February 20, 2003
By Thomas Thale
SENIOR city officials and politicians this week retreated to the tranquility of the bush to ponder on the performance of the city and to set new performance targets for the next financial year.
The 40-strong delegation, which includes members of the mayoral committee, executive directors, directors from key city departments and personnel from the budget directorate, left for Mount Grace in Magaliesburg on Tuesday to review and amend the city's Integrated Development Plan (IDP), in line with the Municipal Systems Act. The IDP is an instrument which "guides and informs all planning and development, and all decisions with regard to planning, management and development in the municipality".
The Municipal Systems Act provides for municipalities to produce annual IDPs outlining their developmental priorities and setting measurable performance targets with regard to each of those development priorities and objectives. Section 34 of the Act requires municipalities to review their IDPs annually, "in accordance with an assessment of its performance measurements" and to factor in "changing circumstances".
The meeting at Mount Grace is officially known as the Mayoral Budget Lekgotla which is tasked with revising the city's IDP. Pascal Moloi, the city manager, described the gathering as "a bi-annual event" which kick-starts the process of public consultation in the build-up to the mayor's budget speech in May.
Moloi said the dates of the public consultation process would be published in due course. The highlight of the consultation process will be the "stakeholders summit" scheduled for 12 April. Various interest groups, including religious leaders, business, NGOs and government departments, are expected to attend the summit.
In terms of performance appraisal, members of the lekgotla will apply their collective wisdom in examining the scorecards of city owned entities and city departments. "We will be assessing last year's performance and setting new targets for the year ahead," Moloi explained.
The lekgotla meets twice every year, In February and in October, to set developmental priorities for the city, which determine the allocation of resources.
Jan Erasmus, a specialist in process management in the city's Department of Strategic Planning, said the set targets would then lay the basis for the development of departmental scorecards.
"We will be able to say, for instance, to the executive director of finance, your target is to raise city revenue by this margin, and he'll be held to account," explained Moloi.
The performance appraisal of managers in the city takes place in July. According to Moloi, some 250 managers who constitute the first four levels of senior management in the city are on performance-based contracts, "We have gone further than the legal provisions, which require only the first two levels of managers to be on performance-based contracts.
Erasmus said the city would this year make an effort to provide feedback to stakeholders who contribute to the process of consultation. The lekgotla ends on Thursday.
