continued engagement with the survey to ensure that more refined data and important inter-city comparative data was collected.
• A number of the key people of the former Indicators Working Group were absent and there was a concern about continuity of representation. This posed a major challenge as to how the SACN and its members should continue to engage around the survey and other indicator initiatives.
• Funding arrangements regarding the survey were unclear and there was a need for guidance as to what if anything cities needed to budget for this purpose.
• Technical comments on the document should be addressed directly to Rajen at the HRSC.

Way forward

The following recommendations were made:

• That the SACN Secretariat must ensure that cities collectively have the capacity to engage effectively with the process of implementing the assessment survey.
• That the member Cities should ensure that there was a continuity of personnel in the working group.
• That the focus of the SACN engagement with the assessment should be on ensuring the quality and analysis of the data.
• That key SACN processes such as the work on indicators thus far should be documented as part of knowledge management in order to ensure that critical learnings were not lost.

State of Cities Report (SOCR)

The group supported the approach to the SOCR 2006 as reflected in the outline presented by Sithole Mbanga. It was noted that there was an important iterative dynamic between strategy and implementation that needed to be captured - implementation drives learning which leads to further strategisation.

It was also noted that the report needed to explore the articulation between the national policy agenda and city practice with a view to providing guidance to both policy and practice.

It was argued that the SOCR above all needed to tell the story of what has happened over past 5 years including both the positive and negative. It was suggested that narrative was very important in this and that possibly the report should tell the story of each of the nine member cities explaining the strategy, what happened and why.

It was also suggested that an underlying question should be whether government was making the right investments and doing the right things to have an impact over the 8 to 10 year period. The following themes that should be addressed as part of the well-governed city component were identified:

• Relationships with communities and city stakeholders
• Relationships with external stakeholders
• Political and administrative roles and relationships
• Managing performance
• Corporate governance

Issues that should be addressed within each theme were brainstormed as outlined below:

• Relationships with communities and city stakeholders
• Customer/citizen focus mechanisms
• Batho Pele
• Citizen surveys
• Taking services to the people mechanisms such as multi-purpose contact centres, call centres and CRM
• Community participation mechanisms
• Ward committees
• Imbizos
• Private sector relationships
• Communication

Relationships with external stakeholders

• Inter-governmental relationships
• International relationships
• Marketing and branding

Political and administrative relationships and roles

• The system of accountability including the idea of the separation of powers
• Roles and responsibilities of political component
• Political-administrative interface
• Administrative structure and processes

Managing Performance

• Performance and quality management
• Integration and alignment mechanisms (IDP etcetera)
• Change management and transformation
• Knowledge management
• Financial management (sustainability)

Corporate governance

• Management control mechanisms (anti-corruption)
• Compliance
• Oversight (audit committees, audit departments, forensics)
• Ethics
• Transparency and access to information.

The group then explored two themes – Community Participation Mechanisms and Political and Administrative Relationships and Roles in more detail. It was noted that significant differences of approach or emphasis were to be found across the nine SACN cities which pointed to the potential for rich comparative reflection in the report.