About the IDP Nerve Centre

Background

Since 1994, the South African Government has decentralised key functions to local government. This shift is partly in response to political pressures for local autonomy and to deliver public services more efficiently. Each sphere of government in South Africa performs constitutionally allocated functions for which it is accountable. At the same time, the three spheres are interdependent and interrelated – they are part of “one government” and are required to “cooperate” with each other to provide coherent government. The South African Government has given effect to the principles of co-operative government and intergovernmental relations, by way of:

introducing core systems, frameworks and processes governing priority-setting, strategic planning, budgeting and implementation;
establishing intergovernmental forums through which they routinely coordinate the execution of their functions; and
implementing programs and projects, often through joint effort and collaboration where programs cut through jurisdictional boundaries.

However, the question of how the spheres of government can go about planning and working better so as to provide for a more seamless and expanding delivery of public services throughout the country remains a challenge. Part of the challenge, are the spheres of government’s ongoing quest to find innovative ways to report key planning, programme and project-based information in a meaningful way to one another. Lack in content standards contributes to a current situation where officials in government spend an enormous amount of time trying to report on, manage, interpret and consolidate information to and from multiple government organisations.

As a result, Cabinet approved in May 2003, the establishment of the IDP Nerve Centre (IDPNC), as a tool to support the flow of strategic planning and project-based information across government.

Problem Statement

In order to ensure greater coherence and consistency in intergovernmental planning and service delivery, role players within national, provincial and local government have to develop a shared understanding and agree on development priorities, objectives and programmes of implementation and the corresponding resource demands of different areas across South Africa. At present, the absence of a system where national, provincial and municipalities can supply and maintain this information in an agreed format defeats the objective of integrated planning and development. Also, the majority of information emanating from planning processes (e.g. Integrated Development Planning) across government is stored either as documents or stand alone spreadsheets resulting in the following problems:

Inconsistent ad hoc requests for the same type of information from municipalities;
project actions are not linked to the priority issues and objectives of the organisation;
strategic plans do not have proper implementation programmes; scarce resources are not linked to implementation needs;
insufficient implementation management and monitoring;
role-players can't access key planning and project-based information in a manner that is both consistent and easy to understand. This limits the extent whereto different role-players can plan and coordinate different actions required for the same project;
updates and revisions of strategic plans, such as the Integrated Development Plans (IDP) of municipalities, are difficult;
limits the extent whereto these strategic plans can be monitored;
limits the extent whereto outputs of these plans can be aligned with the resources of other organisations, or incorporated into other systems and processes. For example, it is difficult for line departments to align their resources behind the municipal IDP, since they have no access to key aspects of the IDP in a format that's useful to them.

For intergovernmental development planning to become a reality, role players across government need to make the right information available at the right time in a way that is consistent and useful across government. Access to information need to take place in the process of plan preparation and revision, instead of when the plans have been completed. Accessing the right information at the right time relates very much to the annual process of prioritisation, budget allocation and implementation in government.

The IDP Nerve Centre a Solution

The IDP Nerve Centre is a web-based system that allows multiple organisations, involved in municipal service delivery, to capture and maintain their own strategic priorities, resource allocations and programme of implementation over a multi-year period in a manner that is consistent, thereby enhancing interpretation and ease of use by external stakeholders.

The basic version of the IDP Nerve Centre is funded by the Department of Provincial and Local Government. As soon as a municipality or department has nominated their organisational IDPNC Administrator, they will get access to the IDP Nerve Centre.

Some Features

Some of the features of the e-Project Application that forms part of a Portfolio of Applications in the IDP Nerve Centre are:

Define a portfolio of strategic priorities, objectives, strategies, programmes, projects and deliverables with the option of specifying the relationships (linkages) between them;
Specify for each programme, project or deliverable (milestone) the corresponding performance measures, location, timeframes, budget, roles and responsibilities and progress;
Specify performance indicators and linking them to objectives, programmes and projects;
Link a programme, project or deliverable to funding sources;
Add and maintain funding source detail;
Manage progress on a programme, project or deliverable level;
View and report on planning and project information in a variety of formats (tables, graphs, maps, documents);
View and report on information by region, organisation, status, financial year, programme, responsible person; and
Export information.

Benefits

Ultimately, individuals and organisations that are either directly or indirectly involved in development planning and service delivery in local government will benefit from the use of the IDPNC. These include but are not limited to members of Parliament; councillors; municipal managers; heads of departments; project managers; development planners; IDP coordinators & managers, financial managers and investors. Benefits of the IDP Nerve Centre are:

Single system that provides a consistent reporting platform across government over a multi-year period. This is especially helpful where government needs to monitor and evaluate past, present and future service delivery;
The ability to view the same type of information from neighbouring municipalities and provinces, thereby assisting in coordinating investments that might have a broader regional impact;
The ability to inform key government and non-government institutions of the strategic priorities, objectives, strategies, programmes and projects of the municipality over a multi-year period;
User permissions and validation thereof rests with the participating organisation. For example, the municipality decides who has what type of access rights to their information;
The IDP Nerve Centre holds data in one place, enabling government staff to access it. This makes it both faster and easier to undertake government-wide planning and coordinate key implementation activities;
The intention of the IDP Nerve Centre is to have a single system where departments and municipalities capture and maintain key information once and only once. As a result there is no wasted effort, no wasted storage capacity, and no inconsistency of data. This will assist departments and municipalities to supply this type of information once to the IDP Nerve Centre, instead of continuously supplying the same information to all affected parties. The affected parties will be able to source this information, in different ways from the IDP Nerve Centre. It is acknowledged that specific sector departments may require information levels or types unique to that sector in which case this will need to be requested separately by the sector. The Nerve Centre should, at least, avert the need for municipalities to provide the same general planning and project-based information on numerous occasions to numerous departments.