The State IT Agency's (SITA's) plans to deliver the outstanding modules of National Treasury's Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS) are unclear, despite expectations that the full system will be ready for testing by year-end.
The multibillion-rand development of the IFMS was approved by Cabinet in 2005. The programme aims to replace the numerous disparate, inadequate and/or outdated systems employed by the public service with a single solution aligned to the legislation, policies and directives informing management of public sector organisations.
The final solution will be mandatory for national and provincial departments encompassing supply chain management, financial management, HR management, payroll, and business intelligence. The project is being run as a joint-initiative incorporating National Treasury, the Department of Public Service and Administration, and SITA.
Of the eight solution components promised in the system architecture, the acquisition of two modules has yet to be determined. The first, the inventory management module, was advertised in August 2011, but the tender is still being adjudicated. The second, the payroll module, has - to date - been unsuccessfully advertised three times. There is no tender process currently under way for the payroll module.
To date, the advertisements for these two modules have called for the bespoke development of the applications. The requirements of tender documents have allocated only nine months for the development portion of the software.
Critical project
The project, which is already experiencing delays, is expected to show considerable progress by the end of this year. In November last year, Lungisa Fuzile, director-general of National Treasury, told Parliament's Standing Committee on Public Accounts that all modules were to be developed before the end of 2013 and could then be tested.
Despite the looming deadline, SITA has not responded to numerous requests for information on progress around these modules and its plans to deliver against the year-end schedule.
The IFMS project is critical to government's ambition to run a clean, corruption-free administration. In his most recent report on the national audit outcomes, auditor-general Terence Nombembe noted: "The public sector departments and public entities are heavily reliant on IT systems to perform their statutory financial management, reporting and administrative functions."
Nombembe also addressed the role of the IFMS project in the results of the public sector. "Due to prolonged contract negotiations, the lack of full capacity at SITA, underutilisation of the approved budget, delayed project deliverables, an ineffective risk management process, non-adherence to timelines and ineffective oversight, the IFMS was not fully implemented and rolled out to government as envisaged. Only the asset register, HR and procurement modules were rolled out at specific lead sites, while the payroll, finance, inventory management and business intelligence modules were still under development.
"The timely implementation of the IFMS would have improved the general control environment, thus helping in reducing incidents of fraud or their early detection, where committed. The integrated functionality of the systems would assist in ensuring more accurate business information that is available in real-time. Furthermore, it would have helped to minimise the level of corruption in SCM processes, especially during the tendering process."
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