Ex-DPSA head appointed to UN

Johannesburg, 16 Jan 2009

Former public service and administration minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi has landed a top job with the United Nations Development Programme.

Fraser-Moleketi was sworn in this week in New York as VP of the second committee of experts on public administration and finance. She served on the first committee between 2002 and 2005.

According to the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA), the committee has been mandated to direct the process of public administration to allow United Nations member states to meet the Millennium Development goals.

“The relevance of the work of this committee for the ongoing reform processes of the UN is increasingly being recognised,” explains the DPSA.

Fraser-Moleketi was appointed as deputy minister of welfare and population development in January 1996 before she was appointed minister of public service and administration in 1999.

She resigned her position at the DPSA last year, shortly after former president Thabo Mbeki was recalled by the ANC and resigned. She had been in the position since 1999.

ICT role

As DPSA minister, she had significant sway and influence in the ICT sector, through the control of the State IT Agency (SITA). However, her run in government has been fraught with criticism, with some questioning her SITA board appointment processes, including that of government CIO, Michelle Williams, who was recently cleared of any wrongdoing in a SITA scandal.

However, many considered her government's patron of the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa. She was instrumental in promoting government's policy to implement a national government open source system, through the minimum interoperability standards guiding document.

It was this document that led government to adopt the open document format as the national standard for government documentation.

She served on several cabinet committees, including economic affairs, social administrative affairs and security and intelligence.

Fraser-Moleketi was not available for comment at the time of publication.