Leadership perspectives on service delivery in the South African Public Service : a critical overview of the public financial management systems from 1994 to 2004

Abstract

This research focuses on the effectiveness of the leadership roles played by political leaders in guiding the implementation of government processes to attain the required objectives and goals. The Constitution vests the National Assembly and provincial legislatures with the power to exercise oversight of their respective executives in addition to their legislative and other powers. In order to facilitate Parliament’s oversight of the national executive organs of state, section 92(3)(b) of the Constitution requires of members of the Cabinet to provide Parliament with full and regular reports concerning matters under their control. Parliament and the legislatures have a critical role to play in overseeing effective performance by organs of state. Political leadership, through Parliament, ensures that the objectives of the state are always at the forefront of any activities that government departments and public entities engage in. The delivery of services by the government and the reporting of any achievements are also crucial and ensure that citizens know what services the government is delivering. The challenge facing the government is whether the delivery of services is effectively done and whether people for whom the services are intended do actually benefit from them. This calls for an effective monitoring and evaluation mechanism to determine whether the objectives of the government have indeed been met. Before the monitoring process can commence, effective financial management and reporting systems should be put in place to ensure that the delivery of essential services can be correctly accounted for. The South African Government has developed a financial management policy, the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA), No. 1 of 1999, the implementation of which is aimed at ensuring effective financial management processes that will help safeguard public resources. Through the oversight process of Parliament, the politicians are able to oversee the government functions being performed by government departments and public entities through the process of analysing these reports as and when they receive them. In the exercising of its oversight function, Parliament has been successful in some areas and unsuccessful in others as identified in this report. It is the aim of this report to identify those areas that have not produced good results and to make recommendations on how to deal with these areas in order to produce better results.