Premier

1. (a) Who are the various stakeholders who make up the War Room,

The Economic War Room, a pilot project to test the implementation of Problem Driven Iterative Adaptive (PDIA) methodology to solve complex transversal problems across two spheres of government, operated between August 2019 and January 2020. It was a collaboration between the Western Cape Government and the City of Cape Town.

1. (b) what is the role of each stakeholder and

During this period, the project was supported by a Secretariat, being an individual located in Wesgro, co-ordinating the work of teams from across government and various entities. These teams comprised 44 senior officials from DEDAT, DCAS (Heritage), DTPW, DoTP, DEAADP, Provincial Treasury, and from the City of Cape Town’s Urban Management, Transport, Economic Development and Asset Planning departments. Facilitators from Wesgro participated in all teams, and government officials were joined by experts from BPESA, CDI, CiTi, EDP, Green Cape and Silicon Cape.

 There was also an Authorising Committee which was made up of the Premier, the Mayor, the Provincial Minister of Finance and Economic Opportunities, the Mayco member responsible for Economic Growth, the Director General, City Manager, the Head of Department for Economic Development, and the CEO Wesgro.

1. (c) what are the main focus areas of the War Room;

Apart from evaluating the effectiveness of the methodology to solve complex problems, the Economic War Room focused on finding solutions to address the following five (5) problem statements:

i.          Atlantis Manufacturing: “Ten thousand job opportunities are required to be created and filled in Atlantis”.

ii.         Commuter Mobility: “Cape Town commuter transport is unreliable, time-consuming, expensive and unsafe”.

iii.         Fixed Capital and Property Development: “Job losses and declining economic activity in the construction and property development industry”.

iv.        Light Manufacturing: “Lack of job creation in the informal light manufacturing sector”.

v.         Tech & BPO: “Cape Town and the Western Cape is a leader in the Digital Economy on the continent, a creator and home to great companies, but we are not realising out job creation potential”.

(2)       whether the War Room addresses issues specific to the province; if so, what are the relevant details?

The Economic War Room pilot contributed in clear ways to address issues specific to the Province:

1.         It helped in testing and evaluating an innovative way for this government to operate, and particularly enable an environment where multiple spheres of government are able to work together to solve problems. The Evaluation report assesses the impact of the methodology and the significant benefits of working in this manner to co-create solutions to problems which have been “stuck” for many years

2.         As part of the methodology, Pilot War Room teams engaged with over 355 stakeholders over a period of 75 days, reflecting the Province’s prioritisation of listening to its businesses and residents in solving problems that matter to them

3.         Over a period of just 100 days of actively implementing the methodology, all five Economic War Room teams were able to identify multiple quick solutions to the specific problems presented to them, and to initiate actions to deliver these. Details of the work done is included in the Evaluation Report

4.         The Western Cape Government has resolved to adopt PDIA methodology as a tool to build a team of capable officials able to use this methodology to solve complex, transversal problems. The Province has initiated proceedings to establish a War Room, commencing with teams to further focus on:

i.          Commuter Mobility / congestion

ii.         Fixed Capital and Property Development

iii.         Safety: keeping repeat offenders behind bars

The teams being established to address these will operate with participants from across all three spheres of government. Additionally, work is being done to extend the reach of this project beyond the Metro to include other municipalities.