David Beretti
Executive Director of Corporate Services, City of Cape Town, South Africa
Focus: City Management
Keywords: capacity building, downsizing, job descriptions, one-stop shops, reform sequencing,
Interviewer(s): Michael Woldemariam
Country of Reform: South Africa
Location: Cape Town, South Africa
Date: Fri Mar 11 2011
Abstract
David Beretti recounts his experiences working with the city of Cape Town. While Beretti had a 38-year experience with the city government at the time, he focuses on his body of work as the executive director of corporate services. He begins his discussion by detailing the efforts to reform the many municipalities of Cape Town down to one streamlined unit. He discusses the many challenges the government of Cape Town faced in instituting this reform. First, he recounts discussion surrounding the sequence of reforms. He details the efforts to work with the collective bargaining organizations that originally opposed the reforms. Faced with a short deadline of only 6 months, he explains the innovations that were created in order to address redundant positions that existed among the pervious seven municipalities while avoiding serious retrenchment. Beretti also explains the outside accountability measures used to ensure the cooperation and satisfaction of the City of Cape Town’s employees. This included a large-scale survey and performance monitoring system for the reform process. He concludes his detailed discussion with information on how diversity was handled in the recruitment and promotion process.
Case Study: Municipal Turnaround in Cape Town, South Africa, 2006-2009
Full Profile
At the time of the interview, David Beretti was the executive director of corporate services for the City of Cape Town. At the time he had worked for the City of Cape Town for 38 years. Beretti previously held positions in the finance, engineering, planning and human resources departments of the City of Cape Town. As the Executive Director of Corporate Services he is responsible for the full human resource functions for 25,000 employees. He also manages the legal services, information systems and technology departments. During his time as executive director of corporate services, Beretti oversaw the reformation of Cape Town from an original 39 municipalities in to one streamlined city government.
