Assessment of the effectiveness and efficiency of the Office of the Chief State Law Adviser

The Public Service Commission has released its Report: Assessment of the effectiveness and efficiency of the Office of the Chief State Law Adviser.  "The Report indicates that there were mixed views from participants on whether the OCSLA is executing its mandate adequately to safeguard the independence of the OCSLA from the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development (DoJ&CD) and political interference.  Out of a total of 1232 Laws that were enacted from 27 April 1994 to 2014, 26 Bills and Acts of Parliament were declared invalid and unconstitutional.  Other challenges include increased workload, unrealistic timeframes, a duplication of services rendered with the Office of the State Attorney, the implementation of the Occupation Specific Dispensation (OSD) for qualified legal professions and insufficient or lack of continuous training.  The majority of client departments and other stakeholders rated the competency levels of employees of the OCLSA as good. It seems that despite internal challenges, the perception of the majority of external stakeholders is still positive.

Based on the findings, the PSC made the following recommendations amongst others:  The possibility of centralising the SLA function in terms of recruitment, quality assurance and performance standards, while still using a decentralised approach to service delivery through the deployment of capacity to the relevant sites by the OCSLA, should be investigated.  Conduct a feasibility study into the establishment of an independent OCSLA through legislation (similar NPA). This may include setting it up as a public entity or an agency."