 Hello and welcome. This is to this international idea session on budgeting and financing elections My name is here gasplund and I work here at international idea as a program officer today I'm joined by Fiona Rowley our executive director and formally the deputy chief election officer at the election commission of South Africa Before we begin Fiona, I'd like to maybe it would be interesting for the audience to know a little bit about your professional background. Sure I started Qualified as a charge of accountant with KPMG in South Africa and then spend some time at district audit The service delivery arm for the audit commission in the UK Doing audits in the public sector and it was there that I developed a love of the public sector in general as opposed to commercial work I moved to South Africa with PWC then Also working as a consultant mainly and auditor in the public sector for about 20 years doing work For a variety of clients that involved a strategy enhancement and delivery of strategy finance function improvement Structure reviews and so forth and it was whilst I was at PWC that I was seconded originally to the Electoral Commission to act as their chief financial Officer, I was subsequently permanently appointed to that post and then promoted to deputy chief electoral officer Where I was responsible for the full range of corporate services functions HR IT legal services Finance risk management and strategy And it was from there ultimately that I ended up here looking for a new challenge and to broaden my understanding of democracy In general Thank you So let's jump in first question Maybe you could describe a little bit about how the election commissioner of South Africa gets its funds and what process it follows when negotiating that budget Ongoing course versus maybe specific electoral costs sure in South Africa the the budgeting cycle in government is Driven by two key processes one is the medium term economic framework, which is a rolling three-year budgeting cycle wherein you budget for the current year and the two subsequent years and that Supplemented every year by an E&E process the estimates of national expenditure wherein you detail More thoroughly and review the in-year costs, which are then voted in Parliament to determine our costs We needed to have an understanding of what our current electoral delivery model was as well as then a view Three years in the future Because we operated a five-year cycle wherein we would have in one year to it to registration weekends Wherein we would encourage all eligible citizens to come and register to vote followed by a municipal election Then to registration weekends followed by a national and provincial election in the fourth year and finally in the fifth year A relatively flat year where we would look at our internal processes and do the kinds of things We couldn't do when in the midst of the electoral cycle like Refresh our IT systems Refresh our IT hardware and so forth Because of the the way the the structures work in South Africa, we were part of the home affairs vote To Parliament for our annual budget But given the need for us to secure our independence and obviously independence for us was a critical issue Although we were part of the home affairs vote. We didn't directly negotiate with home affairs We directly negotiated with Treasury and as I said that sort of three-year cycle of budgeting we would determine which of the activities were key in those three years and Develop a budget literally on a project-by-project basis and have detailed discussions with national Treasury Where they would interrogate us relatively rigorously Obviously because of the need to ensure value for money For any amount spent out of the public purse and they would Discuss with us the cost drivers and the elements that were contained within that detailed budget before finally Submitting it through to Parliament for vote and approval Thank you in that case out of Interest it would be good to know how the budget for the Commission was developed and What methodology was used? Who was involved also and lastly does the Commission Operational plan include a budget I presume so but yeah certainly No operational plan can be complete without a budget the first and Fundamental step of any budget is to have a detailed and granular understanding of the service delivery model Which means that we needed to have a detailed understanding of the electoral law and the mechanisms by which that electoral law was going to be translated into practice It means that we needed to understand completely what the cost drivers were and in terms of the election in South Africa the critical drivers were Securing a venues for voting stations. We had 22,000 610 voting stations where we needed to secure and contract with providers normally churches Community Hall schools those kinds of things then we needed to staff the elections in our particular Circumstance we employed around 200,000 temporary staff for the election period and that was a critical cost driver There was a bill of materials obviously the sort of the kit you need to have an election the ballot boxes the Voting booths the the ballot papers the stationery packs, etc And then there were sort of the ancillary matters Perhaps like the voter education campaigns that we carried out and the advertising campaigns we carried out So it was understanding what all these relevant components were and then identifying How much we needed of each component and what the projected costs were and we did that by as I said we had a project-based budgeting system and We would sit Periodically throughout the throughout the year and throughout the cycle with the the key operations people for each relevant article and Hold with them the kind of rigorous conversations We knew we were gonna have with Treasury to say okay now you say that you need X number of ballot boxes How is this number derived? How did you develop the cost per ballot box? Etc. And therefore build from this model a total operational budget great now In your opinion during the time you were working at the Commission. What were the main? financing or budgeting challenges with anything that's that's Finance from the public purse the desire to achieve maximum benefit For minimum outlay in the context of ever increasing service delivery demands from the government as a whole is a critical driver With an election we were we were actually fortunate I mean there was a high level of understanding and support from Treasury for the need for us to be able to Be funded to do our job because one of the critical failures or potential issues for any electoral commission in holding a free and fair election is that is Not necessarily possible if you don't have adequate funding to ensure For example that you can have adequate numbers of voting stations open that will enable public participation and so forth But the challenge was always for us to critically Examine and keep re-examining our service delivery model to ensure that we were Doing the best that we could with the resources that we had one of the things we did for example was look at How we staffed voting stations and whether we had an optimal number of staff now on election day Although you have a voters role and you hope to achieve Maximum turnout you can never tell how many people are going to turn up at a particular voting station so we put plans in place to provide teams of Flexible staff who could be rapidly deployed They were trained and available and paid a standby amount to keep them available But then if they were deployed they were paid additional and those teams were held in order that we could rapidly deploy them To a voting station where cues were getting excessive or they were particular issues somebody hadn't turned up I mean when you're employing 210,000 people on a day Somebody is going to wake up in the morning and discover their battery is flat so they can't get to to work or whatever So we did those kinds of things Out of curiosity would be also interesting. What was the most expensive line item in terms of like the election? Was it a particular process or was there a certain thing that was quite expensive? Definitively for us. It was the electoral staff the 210,000 people in an election year our budget was in the region of two billion rand and of that about 330,000 330 million rand was directed at employing those Temporary electoral staff the 210 of them 210,000 and then the four and a half thousand area managers that were employed to coordinate and troubleshoot within the areas that for us was By far our biggest cost element You talked a little bit for about cost saving and I'm sure that there's more to say on the topic Was there any initiative during your time at the commission where there was a cost saving and drive or push? always and constantly as I said we used to hold debriefs after every election and critically evaluate what worked and what didn't work and Ensure that we could achieve maximum efficiency and effectiveness Not only in terms of the actual delivery of the election But also in terms of the administrative processes that underpinned that like the 210,000 staff for example, we needed to pay them off to the election and you can imagine the processing burden that that created so we looked at innovative ways of Reducing that administrative burden and as a consequence the Costs that underpinned that But to some extent with an election again your your drivers are outside of your control They are very much based on the number of registered voters the number of voting stations and so forth so You have to always be careful when considering cost savings that you don't damage the the integrity of the election as a result of Trying to save costs by not staffing a voting station as a consequence and then Disabling public participation because the queues are too long and people don't want to Don't want to vote or stand in the so there's always a balance that you need to to maintain in this regard Thank you very much Fiona Rowling for taking part in this session on budgeting and financing of elections And thank you very much the audience for watching. Thank you