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PROGRAMME 1
PROGRAMME 1A: INSTITUTIONAL PLANNING AND SUPPORT
Purpose
The Programme is geared towards supporting the high-level policy prioritisation of the Department of Science and Technology (DST) through the following:
- Coordinating the development of strategic plans, annual performance plans and operational plans for the Department.
- Supporting the Department in ensuring good corporate governance in public entities by facilitating public entity board appointments and maintenance.
- Coordinating departmental engagements with the public entities through the Communicators', Chairpersons', Chief Executive Officers' and Chief Financial Officers' Forums.
- Developing and implementing a monitoring and evaluation framework to assess the performance of the Department and its public entities.
- Coordinating in-year reporting and annual performance reviews for the Department and its public entities.
- Developing and implementing frameworks for institutional reviews of public entities.
- Ensuring effective communication between the Department and its key stakeholders, and creating awareness of the Department's key objectives and activities.
Strategic objectives
- To coordinate the identification, formulation and implementation of strategic initiatives and ensure that the priorities of the DST and its entities are aligned to national priorities.
- To develop and maintain good corporate governance systems for the Department and its entities.
- To proactively position the Department positively both internally and externally to ensure informed employees and citizenry.
Components
1. The Ministry and Office of the Director-General support the political and executive leadership in order to lead and coordinate the activities within the Department and its entities. This is to achieve greater impact, cohesion and efficiency within the National System of Innovation (NSI), and to steer the system towards the development of a knowledge-intensive economy with higher productivity levels, coordinating the implementation of the National Research and Development Strategy (NRDS) and the Ten-Year Innovation Plan (TYIP) in line with the Medium Term Expenditure Framework.
2. Enterprise Risk Management ensures that a risk management culture is embedded in the Department by creating risk management awareness, and elevating risk management to a strategic level within the Department in order to improve the DST's risk maturity level. The directorate's secondary roles are to make fraud prevention an integral part of strategy, operations and administration in the Department, and to ensure that the Department has an effective business continuity management programme to build organisational resilience and safeguard the interests of stakeholders, reputation, brand and value-creating activities.
3. Policy, Planning, Governance, Monitoring and Evaluation supports the DST leadership in steering the NSI, through the following:
- Coordinating high-level policy priority setting on behalf of the executive leadership.
- Coordinating the translation of policy priorities determined by the executive leadership into actionable plans with clear objectives, action plans, performance measurements, resource commitments and performance indicators.
- Facilitating good corporate governance within the Department and its entities
- Ensuring that monitoring and evaluation activities undertaken in the NSI answer policy questions of economy, effectiveness and efficiency, as well as reinforcingaccountability, transparency and innovation.
- Coordinate the integration and implementation of the NRDS and TYIP to ensure that the Department delivers on its strategic objectives
4. Internal Audit Activity (IAA) performs internal appraisal activities to provide assurance on the Department's governance, risk management, and control processes to help the Department achieve its strategic, operational, financial and compliance objectives. Internal auditing is also a catalyst for improving the Department's effectiveness and efficiency by providing insight and recommendations based on analyses and assessment of data and business processes. The IAA supports the executive and political leadership in developing and maintaining processes, procedures and systems that enhance good corporate governance, strong internal controls and risk management, through the implementation of a flexible risk-based audit plan.
5. Science Communication is responsible for ensuring effective communication between the Department and its key stakeholders, and creating awareness of the Department's key objectives and activities. The chief directorate raises the profile of the work done by the Programmes in line with the vision and mission of the Department. It facilitates the preparation of information that the Minister and the Deputy Minister communicate externally. Its overall focus is to brand the Department and create awareness about the developments, benefits and opportunities within publicly funded science and technology initiatives across the country's science system. In addition, this chief directorate ensures that information to the public is accessible.