Home Affairs to spy on staff

Johannesburg, 22 May 2007

A new workflow management tool will allow Department of Home Affairs managers to monitor productivity and track the flow of identity documents (IDs), says Home Affairs minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula. She also expects it to root out corruption and a thriving trade in false IDs within the department.

Home Affairs spokesman Mantshele wa ga Tau declined to give a value for the implementation, or identify the vendors.

The move follows last year's ministerial appointment of a task team to investigate some of the department's "glaring shortcomings".

In March, the task team presented the long-awaited summary report to Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs. In it, the task team noted its intention to focus on quick wins had become sidetracked by "deeper systematic problems and crises situations".

Intervention recommendations

According to the summary intervention report, the task team recommended a Home Affairs director-general (DG) be "urgently" appointed. The candidate did not require a security background, instead he or she needed to balance the requirement for internal controls and to redesign current processes and information systems in the department to prevent fraud and corruption, and improve the functioning of the department.

"A glaring weakness in the operations of the Department [of Home Affairs] is the lack of internal monitoring... Corruption in the department has emerged as a persistent challenge; repeated media reports have revealed the perception among the public is that [Home Affairs] is one of the most corrupt government departments. The focus on counter-corruption therefore remains vital to deal with the scourge of corruption," the report adds.

Breaking away from the department's history of appointing DGs from the intelligence community, Mapisa-Nqakula last month announced Mavuso Msimang, ex-CEO of the State IT Agency, would take the top spot at the department. Msimang's appointment has been shrouded with controversy due to allegations of sexual harassment and concerns his positions on the boards of around 20 companies may distract him from the task at hand.

Desperate measures

A 23-year-old man was sentenced to prison last year for taking a Home Affairs official hostage with a toy pistol in 2005, after he snapped following a two-year wait for his ID.

Mapisa-Nqakula says she is determined to prevent a repetition of such a case. "The new system allows us to know who has done what every step of the way, whether they have acted efficiently and properly, or whether there has been negligence or corruption in the process.

"As part of our larger turnaround of Home Affairs, this will be a central tool in achieving our goal of ensuring every rightful applicant receives their ID document within a reasonable period of time, and that the frustrations some have experienced with the process become a thing of the past," she adds.

A similar system allowing managers to follow applications for passports has been operating successfully within the department for some time.

Culture of responsibility

IT experts, in co-operation with the State IT Agency and the department's Citizen Services Branch, developed the ID track and trace system. It allows managers to trace - and if necessary speed up - the progress of an ID application from the moment it is lodged until it is delivered to the applicant.

Specially developed matrixes allow managers to establish which official was responsible at each stage of the process, from acceptance at a Home Affairs office, to transport to headquarters, verification of the applicant's identity, permission for an ID to be printed, printing, return to the issuing office, and handover to the applicant.

Managers will be able to identify blockages in the system and rectify them speedily, or trace applications that have gone astray and identify the official to blame.

"Besides encouraging a culture of individual responsibility for assigned tasks, the system will allow managers to monitor the individual productivity of Home Affairs officials in the business unit responsible for issuing ID documents," says a departmental statement on the system.

"Managers will be able to assess how many documents are processed daily by individual officials, and hold them to department-wide standards and norms, thus increasing efficiency across the board and, ultimately, cutting the time taken to issue documents."