Presidency has hotline wires crossed

After a year of being operational, the presidential hotline is no more than a testament to ANC failure, says the Democratic Alliance (DA).

The hotline, established by President Jacob Zuma, turned a year old yesterday. The service was created to ensure citizens have easier access to the Presidency and to enable greater interactivity.

The Presidency says a number of citizens have been assisted through the hotline service, but DA parliamentary leader and shadow minister of the Presidency Athol Trollip says it has become “a spectacular example of the Zuma administration's failure to deliver”.

Trollip says the statement released by the Presidency yesterday, to mark the hotline's first anniversary, “not only posits a misleading appraisal of the hotline's performance, but also directly contradicts comments made earlier this year by President Jacob Zuma”.

The statement said 72 299 calls were received from the public since the inception of the hotline, with the total number of complaints, up to 7 September, being 57 375. It also said the service resolves about 400 cases per week, which puts the resolution of all complaints to a total of 30 540.

But Trollip says the Presidency has its wires crossed with these figures.

“These statistics are, at best, an indication of the poor administration of the hotline data and, at worst, a clear attempt by the Presidency to mislead the public.”

Trollip explains that in March, during an oversight visit to the hotline, delegates were informed that 674 864 calls had been made to the hotline. “This figure - confirmed by the president in a reply to a DA Parliamentary question in May - is nine times the number of calls reported in [yesterday's] statement by the Presidency.”

He adds that this discrepancy may be because of dropped calls, given the hotline's 70% dropped call rate. “It is, however, difficult to analyse the statistics put forward by the Presidency, as there is clearly confusion over their accuracy.”

Trollip also criticises the Presidency's failure to mention the hotline's “chronic problem of dropped calls”.

“According to the Parliamentary reply received by the DA in May, the president confirmed that 484 327 of the hotline's 674 864 received calls had been dropped, meaning that 70% of the calls made to the hotline had never even reached an operator.”

With regards to the number of resolved calls, Trollip says the figures are misleading because calls are logged as resolved when the enquiry is passed on to a government department, and not when the problem being reported has actually been corrected.

“The statistics released by the Presidency appear to constitute a gross overestimation of the hotline's success. Desperate to paint a picture of effective delivery, facts have been misrepresented and definitions of what constitutes real outcomes skewed to present a more palatable image of what is clearly a service delivery and PR disaster.”

He says the Presidency has admitted that 57 375 complaints have been lodged with the hotline in the last year and this gives an indication of the scale of South Africans' frustration concerning the failure of the ANC government to deliver on its promises.

The Presidency cites a major challenge of the hotline as the need to obtain quicker responses from government departments and provinces.

“To resolve this problem, and in keeping with the president's call to create a government that works faster, harder and smarter to respond to the needs of the people, the president decided to make directors-general responsible for resolving the queries and complaints in their departments.”

Trollip agrees that this is the critical point in the failure of the hotline. “No matter how well equipped or well funded the hotline is, if those government departments to whom cases are referred to be resolved are not working efficiently, the hotline is little more than a government PR machine.”

The Department for Performance Monitoring and Evaluation will conduct a first year assessment of the hotline to look at challenges, successes and opportunities to improve the hotline, according to the statement. The review will assess what interventions need to be introduced to make the hotline more effective.

“We will continue working to improve this service as it is clearly a valuable tool in keeping government in touch, and also to train public servants to take members of the public seriously when they raise issues and enquiries,” said Zuma.

In its first year of operation, the hotline has been allocated almost R12 million of state funds, according to the DA.

The party adds that, despite this expenditure, the hotline has made little impact on improving South Africans' experiences of dealing with government.

“Instead of investing more state funds into this failed initiative, President Zuma's government should focus on improving service delivery in all spheres of government,” says Trollip.

He adds that, if the hotline had been used effectively, it could have boosted interaction between government and the public, improved service delivery by providing a feedback mechanism for South Africans to engage with government, and helped the Zuma administration to isolate the trends underlying service delivery problems.

DA shadow minister of public service and administration Anchen Dreyer says the biggest problem is that calls are directed to the wrong departments and, more importantly, information regarding the calls is not recorded properly, which means the calls cannot be followed up or resolved.

“The most important requirements are the management, follow-up and the implementation of solutions and the quality and completeness of information captured on the system when a call is answered; for example, correct ID of caller to follow up, address and location of problem.”

The hotline, which can be reached on 17737, went live in September last year and operates on two shifts per day, with 10 people on each shift. It deals with complaints related to employment, housing, law, citizenship, potable water, social benefits, corruption, electricity, education, roads and health.