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Gauteng Legislature's R20m failure

Farzana Rasool
By Farzana Rasool, ITWeb IT in Government Editor.
Johannesburg, 19 Oct 2010

After R20 million of public funds have been wasted, a forensic audit will be carried out on a dysfunctional IT system in the Gauteng Provincial Legislature (GPL).

The Legislature Information Management System (LIMS), implemented by troubled vendor Faritec, was a project meant to automate a variety of processes and functions within the institution to improve efficiency, according to GPL speaker Lindiwe Maseko.

The automated system was supposed to improve, among other things, capabilities for public participation through the implementation of an electronic petitions system, access to institutional documentation by implementation of a secure central documents repository, and preservation and retention of institutional memory.

Political advisor to the speaker Mzi Khumalo explains that citizens were supposed to be able to send through e-petitions, but only two were ever logged in the system, which was usually not working.

Citizens should also have been able to comment on new laws through a function of the system called e-Law.

However, during the GPL budget council last year, the LIMS project was deliberated upon where the concern was that, after five years and after R20 million was invested, the system is still not fully operational and its value not realised, says Maseko.

“We realised the system was not working, so we were paying all this money and not seeing the value for it,” says Khumalo.

Negative audit

Maseko adds that a resolution was reached during the council that an audit of the project be undertaken.

“It is on that basis that, in April 2010, the budget council commissioned PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) to proceed with the evaluation and audit of the LIMS project.”

PWC found that there was poor project and financial management, a lack of formal contract management, inconsistencies between the project's terms of reference and the LIMS Implementation Project Charter of 2007, and deviations and extension of scope were not appropriately motivated or signed off at appropriate levels of the organisation.

It was also found that the project steering committee was disbanded in early 2008, without a mandate by the provincial secretary to the legislature.

The auditors found issues around governance and compliance as well. There was inadequate declaration of interests, instances were identified where the GPL did not comply with requirements of the procurement framework, and there was no evidence to support equal treatment of vendors.

Governance investigation

As a result of these findings, PWC this month recommended that a forensic audit be carried out.

“This recommendation has been fully embraced by both the accounting and the executive authority of the GPL. This is so because the institution is committed to good governance within the province. It will lead by example when it implements its oversight role to other government departments,” says Maseko.

She adds that this initiative by the legislature takes place within the context of the annual reports process, which provides an opportunity for the committees of the legislature to scrutinise the annual reports of the departments including its own.

Khumalo says the legislature will have a meeting with the Special Investigations Unit to carry out the audit. “Once we have the meeting we can outline a timeframe but the matter shouldn't be dragged out.”

He adds that Maseko also asked for a report on all contracts that the institution has, with specific focus on governance issues.

The LIMS was implemented and managed by financially-troubled vendor Faritec. The company appointed a liquidator in June after it folded its largest unit Enterprise Solutions.

Enterprise Solutions accounted for R678 million of Faritec's R731 million turnover during the last financial year to June.

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