1,720,957 research outputs found
BRIDGING THE ACCOUNTABILITY GAP: ALIGNING EVALUATION AND AUDITING TO IMPROVE MUNICIPAL PERFORMANCE IN SOUTH AFRICA
No full textObjective: This paper examines the persistent inefficiencies in South African municipalities, focusing on financial management, procurement, and service delivery. Despite numerous recommendations from key oversight bodies such as AGSA, PSC, and DPME, these inefficiencies continue to persist. The primary objective of this study is to propose a Unified Oversight Framework (UOF) that integrates evaluation and auditing functions at the municipal level, which can enhance performance and accountability in local governance.
Theoretical Framework: The study is grounded in three key theoretical frameworks: New Public Management (NPM), which emphasizes efficiency and accountability in public administration; Principal-Agent Theory, which examines the relationship between municipalities (agents) and oversight bodies (principals), and Public Value Theory, which focuses on creating value for the public through transparent, accountable, and effective public service delivery.
Method: This research employs a qualitative case study approach, analyzing publicly available reports from key oversight bodies such as AGSA and PSC spanning from 2010 to 2024. Document analysis is used to identify recurring themes, inefficiencies, and recommendations that are not being effectively implemented at the municipal level. The study includes a comparative analysis to identify how these recommendations align or conflict with each other across different years and municipalities.
Results and Discussion: The analysis reveals persistent inefficiencies in municipalities, particularly in financial oversight, procurement processes, and infrastructure management. The findings highlight the lack of a coordinated approach between auditing and evaluation functions. While both AGSA and PSC offer valuable recommendations, their fragmented implementation undermines the effectiveness of the oversight process. The study demonstrates that a coordinated framework integrating evaluation and auditing can improve accountability, provide clearer guidance to municipalities, and enhance service delivery. The Unified Oversight Framework (UOF) is proposed to harmonize audit and evaluation functions, thereby improving governance and fostering long-term improvements in municipal performance.
Research Implications: This research provides insights into the benefits of integrated oversight and contributes to both theoretical debates and practical policy development in public governance. The findings suggest potential legislative reforms and capacity-building initiatives to support the implementation of the framework.
Originality/Value: This paper presents an original approach to municipal oversight by integrating traditionally separate auditing and evaluation functions. It contributes significantly to the academic literature and offers a viable path for improving local governance in South Africa through coordinated oversight mechanisms
Factors influencing the implementation of the Auditor-General’s recommendations in South African municipalities
Full text linkAbstract: This study focuses on factors that influence the effective implementation of audit recommendations given by the Auditor General (AG), with specific reference to South African municipalities. The establishment of democratic local government in South Africa in the year 2000 decentralised the decision-making powers from the centre to the periphery. Municipalities are accountable for their own financial preparation and the planning of their budgetary processes. The national government, though, remains accountable for providing resources in terms of funding and programs or policy implementation. Notwithstanding the enormous investment in terms of resources (funding and capacity building programs), empirical studies and municipal audit reports revealed that most of the South African municipalities were not taking corrective action on the issues of irregularities raised in prior year audits; hence some of the weaknesses and problems remained unresolved or were recurring yearly. Thus, this study aims to discuss factors that influence municipalities failure to efficiently and effectively implement audit recommendations given by Auditor General of South Africa (AGSA). The research methodology used in this research is mainly qualitative and relied heavily on robust literature study (academic overview) and a review of key documents (specific reports on local government performance) in to achieve this research objective. The main findings of this study are that factors influencing implementation of audit recommendation include: availability of resources and time, lack of accountability, lack of follow up actions, complex issues, staffing issues, and lack of reasonable time frame for implementing the recommendations. To deal with these challenges, the study recommends the following strategies: establishing and ensuring a vibrant Audit committee, planning and determining the time frame in which to implement external audit recommendations, developing implementation progress report system, undertaking follow up actions, and the government to commensurate responsibility of leaders with accountability for proper implementation of audit recommendations in the South African Municipalities.M.A. (Public Management and Governance
Evidence ignored? Unpacking barriers to evaluation use in the city of Tshwane’s indigent programme exit strategy
Full text linkEvaluation systems are slowly making inroads in South African municipalities, particularly in the metros, yet their effective utilisation remains uneven across service delivery programmes. This study investigates the barriers affecting the uptake of evaluation in implementing the Indigent Programme Exit Strategy within the City of Tshwane (CoT) Metropolitan Municipality. Despite the strategic intent of the exit strategy to reduce long-term dependency and promote self-sufficiency among beneficiaries, the study finds that evaluation evidence is rarely used to inform decisions related to the strategy\u27s design, implementation, or review. Instead, reliance is placed on administrative reporting and compliance-driven monitoring data, which limits learning, adaptation, and accountability. Using a qualitative case study approach grounded in institutional and systems theory, the study draws on semi-structured interviews and document analysis to identify key barriers, including weak political incentives for evaluation use, limited integration of evaluation processes into decision-making cycles, and inadequate feedback loops between evaluators, implementers, and policymakers. The findings underscore that the challenge is not the absence of M&E systems but rather the underutilisation of evaluation evidence to inform programmatic change. The article concludes by offering context-sensitive recommendations for enhancing evaluation uptake within municipal exit strategies and related interventions, contributing broader lessons for strengthening evidence use in local governance
The silent quintile: Infrastructural inequities and developmental risk in township-based early childhood development centres in South Africa
Full text linkThe quality of infrastructure in Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres has a profound influence on child development outcomes, particularly in marginalised communities. This article investigates the infrastructural challenges facing township-based ECD centres in Johannesburg, South Africa, and explores how these challenges influence parents’ decisions and, potentially, the developmental trajectories of their children. Drawing on the National Integrated ECD Policy (2015) and the Department of Social Development (DSD) infrastructure norms, the study employs a mixed-methods design to assess the availability and adequacy of physical infrastructure in selected centres. Parents of children attending township ECD centres participated through an online quantitative survey and telephonic qualitative interviews conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings reveal widespread compliance with minimum infrastructure standards—such as access to clean water, basic sanitation, and classroom space—but expose critical gaps in outdoor play areas, safety features, and child-friendly environments. These deficiencies are compounded by limited financial resources, overcrowded facilities, and dual-purpose premises that serve both as homes and ECD centres. While parents generally expressed satisfaction with proximity, staff care, and affordability, their responses also highlighted low awareness of infrastructural quality as a determinant of developmental outcomes. The study concludes that township ECD infrastructure reflects a “silent quintile” system—an informal, inequitable tier of provisioning shaped by historical neglect, regulatory ambiguity, and constrained investment. It argues for targeted infrastructure grants, strengthened monitoring mechanisms, and parental awareness campaigns to ensure that ECD infrastructure supports rather than hinders child development. This article contributes to the growing discourse on structural inequality in early childhood provisioning and calls for policy coherence and cross-sectoral collaboration to advance the right to quality early learning for all children in South Africa
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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