Integrated Planning and Reporting Reforms between Local and District municipalities in North West Province

Abstract

Since the transformation of the Republic of South Africa post 1994, local government has remained the focal support to deliver basic services. Many policies and programmes were introduced to build and support efforts for a capable, developmental and ethical state in order to address gaps in the planning systems to better contribute towards the achievement of the country’s developmental mandates. This resulted in a need to focus on strengthening coherence and support across the local government and other spheres of government. Local government planning and transformation became a centre of focus to which service delivery planning should take place in order to provide primary basic services to communities in a sustainable manner. The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa and the National Development Plan (NDP) enshrined and paved the way for the underlying efforts to take place and to ensure that planning legislation, policies and programmes are initiated to eliminate duplication in providing services. The White Paper on Local Government indicates that municipalities need to have at least three sets of capacities in order to play an effective developmental role in improving service delivery. Back-to-Basics was then introduced to revitalise local government by ensuring that planning and reporting became the key need for this set of capacities to improve the functioning of municipalities. Therefore, the aim of this study is to critically analyze and test the Back-to- Basics Programme against the integrated reporting frames that comes through the implementation of the Programme. There have been concerns regarding how planning and integrating functions across the spheres of government. One of the challenges regarding planning and integration is the socio-economic phenomenalism that is driven by failing integrated systems to collaborate and share information. This study is justified on the basis of exploring and understand the complexity, localised human activity system and environment in which the planning and reporting mechanisms are taking place across the local and district municipalities. To find the answers to research questions and objectives, the study was conducted through the desktop research method which incorporated qualitative means of primary and secondary data collections dimension in order to understand complexity, and localization of human activity system and environment in which the practices and processes of integrated performance reporting is carried out across the municipalities. This practice and process is examined by virtue of planning and reporting processes that are taking place in order to implement the B2B Programme and how the approach can be used to compare service delivery compliance across III the spheres of government. In conclusion the Programme is welcomed and is viewed as a programme to bring change in the municipalities in a simpler, faster and better approach which will eventually lead to improved service delivery felt by the communities. However, there are innovative ways that need to be developed to ensure that clear planning and reporting processes are taking place in terms of implementation of the Programme across both the levels of local and district municipalities in order to instil a better and better coordination of the Programme which is getting basic services right.