22 June 2007
Comrade Speaker and Deputy Speaker;
The Honourable Premier;
Colleagues in the Executive Council;
Honourable Members of the House;
HOD of the GSSC, Mr. Mike Maile;
Distinguished Guests;
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Comrade Speaker, we have distributed copies of the full version of the GSSC Budget Vote Speech. Due to time constraints I request that you allow me at this stage to present only the salient points of the GSSC Budget Vote.
I am delighted to table before the house the budget for the Gauteng Shared Service Centre for the 2007/8 financial year.
This budget and the service delivery plans to which it is allocated; is borne out of the vision we defined when we started our journey in 2004.
This vision was further reiterated by the Premier in February this year when he delivered the State of the Province Address at which he declared that; indeed a better Gauteng is in the making.
This budget statement outlines some of the successes that we have recorded in building a better Gauteng.
It also indicates the course we shall chart and follow in creating a shared service centre that is relevant and capable of serving the needs of a globally competitive Gauteng City Region.
I am humbled that we are tabling this budget during the month of June which is dedicated to the youth of our country.
It is during this month that we pay tribute and honour the warrior generation of 1976 who took a stand against tyranny.
Our democracy as we know it today is very much a product of the 1976 youth struggles as it is of the many battles conducted by the people of our country.
We will continue to look up to our young people as we engage in the important task of deepening the gains of our democracy.
In this regard, I have the pleasure of acknowledging the presence in the House of the leadership of the Gauteng Youth Commission, represented by the Chairperson Lebogang Maile and the CEO Masabata Mutlaneng.
We also have in the gallery a pioneering young man, Omar Sallie, from the GSSC whose revolutionary initiative, which I shall speak about later, has inspired more confidence in our drive to deliver better services to the people of Gauteng.
Today, Comrade Speaker as you will know, we are celebrating Africa Public Service Day under the theme: "Building an ethical public service for improved service delivery in Africa".
The Gauteng Shared Service Centre is an affirmation of the Gauteng Provincial Government's commitment to realising the vision of improved service delivery in Africa.
It was five years ago that the Gauteng Provincial Government gave serious thought about how to re-engineer service delivery in the public sector.
This gave birth to the Gauteng Shared Service Centre as we have come to know it today. We have commissioned a report that reviews the work of the GSSC over its five years of existence.
Given the successes and opportunities raised by this report, we have felt it imperative to share these experiences with our counterparts on the African continent and the Diaspora.
Towards this end, we will host an international conference in August which shall have as its primary objective the sharing of best practise and acceleration of the shared service model throughout the public service.
Through the five year report I have alluded to, we sought to better understand the ability of the business model to deliver on our task of ensuring that all back office support functions are delivered to departments efficiently and seamlessly.
I urge members to study the report and its recommendations. The report makes a number of proposals with regard to taking the shared service model to the next level.
Amongst these is the need to develop the GSSC into a commercially viable entity with a better operating model.
Commercially viable, in the government context, refers to an organisation that is able to sustain its operations on a surplus and does not need unending funding from the limited resources in the fiscus.
Comrade Speaker, for the current financial year, the GSSC's budget is R1 billion. I will now indicate how these resources will be allocated per programme.
Gauteng Audit Services
The Gauteng Audit Service continues to be the leading light in the provision of services that promote good governance. These include integrated risk management processes and best practice, which help us to maintain an efficient and effective internal control environment.
During the past year, through our Forensics Unit we have put up a formidable and decisive fight against corruption and fraud. This fight has seen the Gauteng Provincial Government initiate claims to recover in excess of R20 million.
In addition, there are matters currently before the courts where we have assisted accounting officers of various departments to uncover fraudulent transactions.
The Gauteng Audit Services receives R66.3 million.
Human Resources Services (HRS)
The HRS Business Unit will focus attention on creating a climate for GPG as an employer of choice. In line with the initiative of building Gauteng as a Globally Competitive City Region, HRS transactions will be taken to the next level using automation initiatives.
We will aggressively position ourselves as a consulting powerhouse in middle management development, organizational development, employee relations and the assessment centre.
This will add further impetus to the objective of building a knowledge economy.
In line with our strategic priority of building an effective and caring government as well as bringing government closer to the people, the HRS Business Unit is implementing a new and revolutionary way of applying for a job in the Gauteng Provincial Government.
The Mobile Application System allows job applicants to use the cellular phone to apply for a job within GPG. This innovative system is the brain child of Omar Sallie, a young pioneer and innovator at the GSSC.
We congratulate him and the team that contributed to the development of this system.
The Human Resources Services Business Unit receives an amount of R82.1million
Procurement
The Procurement Unit is at the center of our efforts to support the development of small, medium and micro enterprises and to promote Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment.
The following are some of the key results that were achieved within this programme over the past financial year. `
For the current financial year the Procurement Business Unit will focus on among others:
We are allocating R66.8 million to the Procurement Business Unit.
Finance Services
We have successfully implemented a seamless integration of systems and processes as a result of GPG changing its bankers.
This entailed among others opening new bank accounts for all the respective departments and corresponding trading accounts.
We have implemented preventative control measures to reduce the incidences of fraud. These include; e-receipting, the electronic salary mandate and electronic invoicing.
The Finance Business Unit receives R60.2 million.
Technology Support Services
We have responded positively to transversal systems issues raised by the Auditor General last year.
The Disaster Recovery Site for the GSSC is now in place and we have a Business Continuity Plan also in place.
Next year, we will conduct more tests to ensure that the Business Continuity Plan is entrenched as part of the organisational business process.
We have made great strides in the area of service management. We will be implementing our IT Service management and infrastructure monitoring project.
Through this, we will monitor the quality of our services and radically reduce turnaround times.
Our flagship programmes will continue to receive greater attention. Our e-Government programme will see greater improvement through an increased service offering on the GPG portal. The Gauteng on Line project for schools is now located in the GSSC. We are in the process of reviewing all infrastructure and security.
We will align this project with the broader e - Government programme, ensuring that there is greater universal access to ICT for communities.
We continue to attend to matters relating to the provision of Information Communication infrastructure. Accordingly, we are working in partnership with Blue IQ, on the Blue Umbrella project.
Through this project we seek to create greater access to the broadband network and improve connectivity in the Gauteng City Region.
The project will give impetus to our drive of creating access to education, through distance learning, social inclusion, job creation, increased productivity and consolidation of the knowledge based economy.
Technology Support Service receives R576 million for the current financial year.
Corporate Services
The Corporate Services business unit is the back-office of the GSSC. Corporate Services provides the internal support services to enable the externally-oriented business units to provide efficient and cost-effective services to the greater GPG.
The GPG Contact Centre continues to add momentum to our objective of bringing government closer to the people. This year will see a significant increase in the service offering of the Contact Centre.
We are among others adding the police complaints line as one of the services. As part of the consolidation process, Ekurhuleni's license booking Call Centre will be incorporated into the GPG Contact Centre.
Our satellite site in Sedibeng is now operational. This has seen an addition of at least 150 young people as contact centre agents.
The West Rand satellite site is also in the pipe line. We are confident that, we will conclude work on this by the end of the current financial year.
We are moving with full steam with the roll out of the call centre hub in the Braamfontein CBD.
Comrade Speaker, this is one area that has provided us with the opportunity to broaden our skills base and create sustainable jobs.
We are humbled that the GSSC is the recipient of the first Golden Circle Youth Award conferred by the Gauteng Youth Commission for employing the most number of young people in executive and senior management positions within GPG.
We are moving full steam with the implementation of the learnerships programme focusing on skills development and access to employment opportunities for the youth.
Corporate Services receives R143 million for the current financial year.
Conclusion
Comrade Speaker, the budget we are tabling today is a reflection of our commitments in ensuring that we build a better Gauteng.
An assessment of the work done points to the correctness of the decision we took to streamline back-office operations of the Gauteng Provincial Government in order to take advantage of that come with specialisation and economies of scale.
It is only where a dedicated pool of professionals service back-office functions as their core business that you are able to emerge with innovations such as the Mobile Application System which I referred to earlier and many others not mentioned here.
We are confident that when we return to this House, we will have demonstrated the need to move with greater speed in consolidating the shared service model; particularly our move from pure transactional activities to more consulting and value added services.
I wish to take this opportunity to thank the management and staff of the GSSC for their dedication and hard work. Without your collective effort, the GSSC will not have achieved the milestone it has achieved thus far.
To all GPG Departments we would like to extend a word of thanks for your continued cooperation with the GSSC.
Thank you