SERVICE DELIVERY IMPROVEMENT PLANS
PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE
By: Dr Alex Mahapa
18 February 2015
CONTENT
 Background & Context
 SDIP Status & Why Poor Performance
 Interventions
• Wayforward.
BACKGROUND
Chapter 1, Part III, C.1 of the Public Service Regulations: An
EA shall establish and sustain and SDIP for he/his
department, indicating: services to be provided, consultation
arrangements, mechanisms for promoting access, service
standards
mechanisms
for
providing
information,
mechanisms for complaints handling
C.2 of the Regulations: An EA shall publish an annual
statement of public service commitment which sets out the
department’s service standards that citizens can expect and
which indicates how the department will meet each of the
standards
BACKGROUND
• The White Paper on the Transformation of Service Delivery
(Batho Pele), 1997 states in paragraph 7.1.2 that HOD’s
are responsible for SDIPs and that this responsibility
should be clearly assigned to a person or group of people,
accountable directly to the HOD.
• Paragraph 7.1.5 describes that the relevant Minister/MEC/
executing authority must approve the department’s
SDIP and that a copy of the approved document must be
sent to the DPSA to inform it’s yearly progress report to
Parliament.
BACKGROUND
A 2008 DPSA Directive on SDIPs meant to improve on
“compliance and quality” requires:
• Departments to submit SDIPs by 31/03/ of every 3 years
and the annual reporting aligned with the MTEFs.
• The SDIPs should be signed off by the Head of
Department (HOD) and Executive Authority (EA).
• There should be an indication of how SDIPs are cascaded
to service points.
CONTEXT OF SDIPS
The SDIP are underpinned by the following:
◦ Value add for the institution through strategic focus to two
or three priority services for continuous improvement, and
specification of the actual and future service beneficiaries.
◦ The specification of consultation arrangements with the
service recipients; means of access to services; barriers to
access, and the strategies to remove these barriers.
◦ Specification of the existing and future service standards
for the services to be delivered.
◦ The existing and future arrangements on how information
about the department’s services are provided; and
◦ A system or mechanisms for managing complaints must be
specified.
OVERALL SDIP STATUS
The update of the SDIP status and is around the following key deliverables:
- Submission rate to ensure compliance with the legislative framework;
- Emerging issues on the Quality of Submitted Plans; and
- Annual progress reporting against the set targets to determine progress
on continuous service delivery improvements and the ultimate impact.
a) Generic Observations with the Submission rate:
SDIPs submission picking up slowly as opposed to 100% in 1st quarter of
the reporting cycle to allow quality implementation, monitoring, reporting
and feedback especially to the beneficiaries. Example of how the SDIP
submissions were made during the current cycle (2012/15):
• 2012/13: 68%: 2013/14:85%; 2014/15: 88% (National & provincial
departments).
UPDATE ON 2012/2015 SDIP COMPLIANCE FIGURES
DEPARTMENTS
PROVINCES
Grand total compliance: National &
Provincial departments
COMPLIANCE RATE
PERCENTAGE
132/150
88%
COMPLIANCE BREAKDOWN FOR NATIONAL & PROVINCES:
Compliance in National departments
Compliance in Provinces
28/42
67%
Eastern Cape
13/13
100%
Free State
10/11
91%
Gauteng
12/12
100%
KZN
13/14
93%
Limpopo
11/11
100%
Mpumalanga
12/12
100%
Northern Cape
9/11
82%
North West
9/11
82%
Western Cape
13/13
100%
104/108
96.29%
OBSERVATIONS:SDIP STATUS
b) Quality of submitted SDIPs remain poor: almost 80% of the approved
submitted SDIPs obtained below quality ratings at a scale of “0-5 rating.
The following are some of the observations for the continued poor quality:
• SDIPs signed by HODs & MECs for compliance sake. There seems to
be no thorough thoughts applied on how the submissions would impact
on service delivery.
• Little evidence of a clear relationship between the department’s
performance improvement plan and the content of the SDIPs. This
includes the non alignment of the SDIPs to the strategic plans nor
operational plans of departments.
• Non-compliance by Departments affected by re-organisation. They
found it difficult to develop SDIPs when still trying to understand their
mandate and operations.
OBSERVATIONS:SDIP STATUS Cont...
• No clear understanding of the departmental strategic processes that
should feed into the SDIP, including evidence that departments’
developed activities aimed at addressing the identified problematic areas
will bring actual improvements;
• The SDIP is supposed to be a departmental strategic tool to enhance
efficiency and effectiveness in service delivery, however, its location and
alignment thereof with the planning and budget cycle remains a serious
challenge.
• SDIPs developed by one person in some areas and is not an all-inclusive
approach.
This
compromise
ownership;
buy-in
and
general
implementation, monitoring and reporting on the SDIP progress made.
OBSERVATIONS: SDIP PROGRESS REPORTING
Overall submission of progress reports against the submitted SDIPs
remains a challenge across the national and provincial departments. The
progress reports received by the DPSA are as follows over the mentioned
periods:
PERIOD
SUBMISSION TOTAL
2009/2012:
3 out of 118 (3.5%) national and provincial
departments submitted progress reports
2012/2013
4 out of 71 (2.8%) national and provincial
departments submissions received
2013/2014
22 out of 131 (29%) national and provincial
departments submitted progress reports.
OBSERVATIONS: SDIP PROGRESS REPORTING (Con...)
Breakdown of 2013/14 submission: 22/131 (17%) SDIPs submitted; breakdown:
YEAR
NAME OF DEPARTMENT
2013/14
National Departments: 5/42 = 11.9%
•DTI
•NPA
•STATSSA
•DIRCO
•SASR
2013/14
PROVINCIAL DEPARTMENTS:
Northern Cape: 1/11 departments: 9%
•Social Development
Eastern Cape: 11/13: 84%
•Roads and Public Works
•Economic Development, Environmental Affairs and Tourism
•Provincial Planning and Treasury
•Human Settlements
•Rural Development and Agrarian Reform
•Social development and Special Program
•Education
TOPCulture
SECRET
•Sport, Recreation, Arts and
STATUS OF SDIP PROGRESS REPORTS (Cont...)
Breakdown of 2013/14 submission: 22/131 (17%) SDIPs submitted Cont...
YEAR
NAME OF DEPARTMENT
2013/14
Limpopo Provincial Departments: 5/11: 45%
•
•
•
•
•
Office of the Premier;
Provincial Treasury;
Public Works;
Roads & Transport; and
Agriculture.
The challenges with the non-submission of progress reports is critical to
monitoring and reporting on progress and can be attributed to:
• Development of non-implementable and non-aligned SDIPs. Some SDIPs
demonstrate little evidence of appropriate resource allocation especially if
SDIPs are perceived not to be adding value to the department’ specific’s
critical priority service delivery areas.
• Absence or little top management support and buy-in towards SDIP
implementation, monitoring, reporting and feedback to beneficiaries; and
• Non alignment of SDIPs to the Operations Management value chain &
tools.
INTERVENTIONS
Interventions and Institutionalising of SDIPs include support with advocacy on
the development of SDIPs, improvement of quality to ensure response to the
critical service delivery issues within the department; monitoring and
feedback mechanisms using:
• Ongoing workshops to departments and strengthening of sector
coordination to ensure SDIP relevance as a strategic mechanism to
ensure continuous improvement and quality delivery to all within the public
service.
• Continuous improvement and alignment with other service delivery
tools/instruments in strengthening development; implementation;
monitoring and reporting.
• Targeted SDIP support provided to non-complaint provincial & national
departments and those affected by macro reorganisation. Promote sharing
of emerging good practices through the Service Delivery Improvement
Forums and Frontline Service Delivery Improvement Programme:.
INTERVENTIONS (Cont...)
• Inside and Outside strategic thrust and support to the SDIP
development, implementation, monitoring and reporting.
• National SDIP Evaluation by DPME and DPSA to identify gaps
and recommendations for continuous improvements.
• Yearly implementation reports and reporting to the different
stakeholders and reporting structures which include Cabinet.
WAYFORWARD
• Dedicated and focused 5 year SDIP support plan aligned to the
departmental strategic plan developed and will be rolled out to
institutionalise SDIPs across the public service.
• Strengthened support through A step by step SDIP manual
Operations Management Planning tools to ensure relevance,
effectiveness and efficiency of the SDIPs across the public
service.
• Promoting the sharing and/or replication of emerging good
practices through the Service Delivery Improvement Forum; and
•
Continued response to further capacity building needs
provided through a series of workshops taking place since
2011 as directed by FOSAD’s Plan of Action.