Newsletter 53 – Best practice case study: Ekurhuleni – 8 January 2010
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In 2009, the first year of the municipal outreach project, the Institute’s staff, municipal councillors, officials, and NGOs identified key challenges facing municipalities. The findings were detailed in the supplement to the 2008/2009 South Africa Survey entitled Local Government and the Poverty Challenge. This year, the second year of the three-year project, the objective is to identify best practice interventions to combat the challenges identified in year one.
This first newsletter of 2010 investigated best practices with a focus on the City of Ekurhuleni which has made changes in its corporate governance policies and the results thus far show a promising resolution to the problems of governance which plague most municipalities. The evidence of such poor corporate governance methods can be seen in the corruption and financial mismanagement common throughout the country. These malpractices affect the lives of poor people, which is the primary focus of the project, by services not being provided efficiently, if at all.
As in many municipalities, corporate governance was in a chaotic state. Thousands of documents were either misplaced or reached responsible people too late, comments from stakeholders were not obtained or were insufficient, and there was no monitoring of the implementation and execution of decisions.
A new approach established for the City of Ekurhuleni encourages accountability, visibility, and clean audits. The new method is divided into two processes which are subdivided further into 11 tasks.
The first process has nine tasks which include writing a document and entering it into a system called Collaborator, checking the document’s content to determine if it complies with set standards, and scrutinising of the document by all relevant stakeholders until a final decision is made. The second process consists of two tasks which are a plan of action and identification of the person responsible for implementation.
This method ensures that documents are discussed thoroughly, that there is record of the document and feedback on the system, there is input from all relevant stakeholders before a decision is made, and there is a record of all the steps in the processes. Most importantly, there is accountability in that the person who is finally responsible for implementation is clearly identified.
However, this process is too lengthy. It can be condensed by having one meeting where the relevant document is discussed with representatives of all stakeholders where a decision is made instead of conducting meetings with the council, the mayoral committee, and the relevant portfolio which can take months before any resolutions are made. Another major fault with this new method is that there is no follow-up. Once the person responsible for implementation is appointed, there is no step to monitor progress, ascertain whether they adhere to the plan of action, or check if they stick to the time frame and budget allocated.
However brilliant a system may be, it is only as good as the people involved.
Other best practice interventions will be analysed throughout the year so as to ensure that each of the eight municipalities covered by the project will have interventions relevant to their particular challenges.
- Nthamaga Kgafela
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nkgafela
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last modified
2010-01-07 15:56
