Review 3 final 2 - TAU - National Treasury

TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE UNIT REVIEW | A Government with a Strategic Centre
Minister of Finance, Trevor A Manuel in his budget
speech. Dr. Kelly’s inputs were seen as an opportunity to
prompt broader discussion between key stakeholders
in government, provide feedback on some of the
key issues involved and to share knowledge of the
international experience.
Dr. Kelly advised government that strategic government
requires a strategic centre. However, often when
governments try to be strategic they revert to control
and command and/ or they over-burden the system
with excessive reporting requirements. According to
Dr. Kelly, a strategic centre must organise itself to operate
in three strategic domains namely: the political,
the policy and the operational domains. The role of
the centre is less about analysis and control, but more
about facilitation, co-ordination and synthesis. Relationship
and network management skills are increasingly
important in such a configuration.
According to Dr. Kelly, expenditure reviews of
government programmes are one of the tools to
achieve a more strategic centre as they can be used
to re-define policy: working away from chasing new
policy development and rather including responses
to questions of policy implementation, evaluation
and adaptation. These reviews can also be used as a
coordinating mechanism that enables the centre to
operate strategically rather than incrementally as well
as facilitate the definition of issues and priorities in the
political domain.
Furthermore the reviews provide an opportunity to ask
questions such as:
• Is the current policy-setting right
• Are policies achieving the desired ends
• Who should be responsible for policy setting and
policy implementation
• Are delivery agents sufficiently resourced to perform
these mandates
In the face of the compelling temptation to solve
delivery problems by developing new policy, the
real answer, according to Dr Kelly, may be to put a
moratorium on all “new policy” for a five- year period
so as to allow learning, consolidation of capacity and
optimisation of implementation of current policy.
When planning an expenditure review programme,
a number of key questions and tensions are evident
in the design. These were summarised by Dr. Kelly as
follows:
• What’s the purpose Review and cut budgets versus
redesigning the ‘way we do what we do’ for more
efficient and effective delivery
• What should be reviewed and how
• Who is responsible for overseeing the process and
for conducting the reviews
• What is the role of government departments and
entities as well as the National Treasury
• Is there the political will for the reviews and to make
the difficult changes
These thought-provoking issues were debated in
different forums including two separate seminars
hosted respectively by the National Treasury and the
Presidency.
The final outcomes of these considerations are yet to
be determined. However, the discussions and their
richness, facilitated by the TAU, on these issues are
sure to inform the decisions and final design of an
expenditure review programme in government.
Robert Clifton
Senior Technical Advisor
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Enabling change for development