How BLSA Tracker works

South Africa is often said to be great at making plans, but bad at implementing them. BLSA Tracker aims to help ensure we get to implementation by tracking progress from a policy idea to its execution and resulting effects on the business environment. Along the way we highlight successes and obstacles to support both the public and private sectors in navigating towards success.

The Tracker monitors progress on each policy deliverable in four distinct phases:

• Is it on the agenda? When a policy proposal is first mooted it takes time to make its way onto the agenda of government for implementation. The agenda is set through key policy pronouncements in the state of the nation addresses, the national budget and the departmental plans of government, among others.
• Are there plans in place? A policy can be put on the agenda, but there then needs to be a clear plan drawn up for implementing it. This will set out what is being done to ensure the policy is turned into reality, including research and consultation and action plans for different government role players. Such plans can include white papers, Operation Vulindlela plans, reform roadmaps, etc.
• What government actions have there been? This is where implementation is key – are the plans being put into action. This can include new laws being tabled, regulations being amended, new institutions established or others restructured, people hired, new systems developed and launched, all to ensure the plans are made a reality.
• Does it work? This is an assessment of substantive efficacy, whether South Africans are truly benefiting as intended by the policy change.

Our team analyses the progress of the deliverable through these four phases and assesses whether the goals of the deliverable have been achieved. The goals serve as the threshold for completion of the deliverable. The team interrogates progress on the deliverable across the four phases, assessing public announcements and speaking to key stakeholders from policy holders to business to understand where reforms have got to and what may be holding up further progress. Each reform deliverable is assessed once per quarter, though can be updated more regularly if specific new information is made public.

The assessment is provided at a granular level for each deliverable. Deliverables are categorised in reform areas, which are major reform themes within each of the three top-level reform categories: criminal justice, governance, economic.

How the scoring works

The four phases are shown in the analysis of each reform deliverable in the Tracker. A brief update is given under each phase with a traffic light colour signal showing how far that phase has gone, from green to amber to red, depending on whether the phase is complete, in progress, or stalled.

Separately an “on track” score is determined for each reform deliverable. Every deliverable starts out as incomplete, and then follows a process toward finally delivering the changed environment. We assess this separately to the phase analysis, assessing whether the reform process is following the timetable set out as part of the goals and plans for the reforms. We similarly score that from green to amber to red depending on whether the reform is progressing as expected, is progressing but not on schedule, or is facing major blockages and at risk of stalling. This view is shown in the rev counter for each of the deliverables:

Some deliverables are no longer tracked and these can be seen on the heatmaps with the symbols showing a tick ✔ for those that are completed and no longer tracked, or a ⏸ sign for those that are halted, either because the reforms are no longer appropriate given the changing environment or superseded by other reforms, or because the political will to implement the reforms has been lost for other reasons. Most reforms, however, are in progress, indicated by the symbol ↻.

To enable higher level assessment and easier navigation, reform deliverables are grouped into one or more reform areas, being a group of deliverables that together are intended to achieve a broader goal such as “stable electricity”. That may have a set of further reform areas such as “higher energy availability factor” or “pathway to electricity markets”, before you get a set of deliverables within those reform areas. The Tracker provides an aggregated view of progress for each reform area which is colour coded in the heat maps when seen at a reform area level (the image below shows the general structure of top categories, reform areas and deliverables).

How reform areas and deliverables are selected

The Tracker is designed specifically to assess reforms that are positive for the business environment, across criminal justice, governance and economic categories. These are key to unlocking economic growth in the country.

The business environment requires effective rule of law with a well-functioning criminal justice system and regulation. It also requires government to be capable and effective in providing services to the public. Economic reforms are also critical in improving the ability of business to function, while knowing the status of a reform enables executives to make business decisions with more confidence.

The Tracker does not consider other reforms that are neutral or potentially negative for the business environment. Many reforms aim to provide positive outcomes for citizens but do not have a notable bearing on the business environment. Some may have positive social consequences but have a negative impact on business where it implies a cost to business. Such reforms may be good for the country overall, but we do not track these reforms here. The mandate of the Tracker is to focus on reforms that are positive (usually by explicit intention) for the business environment and therefore for economic growth.

The reform areas measured are established focus points for both government and business. They have been placed firmly on the national agenda as a focus of reform (eg, electricity supply, climate change). Our analysts have identified reform areas in each top-level category by analysing speeches and policy documents as well as the reform agenda of key institutions such as Operation Vulindlela.

We then select deliverables within each reform area that have been mooted as important to delivering on the overall reform area. These have, at a minimum, been put forward as policy ideas and accepted to some extent as important for the reform agenda, though many are further advanced and in progress of being implemented.

Input of BLSA members

The reform deliverables are also assessed by BLSA members, who are surveyed each quarter. BLSA members provide input on what reform deliverables they think are important to track, and what the efficacy of reforms is for the environment in which they operate. Many members are heavily exposed to the issues that reforms target, from trying to obtain visas for skilled workers, to trying to ship goods out through the logistics system. Their input is crucial to providing a “real world” test of whether reforms are actually effective or more needs to be done.

The reform Tracker has been developed by research and consulting firm Krutham.