SERIES: By the Numbers is a new series – a collection of 10 interesting numbers from current affairs and Inside Politics articles. I shall try to run it each Friday (if not every Friday then most Fridays) – hopefully, some more light-hearted reading for the end of the week. Below the main graphic, I have linked to the source of as many of the numbers as possible.
FEATURE: The Public Service Commission recently published a report assessing the performance of the nine Offices of the Premier. The only Office of the Premier not run by the ANC – in the Western Cape – came out on top. What follows is a summary of that report and a more detailed look at how the DA-run Western Cape Office of the Premier faired. There is some critical information in this article and some invaluable statistics. All in all, further proof that, where the DA governs, it delivers better services than the ANC, to more people.
ARTICLE: The 2011 State of the Public Service Report sets out in stark detail how reported cases of corruption are ignored by the majority of the public service and those departments responsible for investigating them. Indeed, the percentage of reported cases for which feedback has been received has fallen from 70% to just 10% in six years. The stand out exception? The Western Cape. Read on for some significant statistics.
FEATURE: Annual Reports go directly to accountability and transparency. If they are produced by a government timeously and made easily available to the public and press, it says something about that government’s commitment to those two principles. What follows is an assessment of the extent to which annual reports are available on provincial department websites. In undertaking it, it became apparent that not only were the reports scarce, but that some 18 websites just didn’t work at all. To find out which ones, read on.
SERIES: A good quote can hold within it a thousand separate insights, just as surely as some poorly constructed thought can reveal someone as a fool. Quotable Quotes looks at what is said, what was said and, on occasion, how the two compare. Today, the ANC regularly accuses the DA of ‘opposing for the sake of opposing’ but what of its record in opposition, in the Western Cape legislature? Does it practice what it preaches or, like so much the ANC says and does, is that criticism little more than hypocritical posturing?
www.inside-politics.org 