CIPC tech 'lets SA economy down'

The Companies and Intellectual Property Office has made improvements to ensure clients are not frustrated by its Web site.

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The Companies and Intellectual Property Office (CIPC) - which is in the midst of a modernisation phase - is letting the economy down because of a lack of functionality on its Web site, dropped calls at its call centre and the sheer amount of time it takes to register new companies.

This is according to the Democratic Alliance's shadow minister of trade and industry, Geordin Hill-Lewis, who notes people trying to use the office's electronic functionality are battling, and an unacceptable percentage of 25% of calls to the call centre are answered. However, the CIPC says it does not have a call centre, and calls are answered by back-office staff, which is why the rate is a low 25%.

Hill-Lewis notes the office receives some 12 000 applications for new business registrations each month and, despite its claims of a 24-hour turnaround, the bulk of these are only ready to open their doors in 22 days.

The CIPC is one of the most important pieces of the behind the scenes infrastructure for the economy, and to spend so much time on "red tape" is a real cost that is lost to production, says Hill-Lewis. He cites World Bank statistics indicating South African businesses spend as much as R7 billion a year on bureaucracy, and adds this money could be better served invested in the business and creating jobs.

Hill-Lewis says the root cause is an IT issue as the CIPC's systems are "extremely bad".

Yesterday, Hill-Lewis said the CIPC's new Web site is not working as it should, a claim the office rebuffed, saying its "transactional Web site is working". The CIPC subsequently said there have been some system challenges, and it is working around the clock to sort out any problems.

The new Web site introduced new online transacting services, including a new company registration system, a new name reservation system, a new director and member change system, and new systems for company and close corporation address and financial year-end changes. Since launch, it has seen a large number of transactions logged:

The site, which also has a query-logging system, has so far received some 2 000 queries, and has solved 10% of them, it adds in a statement. "The CIPC is aware that clients are logging the same query several times, which creates bottlenecks, and wishes to encourage the public to please log each query only once."

It adds there "appear" to be issues with slow responses to director changes and it has improved bandwidth and storage to deal with this issue.

In July 2011, the office was set to overhaul its IT systems in a bid to appease consumers who were battling to register new company names, and organisations complaining they cannot lodge annual returns. That would have been the first time in a decade that a new system was implemented, after a legal squabble between its predecessor, the Companies and Intellectual Registration Property Office (Cipro), and Valour IT over a cancelled tender.

Despite this plan, the CIPC is still struggling with backlogs - an issue that has plagued it since inception - in areas such as company registration, amendments to company memoranda of incorporation and director changes. "System refinements as well as extended processing times are being implemented to ensure that we are able to address the volumes."

The office is "confident" these issues will be resolved by the end of the week, and the backlog in critical areas, such as company registration and director changes, will have been significantly reduced over the next two weeks.

The CIPC adds it has made "substantial strides since May 2011," through services such as self-service terminals, and system, network and infrastructure upgrades. "We still have some big projects in the pipeline, but for the most part we have concluded the upgrade. It is now a question of optimising them to ensure that we can enhance external performance," it says.