Promoting effective and accountable public sector institutions for broad-based and sustainable socio-economic development and service delivery

Public Administration and Governance

Country: South Africa
Contract Period: Ongoing

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Building effective, transparent and accountable governance and civil society

Effective and accountable public sector management and governance are increasingly recognised as essential to broad-based and sustainable socio-economic development. Well-functioning government institutions at all levels play a critical role in planning and delivering health and education infrastructure, improving access to shelter, and providing basic municipal services to the population. South Africa continues to grapple with the effect of transformation at all levels of government. Elsewhere in Africa, national governments are steadily decentralising resources and responsibilities to regional and local levels.

Promoting effective planning, budgeting and management within the public sector

Eliminating backlogs in basic service and infrastructure delivery is a South African national priority. While much has been achieved since 1994, many South Africans remain without basic municipal services in water and sanitation, solid waste removal, electricity connection, and provision of affordable permanent shelter. These backlogs are also typical of other African countries which have been affected by civil wars and poor governance, lack of or poor delivery and maintenance over prolonged periods of time, as well as natural population growths. General improved governance has led to an increase in the availability of government and donor funding to stem the tide. South Africa in particular has advanced levels of revenue collection and fiscal planning. These backlogs have significant economic and social costs that are retarding economic growth, which in turn leads to increasing unemployment and attendant social ills.

ECIAfrica provides targeted consulting advice that directly supports government efforts to eliminate service delivery backlogs. Our developmental approach recognises the importance of marrying efficient delivery with the achievement  of national social imperatives and objectives as may be necessary, such as transformation goals through labour intensive works, preferential procurement, and capacity building of emerging contractors in South Africa. We provide technical assistance and consulting advice to public officials and local communities in South Africa and the southern African region to strengthen democratic governance. We emphasise skills transfer to promote long-term sustainability. We avoid overly technical solutions and instead rely on equipping public officials, citizens, and civil society organisation with the tools and expertise needed to build accountable, responsive, and effective governments at all levels.

Our range of services includes the following:

• ■ Management Interventions and Institutional Support: Working with national, provincial and local government officials to improve performance, accountability, and transparency through strategic planning, budgeting, change management and capacity building support
• ■ Transaction Advisory Services to support both the Public Sector, Private Sector and Local Communities on various types of Partnership Models including Private Public Partnerships (PPPs); Community Private Public Partnerships (CPPP) and Privatisation

• ■ Programme/Project Design, Implementation and Management: Working to support proper application and management of both government and donor funding on service delivery programmes and projects
• ■ Policy Advisory Services: Public policy development and implementation, including on site scaling-up implementation lessons for positive policy change at provincial and national levels
• ■ Civil Society Strengthening: Building capacity of associations, and non-governmental an­d community-based organisations for service provision, financial sustainability and advocacy
• ■ Monitoring and Evaluation: Research, evaluation, and analysis, which involve evaluating development and service delivery programmes and assessing institutions to provide clients and donors with quality data, information, and analysis on governance issues and recommended interventions