BUILDING A COMPLIANCE MONITORING SYSTEM TO PROMOTE GOOD GOVERNANCE IN THE PUBLIC SERVICE

African countries pass many regulations and adopt new standards every year for its public service, but how many are effectively implemented? The South African government has come to realize that the poor compliance of its regulations by departments was harming the overall development of the country. To address this challenge, a new mechanism is being set up by the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) to build a Compliance Monitoring System in order to inculcate a culture of accountability and transparency within the public service.

The DPSA, where I am the Public Sector Chief Director for Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E), was established in 1996 with the purpose of promoting service delivery and support to the Minister in the transformation of the Public Service in South Africa. One of its key functions is to report to Parliament and oversight bodies on an annual basis on the level of compliance to regulations and other prescripts issued as part of good governance.

The Auditor General’s findings as well as the Public Service Commission reports have, over years identified poor compliance with public service regulations/ legislation/standards/prescripts and other requirements as a challenge throughout the public service. The 2008/09 findings from these reports revealed that overall compliance levels currently stand at 47% in terms of implementation of the following regulations:

• Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Act 108 of 1996 (Chapter 10 (s195 (1)) principle 8 on human resource management and career development standards)
• Public Service Act, 1994 as amended by Act 30 of 2007
• Public Service Regulations, 2001 as amended
• Public Finance Management Act, 1999 (Act No. 1 of 1999)
• White Paper on the Transformation of Service Delivery (Batho Pele), (1997)
• Skills Development Act

This challenge is attributable to a large extent to the non-existence of an integrated compliance monitoring guide and system.

The 2009/10 Presidential State of the Nation Address, the 2009-2014 Medium Term Strategic Framework as well as the Minister of Public Service & Administration Budget vote Speech 2009 as well as the Presidency’s Monitoring and Evaluation White Paper (2010) made compliance to standards and regulations of public service departments a major priority.

The DPSA had already started conceptualizing on this area of monitoring in 2008. To address this need, a survey to identify the compliance criteria within the DPSA legislative environment was conducted. However, the focus was on “Institutional Compliance & Performance Assessments.” This intervention was aimed at enforcing institutional compliance in an integrated manner.

To this extent, the Monitoring and evaluation Unit now aims to broaden the scope and look beyond internal DPSA compliance monitoring. This unit is currently working on the formulation of an M&E Framework for the DPSA which will clearly spell out how the compliance to Public Service regulation will be monitored.

If this intervention is implemented, the DPSA and government will be in a better position to (a) enforce compliance in a integrated manner, (c) improve compliance levels in the public service and ultimately service delivery and performance, and (c) analyze and use compliance data to make informed decisions about appropriate support interventions.

The DPSA has to develop extensive compliance monitoring system, coupled with development experience of compliance systems and knowledge of public service regulations and practices. This will then allow DPSA to evaluate complex processes and controls in a comprehensive and streamlined manner, with indicators best aligned with public service control environment, risk appetite and risk tolerance.

Among key elements of our M&E Framework on compliance monitoring will be 1) compliance monitoring assessment & design; 2) compliance monitoring implementation as well as 3) compliance monitoring performance improvement and guidelines.

To know more about this project, read the Change Project that I submitted as part of the 2010 International Training Program on Public Service mentioned here.

Ms Ledule Bosch, South Africa
AfCoP Core Management Team member
DPSA, Chief Director: Public Sector Monitoring & Evaluation