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Quality service delivery report: A valuable tool to track progress on service delivery

Service delivery to citizens not only means the provision of basic amenities, but also talks to the dignity of a nation. Availability of basic services improves the overall quality of life that can be afforded to citizens. It also talks to the millennium development goals which our country as a global citizen has committed to.

Government service delivery continues to feature prominently in the media and in our public sphere in general – marked by heated public debate or scenes of organised protest by disgruntled citizens or ratepayers demanding better delivery of basic services such as water, housing, sanitation or road maintenance at community-based forums.

In many instances, media outlets and public analysts reporting and commenting on service delivery, or lack thereof, refer to general reports generated by my office which provide in-depth analyses of the audit outcomes of all government spheres.

Most of these developments, including the AGSA reports are consistent about the urgent need for credible, accurate and timely information of the status of service delivery expectations.

Departments, municipalities and public entities are required by law to report on how they have performed against planned service delivery targets

All government departments, municipalities and public entities that receive funds for a public purpose are required by law to report on their actual performance against predetermined objectives. I refer to these reports as 'service delivery reports', while the National Treasury refers to them as annual performance reports. Departments, municipalities and public entities have to submit these reports annually for auditing, together with their annual financial statements.

Auditing of service delivery information by the AGSA
My office has long pointed out the direct relationship between sound financial management and good service delivery. What my office refers to as audit reports attesting to 'clean administration' goes beyond the balancing of books, revenue collection for services rendered, accounting for assets, or prevention of unauthorised, irregular or fruitless and wasteful expenditure. Admittedly, not looking after the finances does leave less financial resources available for service delivery, but keeping tight financial controls does not by itself guarantee the channeling of funds to areas responsive to the service delivery needs of communities. Proper management of service delivery information takes the process a step further and can be utilised to provide regular assurance to all stakeholders including citizens that indeed the funds are utilised for the predetermined objectives.

My office has since the 2005-06 financial year, in consultation with the National Treasury, gradually phased in audits of service delivery information published by departments, municipalities and the entities they control. We audit and issue to management and those charged with governance at departments and municipalities findings on their published service delivery information. These findings are predominantly pointing to a need for greater improvements, although some auditees, of various sizes and institutional capacity, are getting it right.

Our audits of all three spheres of government continue to reveal that service delivery reports can be more valuable if the following areas can be improved:

  • Service delivery planning: planned performance targets in most auditees are currently not specific, not measurable and are not time bound. Here the old maxim may well hold: Failure to plan means planning to fail in significant ways.
  • Reported indicators/measures are not verifiable, not accurate when compared to source information and in some cases there is no supporting documentation to support targets and service delivery indicators.
  • Reasons are not given for major variances between planned and actual targets. While the best plans may suffer set-backs and unexpected implementation challenges, it is important to provide an explanation as to what went wrong and why. In my engagements with government leadership I have highlighted that one of the main sources of frustrations to citizens is the lack of explanation of the gap between the planned targets and the actual services experienced by citizens. This challenge can be addressed through transparent regular interactions with citizens using accurate and credible reports which will also explain any obstacles that hinder service delivery.
  • Most importantly, inadequate leadership monitoring and oversight to ensure that the performance reports are credible not only annually in preparation for the audit, but continuously throughout the year.
  • Inadequate performance management systems (this refers to the overall system that should be in place for the planning, budgeting, implementation, monitoring and reporting of performance information). There is a trend country wide, that indicates that most municipalities struggle to put in place robust performance management systems. It is however, encouraging that some municipalities in remote areas have received clean audits on account of demonstrating diligence in this area by managing to put in place very good systems which provide credible service delivery information. The cost of such systems need not be exorbitant.
  • This brings me to another key root cause which accounting authorities and heads of departments can and should address: many departments and municipalities whose service delivery reports have attracted adverse findings from my office have not assigned sufficient competent staff to monitor performance reporting. This results in late or non-submission of information for auditing, and when the information is presented, the quality is poor and more often than not it is not relevant or consistent. The sooner all departments and municipalities professionalise their environments and ensure that they create an attractive environment that will result in the retention of staff, the more this will translate in improvement in the quality of service delivery reports that are critical for the monthly update of the leadership.
  • Addressing non-existent or ineffective internal audit and audit committees will also play a major role in improving service delivery reporting. In some instances, these governance structures do exist and assess performance information, but the effectiveness of these structures is not visible – documentation is largely still inaccurate, invalid and incomplete.

We have been constantly advising accounting officers, accounting authorities, audit committees, oversight bodies, local, provincial and national role players and, indeed, responsible national and provincial ministers that service delivery reports need to be upgraded to meet the requirements of legislation and other relevant criteria.

Such quality reports will serve as a tool to engage with the citizenry, demonstrate government's commitment to servicing the needs of communities and its willingness to hold implementing departments and organs of state accountable. This will go a long way towards allaying the concerns and disquiet expressed by the public regarding service delivery.

My office is working closely with, inter alia, the National Treasury, COGTA and the Presidency to accelerate deliberations on how the government can improve the preparation, management and reporting of service delivery information. But the critical and effective shift should come from departments, municipalities and entities that commit to treating and man- aging reporting on service delivery as an important process that is worked into the daily activities of the institution, not just as an event that needs to happen for audit purposes.

Audit messages raised by my office on service delivery reports, will further intensify the public focus on service delivery, as the citizens will legitimately seek to correlate what is being reported with their day-to-day experiences and their level of satisfaction with services rendered. In my engagements with my counterparts in other countries we agree that the issuing of audit messages on financial, compliance and service delivery information needs to promote transparency and accountability, so as to promote robust debate and empower citizens.

The recently released general report on the local government audit outcomes for the 2009-10 financial year paints a picture that needs immediate and decisive government leadership intervention. The 2010-11 audits being finalised for national and provincial government indicate that improvements to the quality of service delivery reports should remain a focus point for responsible ministers, over- sight structures established in provinces and other role players.

The quality of service delivery reports can and must be improved
In order to obtain clean audit opinions, service delivery reports will need to be based on verifiable evidence and must satisfy set criteria that include the so-called SMART principles. These principles require information to be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely.

I am encouraged by the level of commitment evident in the interactions that I have had so far with several executive authorities and legislative oversight structures within all government spheres. From our side, we will continue to intensify our engagements with both executive and legislative leaders at national, provincial and local government level. These engagements are proving to be very valuable in facilitating a collective understanding and commitment by the executive and legislators to achieve transparent public sector accountability and thus enhance the credibility of service delivery information.

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