Working together to serve the nation

• Published date: 20 May 2022
• Publication title: South African Official News

Government seeks to strengthen efforts for all spheres, as well as social partners, to work together in alignment to achieve its objectives of creating jobs, eliminating poverty, creating an inclusive economy and reducing inequality.

'We need to forge a solid and seamless synergy with all government departments, entities and social partners, align our plans to these strategic objectives and long-term developmental plans,' Minister in the Presidency, Mondli Gungubele, said on Friday.

Delivering the DPME budget vote, Gungubele said for government to effectively achieve the goals encapsulated in the National Development Plan (NDP), South Africa has to overcome the threat posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, rebuild the economy, equip people with the necessary skills, fight corruption both in government and the private sector.

The July 2021 unrest, floods and the drought in the KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape and North West Provinces further compounded the country's challenges.

'The National Developmental Plan remains our lodestar as we continue to deal with current and future challenges post the COVID-19 environment. We must recalibrate our efforts to ensure that our plans are implemented within the set time and allocated budgets,' Gungubele said.

In this regard, the DPME will undertake Inter-governmental and public consultations on the revised Integrated Development Planning Framework Bill.

'We remain committed to produce a legal framework that will usher in a new predictable and automated planning paradigm and discipline within and across all spheres of government. We anticipate that these consultations would be finalised by September 2022 and the necessary updates to incorporate comments will be effected by March 2023,' the Minister said.

Over the years, the DPME has consistently assessed all departmental strategic plans and Annual Performance Plans to ensure that they are aligned to the Medium Term Strategic Framework (MTSF) and NDP.

'These efforts were augmented with a series of training sessions for key planning functionaries in government to get them up to speed with the planning framework and guiding concepts.

'This work, which will continue in the financial year 2022/2023, has been enhanced by the development of a much more nuanced theory of change that would guide integrated development planning in government and ensure that all components of the government machinery work collaboratively to achieve the set MTSF and NDP outcomes,' the Minister said.

This work has also...