Performance management for participatory democracy: thoughts on the transformation process in South African local government

Abstract

The White Paper on Local Government in South Africa signals the intention to establish a performance management system for the sector. This paper suggests that current approaches to performance management, as used, for instance, in the UK public sector, would need substantial revision to be supportive of effective municipal development in South Africa. There is a need for low cost systems that fit the capabilities of the administrations that exist in many municipalities. A focus upon how municipalities manage their governance role would in the end be the best way of ensuring that liveable communities as well as improved services are created in the towns and rural areas of South Africa. The paper provides some ideas on the design of such a performance management or enhancement system. Its principal features would be that it is: based on mutual organisational learning and problem solving; using simple, indirect, low cost information gathering and dissemination techniques that are within the capabilities of existing leaders and officials; focused on processes in priority to outcomes.

Implementation of Lean‐Kaizen in the human resource service process

“…Furthermore, other studies have attempted to link performance management with measurement techniques such as balanced score cards (Wisniewski and Olafsson, 2004), a system approach (Bowland and Fowler, 2000), process redesign, standards, and Kaizen (Suárez- Barraza and Lingham, 2008), strategic planning techniques and benchmarking (de Bruijn, 2002) and other techniques related to public participation (Curtis, 1999). However, studies have also indicated that the transfer of implementation techniques associated with performance management from the private sector should take into account the specific peculiarities of the public sector (Brignal and Modell, 2000).…”

Managerial performance of Palestinian local authorities

“…In addition, no periodical meetings are held regularly for senior officials with Mayer of the municipality, no annual periodical evaluation for measuring the performance of municipal employees, and there is no special provident fund for service termination for municipality employees, which lead to a financial burden every time employees retired or resigned. This leads to the conclusion that the Palestinian municipalities have a week measurement system to assess the performance of employees and the efficiency of work, this is considered (in the world context) as issue number one in managing the local governments as presented in various studies (Jones, 2004;Afonso and Fernandes, 2006;Curtis, 1999).…”

“…The study found that the initiatives of local government reform in Latvia included: drafting a new law on local government council elections and improvement of the local budget system. Curtis (1999) discussed the model to support an effective municipal development in South Africa, he also discussed that if municipalities manage their governance role, this would be the best way of ensuring that livable communities as well as improved services are created in towns and rural areas of South Africa based on mutual organizational learning and problem solving; using simple, indirect, low-cost information gathering and dissemination techniques that are within the capabilities of existing leaders and officials. Other studies such as the one conducted by Jolicoeur and Barrett (2004) discussed the application of strategic asset management in the municipal sector and found that local government is the closest level of government to the public, thus the framework for strategic asset management must be transparent.…”

Productivity and morale of administrative employees in the South African public service

“…The South African public service is still in a process of transformation, pressured by high expectations from management as well as from the nation, its client. A study conducted by Curtis (1999) found that the residue of the former underperforming administrative structure was at that time (during the late 1990s) in the midst of rapid change through restructuring, redeployment and process re-engineering. This situation created a climate of power struggles, competition and restructuring, leading to a situation with little complacency.…”

“…A systematic service culture is perhaps still absent. Curtis (1999) cites a number of examples of poor performance in government sectors in South Africa. Poor performance may be due to factors such as the continuing pace of externally imposed change, chronic uncertainties and anxieties about amalgamation of different public sectors, and externally imposed contradictions and constraints, such as the balancing of budgets against the pressure not to dismiss any employees.…”