Integrated Development Planning

The Integrated Development Planning (IDP) Indaba is an annual platform where the three spheres of government (national, provincial and local government) and parastatals agree on joint priorities and commit resources to implement these priorities. The IDP Indaba is to advance integrated sustainable service delivery. The IDP Indaba ushered in the third generation IDPs, which state that IDPs can no longer be individual, inward looking, municipal plans but outward focused strategic plans that reflects and guides investment decisions of all spheres through collaborative planning.

The Western Cape uses its Intergovernmental Planning and Budgeting Framework (IPBF) as a means of institutionalising the IDP Indaba in general and the IDP Indaba platforms specifically in the province. This is a first of its kind and sets a benchmark for the other provinces in the country.

The advent of municipal planning is crucial but meaningless if there are no financial resources available to ensure that projects emanating from the plans are implemented. Other than internal municipal planning budget links, alignment and joint planning from all spheres of government remains key.

The IPBF is conceptualised, developed and implemented from a holistic perspective that embraces:

• The intrinsic relationship between planning (inclusive of bottom-up and top-down approaches), wherein priorities are set, strategies developed and budgets allocated, and

More recently, the importance of the space economy by mapping government investment in municipal areas, thereby elevating the notion that everything that we implement, we implement in a specific locality.

The IDP Indaba 1: Focus on Strategic Intent of the engagement

The content, objectives and outcomes for IDP Indaba 1 is set for creating a platform for joint strategic priority setting between all three spheres of government, including:

• Alignment of development strategies and plans.
• Dialogue on policies and programmes.
• Strategic budgeting based on previous-year IDP Priority needs and sector departmental key APP deliverables.

The IDP Indaba 2: Focus is output driven, implementation of projects and tracking of implementation of projects   
The content, objectives and outcomes for IDP Indaba 2 is set for creating a platform for pursuing project alignment and implementation of IDP projects between all three spheres of government, including:

• Discussion on implementation of joined-up government projects in a municipal area;
• Discussion on sector departmental projects that will be implemented in a specific locality in a municipality, thus adding to the spatial logic of interventions and through the use of spatial mapping as a GIS-based planning tool;
• Agreement on timeframes, support needs and resource allocations;
• Budget alignment; and
• Alignment with Municipal Planning / IDP Cycle.

The LGMTEC 3/IDP Assessment

 Addressing the key question of “What is the money buying?:, dealing with the overall quality of the IDP, its implementation and responsiveness to community and government priority development issues.