Designing Project Monitoring Mechanisms for Improved Public Sector Governance and Accountability

Project management practice forms the basis of administering the activities of the public sector. Many South African government entities have embraced the projects-type of management approach in their endeavours. Officials are subjected to training in this regard, and are expected to perform their project management and administrative duties with circumspect and South Africa’s public sector organisations’ capacity to plan, execute, monitor and evaluate activities have improved. Yet, many current project monitoring mechanisms do not adequately address the problematic of tracking the asplanned deliverables of on-time, in-budget and required quality – the principle project management deliverable triumvirate. Practitioners confess that too many projects fail because dysfunctional monitoring mechanisms allow for some, or all of the above three imperatives not to be met. In an attempt to remedy such problems, private sector models to identify possible “best practices” may be prudent, which may assist the public sector. This paper presents in an adapted form possible private sectorderived project monitoring solutions to the public sector, given its unique political and policy backdrop. The research is of a qualitative nature and is part-based on the researcher’s observations (participant observer) and experience in the respective sectors, and augmented with relevant literature.