Post-apartheid South Africa faces major challenges in ensuring that it provides high quality and sustainable services that meet citizens’ expectations. The public wants local government that is not only responsive to their needs but also provides ‘optimal and professional services’ across all areas (Meyiwa et al. 2014:4). Thus, government has the onerous responsibility to develop and implement a developmental framework that redresses apartheid legacies. This calls for municipalities to develop proactive responses that free citizens from poverty and underdevelopment.

Historically, local government operated in a manner where one group was more privileged while others were marginalised (Govender 2011:113). Basic services delivery did not cater for all; thus, the democratic government inherited significant backlogs. The new administration adopted a radical transformation policy that aimed to correct the anomalies created by the former regime by ensuring effective public administration. At the same time, it embarked on a programme to educate citizens on human rights, the Constitution and other important pieces of legislation. It was envisaged that this would empower them to demand better, high quality public services and at the same time hold government accountable for its actions (Naidu 2012:279).

Sadly, as the nation has developed over the past two decades, basic services delivery has been on a downward spiral, characterised by ongoing community protests in many local municipalities. According to Govender (2011:6), the root causes of poor service delivery include poor performance culture in many municipalities, a lack of competent technical human resources, political interference and poor financial management as well as an organisational structure that was not aligned. To correct these anomalies, the government adopted a people-centred framework in 1997, commonly referred to as the ‘Batho Pele’ (a Sesotho phrase meaning ‘people first’) principles (GGLN 2012:19). The primary aim of this policy instrument is to encourage public servants to pursue and sustain excellence in basic services provision. Furthermore, the framework aims to transform basic services delivery with regard to service standards, courtesy, information, transparency and openness. It can be argued that these principles facilitate accurate measurement of local government’s commitment to deliver sustainable and high quality basic services. For this to become reality, a monitoring and evaluation system is required to enhance corporate governance at the local government level (Hargreaves 2010:35). This article argues that a monitoring and evaluation system is a critical development tool that enhances the legitimacy of this sphere of governance because it ensures that it functions optimally by offering citizen-responsive services. The article is organised as follows: following the introduction in the first section, the second section defines selected key terms specific to the article, followed by a brief discussion on institutionalising monitoring and evaluation in local government in the third section. The fourth section discusses the challenges associated with the institutionalisation of the system, while the fifth explores possible solutions to these challenges and the sixth section briefly examines how to operationalise and sustain an effective municipal-wide monitoring and evaluation system (MWMES). The article concludes by making recommendations and identifying good practices that local municipalities can adopt to maintain an effective monitoring and evaluation system that ensures that basic services are provided efficiently and sustainably.

As the sphere of government that is closest to citizens, the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa mandates local government with the responsibility of delivering public services equitably and fairly (Koma 2010:113). The primary aim of this constitutional mandate is to reverse the underdevelopment created by the apartheid regime. In this regard, national government envisages local government that is capable of working with citizens in their locality to address their challenges and provide collaborative, sustainable solutions. However, Davids (2011:3573) notes that many municipalities across the country are struggling to fulfil this mandate, especially given the change from an inward-looking approach, that is, an approach focusing on municipal internal processes, to an outward-looking approach, meaning one that focuses primarily on citizens. Regrettably, most citizens are still wallowing in abject, chronic poverty, while unemployment and inequality are growing apace. The onus is on local government to address these challenges.

In response to this dilemma and in order to improve government performance, the national government developed the Government-Wide Monitoring and Evaluation System. This framework aims to enable national government to improve governance and resource allocation across all departments and agencies. It sets out specific intervention objectives, inputs, outputs, outcomes and expected impact to ensure that government delivers in line with citizens’ needs (Presidency, 2011:11). The government envisages a functional and effective public service that:

It is important to note that the success of this framework depends on support from other key stakeholders who provide oversight of different critical aspects. For instance, the Presidency is responsible for coordinating the implementation of national policies through government departments to ensure integrated service delivery (National Treasury 2010:17). Another key stakeholder is Statistics South Africa, the government agency responsible for collecting and analysing data to generate accurate information to inform government policy planning processes as well as decision-making (Govender 2011:71). The Public Administration Leadership and Management Academy, now the National School of Government, is a critical stakeholder as it is tasked with building the leadership and management capacities of middle and senior government officials, including their knowledge of monitoring and evaluation (Govender 2011). These and other stakeholders, such as the DPME, office of the Auditor-General, office of the Premier and the Public Service Commission, need to ensure that government-wide monitoring and evaluation is undertaken responsibly by relevant line departments as shown in Figure 1.

At the provincial level, provincial-wide monitoring and evaluation systems are established to ensure that provincial developmental objectives are realised. This includes the coordination of interdepartmental efforts in terms of policy formulation, review and planning as well as overseeing basic services delivery (Govender 2011:106). However, challenges have been reported in institutionalising monitoring and evaluation systems at the provincial level, including complex reporting mechanisms and non-alignment of provincial objectives with national priorities. It is important to note that both national and provincial monitoring and evaluation levels are interlinked and interdependent. They are designed to complement and depend on one another in order to ensure consistency in tracking government performance on its programmes. At local level, the integration of monitoring and evaluation has been fragmented and uncoordinated. Because of a lack of human and financial resources, municipalities have not implemented a MWMES (Govender 2011:107). Monitoring and evaluation have thus not been institutionalised at this level. The following section discusses this question.

As noted in the previous section, an effective monitoring and evaluation system delivers because it is owned by those responsible for leadership at any level of governance. Govender (2011:88) argues that in order to institutionalise a monitoring and evaluation system in a sustainable manner, municipal leadership should appreciate that the system is a critical management tool to guide its performance. That this is not the case at present is demonstrated by the increase in service delivery protests by citizens who are frustrated by the slow pace of basic services provision.

The second challenge associated with the institutionalisation of monitoring and evaluation at the local government level is the lack of competent technical personnel skilled in monitoring and evaluation (Uys 2010:4–5). While significant investment has been made in improving public servants’ skills, the State of Municipal Capacity Report for 2010/2011 reveals that major capacity shortfalls persist in most local municipalities (SMCR 2012:8). The deficits are generally higher in rural than urban municipalities (Ajam 2012:4–5). The lack of critical personnel is a catastrophic situation that is a significant impediment to basic services provision.

Thirdly and connected to the above point, most municipalities are unable to accurately align their integrated development plans with the provincial growth and development strategy, which leads to lack of alignment of priorities between municipalities and premiers’ offices. Therefore, the vision that municipalities set for themselves is often not realised because of a lack of technical human resource capacity to enable accurate interpretation and subsequent implementation of provincial goals at local government level.

Fourthly, according to the Role of Premiers’ Offices in Government-Wide Monitoring and Evaluation Practice Guide: A Good Practice Guide (Presidency 2008:4), there is a general lack of understanding of municipal processes and systems among employees. This poses serious challenges to municipalities insofar as performance management is concerned as the quality of services provided may be compromised. Increased service delivery-related protests may result.

Fifthly, the same guide highlights that the monitoring and evaluation data collected are usually of poor quality and inaccurate (Presidency 2008:4). This suggests that municipalities have significant capacity limitations in generating useful, evidence-based decision-making as a result of a lack of accurate data. It also means that many municipalities will continue lagging behind as far as basic services provision is concerned because they cannot accurately track progress made towards reducing basic services backlogs.

Sixthly, limited understanding of the importance of performance measurement among municipal management and staff is a key impediment to institutionalising monitoring and evaluation in municipalities (Govender & Reddy 2014b:70). Thus, there is no organisational buy-in to sustain effective monitoring and evaluation practices in local government.

Seventhly, the inertia to change mindset about the way performance measurement has been made has complicated institutionalising monitoring and evaluation in local government (Govender & Reddy 2014b:70). For a long time, municipal staff have operated within a mindset of the past, ‘we have always done things in this way’ (Govender & Reddy 2014b). This kind of mindset resists anything new or change that challenges the status quo. Without a paradigm shift internally with municipal staff and management, institutionalising monitoring and evaluation in local government will remain a distant reality.

While municipalities are complex structures, there is an urgent need to explore ways to address the challenges that are hampering the institutionalisation of monitoring and evaluation at this level. This is based on acknowledgement that monitoring and evaluation is a crucial management and performance tool that helps to assess the impact of government interventions on citizens. The following section discusses the various ways in which these challenges can be mitigated.

In every challenge lie possibilities for innovation, which normally lead to improved services. The challenges that local municipalities have experienced as they attempt to institutionalise monitoring and evaluation are not uncommon. The main issue is the way institutionalisation should occur to facilitate the process. This section discusses strategies to mitigate the challenges identified.

A sustainable and an effective MWMES is important for a developmental local government. This is because it provides a framework of operation that guides municipalities to deliver their interventions according to set objectives and targets while being cognizant of citizen’s needs. Therefore, to ensure that an effective MWMES is established and sustained, the following aspects need to be considered:

In summary, operating an efficient and sustainable MWMES requires significant coordination of multiple role players to ensure it delivers results as expected. However, it also requires a significant level of support from political and administrative leadership at the municipal level, who should work in tandem with each other to ensure they support municipalities in delivering quality public services.

Monitoring and evaluation is critical for ensuring that local government that is responsive to citizens’ needs. Admittedly, there is no one-size-fits-all approach for tackling the challenges facing local government. However, to create conditions for improvement and sustained good performance of the sector, both political and administrative leadership in municipalities must work with each other in delivering their services to the public sustainably. They must also possess requisite technical skills and competencies in order to execute municipal monitoring and evaluation responsibilities with discretion and sensitivity.

Moreover, the three spheres of government need to work more closely to ensure an integrated effective and efficient service delivery. Monitoring and evaluation plays a crucial role in connecting these spheres through a coordinated linking of critical activities such as information flow inter-departmentally to ensure accurate reporting of government programmes. This means intergovernmental relations among these governance spheres must be strong to ensure mutual accountability.

To realise this ideal on a consistent basis, there must be a commitment geared towards embracing municipal-wide monitoring and evaluation as a tool for enabling a results-oriented developmental local government. In pursuit of a developmental local government, municipalities must prioritise upskilling and re-skilling their human resources (municipal officials), in order to standardise performance and outputs from the system. This implies that there should be better coordination of monitoring and evaluation efforts across departments and units, to ensure timely and effective decision-making for better outcomes. To this end, monitoring and evaluation in municipalities needs to move beyond compliance towards institutionalisation in an incremental way, to improve monitoring and evaluation practice in the sector. The implementation of monitoring and evaluation systems contributes to the pursuit of good governance. Failure to move towards institutionalisation means that monitoring and evaluation practice in municipalities is reduced to a mere checklist exercise. Ultimately, the ability of municipalities to be accountable may be compromised.