The Western Cape provincial government has installed a project management dashboard that it says is the first of its type in the country.
The system will hold it publically accountable to meet its milestones for major projects, it adds.
Launched today by Western Cape premier Helen Zille, the dashboard will list all projects being managed by the province with red, amber and green indicators to show if the initiatives are running on track.
Hilton Arendse, the province's chief director for strategic ICT management, says the system uses an Oracle database, is built on a Java platform and was constructed in-house by a team of four programmers who are permanently employed.
“This means there has been no extra costs to the provincial government other than the normal salaries paid to those employees.”
Arendse says the dashboard will give the premier and the members of her executive council direct and up-to-date information on the status of all projects, allowing them to focus on those that run into problems.
He says three steps are being incorporated into the dashboard system to ensure the information displayed is not misleading. Firstly, the provincial government's financial officers and not the project managers themselves enter the financial information into the system.
“This is useful, because if a project shows 'green' status, meaning that all is fine, but it is over or under budget, then we can pick up there is a problem,” Arendse says.
The second step is that from 1 April next year, the system will be available to the public through the provincial government's Web site, so that anyone can see the status of the projects and report discrepancies.
“So, if we have a situation where 10 houses are supposed to be built, but people who already live in the area report that only five are being built, then they can report it directly to the provincial government and this will be investigated,” Arendse says.
The third step to ensure the quality of information is reliable is the involvement of government's central financial watchdog, the auditor-general.
“We are in negotiations with the provincial treasury to make the system available to the auditor-general so that he can also hold the province accountable to project management milestones,” Arendse says.
Premier geek
The premier's office holds “dashboard sessions” on a monthly basis with the members of the executive council. The system allows them to drill down to identify areas of blockage, analyse budget spent by milestone, hold specific officials accountable, and facilitate reprioritisation of the budget.
The system has been under development since June. Both Zille and director-general of the Western Cape government Brent Gerber drove the idea.
The only enhancement planned for the system is the purchase of an Oracle business intelligence tool, Arendse says.
He notes that local authorities and municipalities may use the system too, especially in cases where they have joint projects with the provincial government.
“The premier can access the dashboard from wherever she is and the only support we give her is when some of it needs to be printed out for specific meetings. The premier is technologically very capable,” Arendse says.
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