A comprehensive database of policy reform ideas drawn from parliamentary committee deliberations — curated, assessed for impact, and tracked for accountability.
171 policy ideas · 3099 committee meetings · updated weekly, last on 2026-05-11
131 research papers added.
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Auto-updated from the parliamentary record and policy-research feed.
Most-discussed reform ideas in the last 90 days of committee meetings.
Newly ingested papers from CDE, DPRU, Econ3x3, ERSA, ISS, SA-TIED, SAIIA, and TIPS.
South Africa's economy has grown at under 2% per year for more than a decade — not for want of policy ideas, but because of chronic implementation failure. Parliamentary portfolio committees regularly surface detailed, actionable reforms, yet most go unimplemented or are debated repeatedly without resolution.
SA Policy Space systematically catalogues these reform proposals, organised around structural binding constraints — the core barriers that economists identify as blocking sustained, inclusive growth: energy, logistics, skills, regulation, crime, labour market rigidity, land access, digital infrastructure, government capacity, and corruption.
By mapping dependencies between ideas and tracking implementation status, the platform identifies which reforms are keystones — those whose progress unblocks multiple others — and which are stalled despite political commitments.
Live data from the database — Q2 2026
Weighted index across 5 reform packages. Advancing ~15–20 stalled ideas would reach the 40-point near-term target.
Each idea earns credit based on status: implemented (100%), partially implemented (60%), under review (30%), drafted (25%), debated (20%), proposed (10%), stalled (5%). Package scores are weighted by strategic importance: Infrastructure (28%), Human Capital (22%), State Capacity (20%), SMME (16%), Trade (14%). The composite score is the weighted average across all packages, scaled to 0–100.
Highest network centrality — unblocking these reforms unlocks many others.
Short-term reforms with high feasibility ratings
Reforms most frequently raised in committee proceedings
Built by Laurence Wilse-Samson
Data as of 2026-05-11 · latest PMG meeting 2026-05-08 · refreshed weekly
Total gap between parliamentary committee recommendations and current budget allocations across all 5 reform packages.
| Reform package | Score / 100 |
|---|---|
| Infrastructure Unblock | 41 |
| SMME & Employment Acceleration | 32 |
| Human Capital Pipeline | 29 |
| Trade & Industrial Competitiveness | 25 |
| State Capacity & Governance | 36 |