Effects of Institutional Consistency on Data Generation and Quality in the Public Sector: A Case of the North West Province of South Africa

Abstract

Government department restructuring have a huge impact on budget allocation especially when the mandate of such a department changes. Various budget lines are affected, human resource component get affected as well as capital resources to execute departmental mandate also get affect. The longest stable period for the North West departmental names and mandate is four years while other government component has changed more than six times. Evidently, these changes have had a huge impact on data generation, quality, sustainability and publication. Hence it remains a challenge in the North West province to get access to government time series data on different variables, especially finances.

Keywords: Data Quality, Data Generation, Consistency, Government

DOI: 10.7176/IKM/9-1-01