How to transform the way government works to deliver against bold targets for strategic priority projects
Western Cape Game Changer Series Part 1

Governments world-wide are notoriously bureaucratic in the way that they work. While the publicised intent of all the red-tape is to ensure that there is proper accountability, that spending can be tracked, and that action is taken in a responsible fashion, an inevitable side-effect is the stifling of innovation and dramatic slowing down of delivery where it is most desperately needed.
In South Africa, where the reality of corruption by both politicians and government officials often impacts negatively on the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable, achieving a clean audit becomes the holy grail for any good government, allowing it to prove that it is above the illicit use of public funds. This has created a risk-averse culture, making it more difficult to achieve buy-in and drive for ambitious projects.
The Game Changers
The Western Cape Cabinet is committed to its vision of creating a highly skilled, innovation driven, resource efficient, high-opportunity society for all. In particular, the Province places significant emphasis on improving educational outcomes and opportunities for young people. It is therefore no surprise that, of the seven strategic projects which could serve as catalysts for major improvements in people’s lives, and which were launched by the Premier in 2014 for her second five-year term of office, three of these land squarely in the education space.
These seven priority interventions, or Game Changers, are bold interventions that focus on either leveraging the best opportunities or tackling some of our greatest challenges in the Province. By their nature, Game Changers have ambitious targets, aimed at accelerating economic growth, job creation and social inclusion.
The 7 Game Changers:
- Pioneering a major “live, work and play” development called the Better Living Model that integrates communities;
- Apprenticeship: Expanding Vocational Skills and Training;
- Expanding quality After School activities;
- Achieving Energy Security;
- Implementing quality eLearning at schools;
- Reducing Alcohol Related Harms ; and
- Delivering High Speed Broadband
In launching these Game Changers, Premier Helen Zille recognised the challenges of implementing ambitious programmes in government, where compliance is the over-riding consideration:
“It has become increasingly evident that we need a new way of delivery, one that is uncompromisingly results-focused and performance-driven.”
As a result, the decision was taken to apply the Deliverology methodology developed by Sir Michael Barber, head of the first Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit in the UK in 2001. Sir Michael is currently Managing Partner of Delivery Associates, and is the well-known author of How to Run A Government: So that Citizens Benefit and Taxpayers Don’t Go Crazy.
Deliverology is an approach to manage reform initiatives that requires three key components: (1) the establishment of a delivery unit to drive progress and take responsibility for overall management of the project, (2) data collection to set clear targets and trajectories, and (3) the establishment of routines.
Delivering on the Game Changer Goals
The Western Cape Delivery Support Unit was established in 2015, and commenced the planning to delivery on the seven Game Changer goals.
Working together with the Departments to ensure transversal planning and delivery in government, the Delivery Support Unit also focussed on building partnerships with other spheres of government and civil society, as well as academia and international organisations.

Comprehensive Roadmaps were drafted for the Game Changers. These documents draw together a narrative around the problem statements and challenges, the Game Changer goals, and the transformative strategy to be implemented to achieve these. Importantly, they also detail the delivery plan (what will be delivered and what success looks like), identify key performance indicators, set targets and trajectories, outline governance and show the delivery chains in which the roles of all stakeholders in the Game Changer projects are reflected.

Following the Deliverology methodology, routine report-backs to the political leadership of the Province provides a mechanism to unblock any issues that derail an accelerated delivery schedule. So let’s examine how this methodology is applied to drive change in the area of education.
Education Game Changers
Education in South Africa faces many challenges. Not least amongst these is the legacy of our past, which continues to have an impact, holding learners in disadvantaged communities back from embracing opportunities and realising their aspirations. In many cases, learners leave school inadequately prepared for a successful and productive life in the 21st Century. A high percentage of school leavers have learning outcomes that do not prepare them to succeed in life, the world of work and further successful learning.
The three education-linked Game Changers encompass the critical goals required to provide better opportunities for the young people of the Province:
Apprenticeship
The Apprenticeship Game Changer ultimately aims to achieve sufficient, appropriately qualified technical and vocational skilled people to meet the needs of the prioritised economic growth areas in the Western Cape by 2019. This requires raising awareness of technical vocations as an attractive option, working with business in key sectors to identify workplace opportunities, and critically, improving maths results of learners who might pursue a career in one of the targeted occupations.
After School Programmes
The goal of the After School Game Changer is to ensure that at least 20 percent of learners in the Western Cape, who attend low- and no-fee schools, have regular and sustained participation in quality after school activities which contribute towards positive youth development. The success of this programme depends on creating an enabling environment, focussed on school and programme leadership, safety, nutrition, communication and IT access.
A great deal of work is being done to ensure that we define what comprises a quality programme, professionalise the sector, and engage constructively with all of our partners to agree on the norms and standards that will deliver programmes that are both interesting and valuable. In this way, we will attract more learners and be better able to achieve the goals of higher school retention, reduced risk-taking behaviour and improved academic performance.
Finally, in order to reach the number of learners that we wish to impact over the period of the Game Changer, we are leveraging partnerships with other spheres of government and NGOs working in this sector, expanding both the breadth and depth of programmes throughout the Province.

eLearning
The eLearning Game Changer seeks to enhance the teaching and learning experience of our learners, predominantly in maths and languages, through the use of technology. Building on the advanced roll-out of broadband to schools in the Western Cape through the Broadband Game Changer (which will have connected 1278 schools by December 2017), this Game Changer aims to ensure that every teacher and every learner is exposed to technology and 21st century skills, and able to experience a changed classroom with all the benefits of quality eLearning. The Game Changer seeks to ensure that eLearning is not treated as a stand-alone project, but rather that eLearning activities are integrated into all elements of the Education Department’s core business. This requires a significant change management process.
The eLearning Game Changer comprises six simultaneous and integrated streams of work.

Delivery of infrastructure and technology must be supported by a change of the culture in our schools. Integrating new tools into the teaching and learning process can be an intimidating experience for many teachers who have used the same lesson format for many years. We’re asking teachers to move right out of their comfort zones, especially when we understand that, given our history, many of them have never had the opportunity themselves to engage with computers and the internet. Placing teachers in a position where they lead a classroom of learners who may well be far more comfortable than they are with the new tools of their trade, means that we have a responsibility to prepare and support them in this change.
Implementing the systemic change that we want to see in our education system requires strong leadership in our schools, people with the ability to lead change and support for those responsible for making it happen in the classroom. We have therefore placed great emphasis on delivering Change Management programmes to key school personnel who are at the forefront of the eLearning Game Changer, ensuring that they are better prepared to manage the challenges that they will face.
In order to ensure quality learning and teaching, it is imperative that we provide excellent eLearning resources to be integrated into the classroom through a changed pedagogy. The Department therefore established an ePortal to host digital resources, attracting contributions from the private sector and members of the public who are passionate about education, and we are driving a campaign to encourage teachers to share their best resources with others. Most importantly, given that one of our key aims through this Game Changer is to close the digital divide between our poorer learners and those in better-resourced schools, these resources can be accessed free of charge through the wide area networks installed in our schools. In addition to the growing number of items on the ePortal, a number of mathematics and literacy products are being assessed for their suitability and impact on learners’ performance.
Our teachers are a critical element in the success of this project. We want to ensure that teachers don’t simply replace traditional chalk and talk methods with a digitised version of the same. A process of understanding what level of competence of our teachers currently possess is informing the roll-out of professional development programmes that will enable teachers to embrace a new role of more personalised and collaborative learning.
The opportunities to streamline administrative tasks, including new digital classroom management, learner management systems and learning management systems, also provides platforms to improve data collection, analysis and feedback to schools, teachers, learners and parents.
South Africa today faces many challenges that did not disappear with the dawning of our new democracy in 1994. Many of these impact the most vulnerable members of our society, including millions of young people. The legacies of separate education systems, poverty and inequality all persist in our communities. In Premier Zille’s words:
“The biggest challenge in education is what we can do about the millions of children “left behind”. The history of our democracy is marked by false starts and dead ends in the myriad attempts to find solutions.
Increasingly, the future of education will involve harnessing technology, which could help resolve many of the hitherto insoluble crises we have faced. Of course, this is not a given. But it is already happening in middle-class schools. If we fail to provide the same access to poor children, they will merely fall further and further behind.”
Changing the paradigm for millions of learners and young people requires laser-like focus on transformational projects that change the game. Ensuring that compliant-driven government departments are supported to break free of restricting red tape, and are able to deliver at scale and at pace, requires a new way of delivery — results-focused, data and performance-driven. The Western Cape Game Changers are a real attempt to achieve this, and to ensure delivery of our key goals by the end of the term of this government in May or June 2019.
This is the first post in a series sharing the Western Cape’s forward-thinking approach to delivering on its ambitious Game Changer strategic goals. In the next posts, we will talk about the historical local context in South Africa and dive deeper into the role of data in delivering on these goals.

