Measuring Government Business Incentive Scheme – Learning Brief
June 2021
The South African government is committed to developing the economy, creating employment, and attracting foreign investment. Investment incentives are used to mitigate against the cost or uncertainty of doing business in South Africa, and to upgrade or sustain production and employment, especially in priority sectors as set out in the NIPF, the NDP, the 9 Point Plan, and the post-COVID Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan (ERRP).
The South African government sees business incentives as an important mechanism to raise competitiveness, address historical inequalities and increase the participation of historically disadvantaged groups in the economy. Investment incentives are viewed according to their typology or the nature of the outcome they are trying to achieve. The following types of investment incentives are typical of the South Africa incentives landscape:
1. Direct financial incentives: Including grants; loans at low interest.
2. Indirect fiscal incentives: including tax rebates and tax holidays.
3.Other non‐fiscal incentives: including regulatory and administrative concessions; and subsidised or reduced service costs.
Evaluation Update: April-September 2021
September 2021
Status of Evaluations
- 73 evaluations in the NEPs.
- 15 dropped/stuck evaluations.
- 58 evaluations implemented and finalised.
- 33 (59%) served at Cabinet.
- 49 (87.5%) improvement plans developed.
- 50 (89%) completed and closed evaluations.
- 6 improvement plan monitoring stage.
Country Gender Indicator Framework
November 2020
The Department of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities (DWYPD) is the custodian and steward of gender policy in South Africa. Its primary role is to develop policy and ensure that the country’s gender priorities, including those arising from national and international commitments, are mainstreamed across the state machinery towards achieving gender equality and better development outcomes for women and girls. To this end, the DWYPD developed a Framework on Gender – Responsive Planning, Budgeting, Monitoring, Evaluation and Auditing (GRPBMEA) that sets out the country’s approach to mainstreaming gender across the public policy cycle. The framework describes the problem statement, provides a comprehensive overview of the policy and legislative landscape, articulates the approach to GRPBMEA and identifies implementation priorities and the roles and responsibilities of critical departments in this regard.
Fundamentally, the GRPBMEA is about turning policy commitments into actions and results by integrating them into government policy cycle. However, policy commitments by themselves are less effective if they are not accompanied by a set of indicators that can be integrated within planning and budgeting instruments and to track and monitor progress against defined targets.
A Framework to Assess What Works, How, And Why
March 2021
This policy brief presents an analytical framework for investigating the effects of interventions aiming to support the use of evidence for decision making. The brief describes the components of the framework and how it has been applied to guide the analysis of evidence-use cases and interventions. The objective of the analytical framework is to provide an inductive analytical tool that can be adapted and applied by all stakeholders in an evidence journey and at different stages to better understand the process and outcome of evidence use. The aim is to facilitate a structured analysis of evidence use in decision making to transfer and compare findings and lessons learnt across contexts. Having used the framework to guide the analysis of the eight case studies presented, the following key messages have been identified:
- An analytical framework for evidence use supports the design and evaluation of interventions and analysis of cases of evidence use.
- Evidence use is not a passive process and the framework provides a versatile analytical tool to guide the active intervention in and facilitation of this process.
The framework suggest three main shifts in thinking about evidence use:
- Centring the decision makers and their demand for evidence as the starting point for evidence use.
- Unpacking evidence use interventions by underlying mechanisms of change.
- Conceptualising evidence use as a behaviour change.
Mise En Oeuvre De La Phase Pilote De l’Outil d’Evaluation De La Performance De Gestion Du Service Public (MPAT)
Décembre 2019
La mise en oeuvre de la phase pilote de l’outil d’évaluation de la performance de gestion du service public (MPAT) a permis de:
- créer une mobilisation effective et une prise de conscience collective autour de l’outil au regard du niveau d’appropriation et de participation des acteurs ayant pris part à cette phase pilote;
- mettre en évidence au niveau des organisations concernées les tâches, activités ou actions (ne nécessitant pas forcément de moyens financiers) généralement négligées et dont la réalisation participe de l’amélioration des performances de gestion d’un sous-domaine donné;
- disposer d’un référentiel de mesure des améliorations dans les pratiques de gestion au niveau des organisations;
- relever les insuffisances dont la prise en compte participe de l’amélioration de la qualité de l’outil pour la phase de généralisation.
De l’analyse des résultats obtenus à l’autoévaluation et à la modération, il se dégage un score minimum d’environ 66/100, soutenu par les efforts d’amélioration des pratiques de gestion dans certains domaines tels que la planification et la gestion des ressources financières et matérielles. Des améliorations ciblées sont nécessaires dans les domaines de la gestion des ressources humaines, de l’information et des connaissances, la gouvernance et la reddition des comptes.