Department of Defence / SANDF information management system; Defence and Military Veterans BRRR

Meeting report

Briefing by the Department of Defence and Military Veterans (DMV)
Col Francois Hough, Chief Director: Corporate Information Systems, DMV, indicated that the current Department of Defence (DoD) Corporate Core Information, Human Resource (PERSOL), LOG and Financial Management System (FMS) had all been in operation for between 22-42 years. It was clear that the Corporate Core Information Systems no longer supported DoD business processes efficiently. The Command and Management Information System (CMIS) received requests in connection with the upgrading of the PERSOL Information System (IS), the Single Logistic System (SLS) and multiple requests for strategic planning enablers. The Defence Review 2014 mandates the establishment of an Integrated Defence Enterprise System (IDES). The current Corporate Core Information Systems, HR, PERSOL, LOG and FIN (FMS) of the DoD were outdated and technologically obsolete, not fully integrated, and did not support the business processes in full, and lacked compliance with changes in the Government Regulatory Framework.

The legacy of the current Corporate Core Information Systems had been in operation for 22-42 years and HR (PERSOL) for 27 years, FIN (FMS) for 33 years, LOG (CALMIS) for 27 years, and LOG (OSIS) for 22 years, and LOG (LIMS) for 42 years. The majority of these systems were developed in the “COBOL” computer language, for which programmes have become increasingly scarce. This posed a risk to the DoD to maintain and upgrade these aging Information Systems due to technological obsolescence and constantly increasing support and maintenance costs. National Treasury (NT) initiated the government Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS) in 2005. NT placed a moratorium on national and provincial departments restricting the upgrades, enhancement and renewals of the current core business applications (HR, LOG and FIN). Due to this moratorium; the current Corporate Core Information Systems of DoD were not upgraded and enhanced for the last seven years and to date the government IFMS programme did not deliver according to plan. The IFMS Supply Chain Lead Site Implementation Project was suspended, awaiting further guidelines from NT. 

The scope of the IDES initiative was aimed at rejuvenation, modernisation and integration of Corporate Core Information Systems of DoD like HR, LOG and FIN. The DoD Business Intelligence (BI) capability was supportive of strategic planning and reporting. The IDES initiative was included in the scope of Defence Review Implementation Plan (DRIP) and objectives with Milestone One (arrest the decline) of the DRIP. On the formal approval and funding of the DRIP’s objectives and activities, the detail planning of the IDES would commence. The DoD could not afford to delay its Information and Communication Technology (ICT) maturity path any further. The initiative to encapsulate the entire ICT landscape through an integrated solution was embarked upon as a matter of urgency. The renewal and integration of the DoD Corporate Core Information System was a long-term investment and the successful completion of the IDES initiative, would result in an integrated, structured, technologically advanced and cost effective DoD ICT capability.

Discussion
Mr S Esau (DA) wanted to know the costs involved in the IDES initiative that the Department planned to introduce as no estimated figures were provided throughout the presentation. It was indicated that there should be minimal cost in the Milestone One (arrest and decline) of DRIP but the IDES initiative looked like a huge investment. It was important for the Committee to know about the financial impact of the IDES initiative and the funding model to be used. The government IFMS had been incorporated since 2005 but there was a comment that the IFMS had not been successful in all government departments. He asked what had happened since 2005 that was supposed to have been completed. State Information Technology Agency (SITA) was essentially responsible for ICT in government departments and the entity was also responsible for the maintenance and servicing of the ICT infrastructure. What had happened to the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) systems? What was the arrangement within all the IRPs within the government departments? Why was the Department still continuing with a LOG system that was as old as 42 years?

Mr Esau asked about the implications of the introduction of IDES initiative in terms of training costs to get the personnel up to date with the new systems in place. What maintenance costs would be incurred in the introduction of the IDES initiative, compared to the old systems? The only tool that could be used to determine that the new systems would be better than the one was figures and the cost involved. The lack of delivery of SITA was something that had the potential to impact on the operation of the Department in the ICT. The Committee should organise a meeting with SITA in order to determine the challenges that were causing this lack of delivery in servicing government departments.

Col Hough responded that activities related to the IDES were those related to planning, and this was critically important in any activity to be undertaken. The planning involved capturing the business processes within the DoD and to determine its current status. It was difficult to estimate the rollout of the IDES initiative, as the solution had not been designed yet. The IFMS would be a transversal solution to other government departments and the requirements of the Department that were transversal to other departments would be addressed. There were still a lot grey areas in terms of what IFMS would bring to the table and the change that would be required to bring the systems up to date. There was a requirement in 2005 for the Department to upgrade the systems and monitoring was put in place for the Department to wait for the IFMS. The Department was then drawn in by IFMS in 2010 and this was where the Department was selected as the leading Department for the logistics portion in the Supply Chain Management (SCM).

Col Hough added that NT approached Parliament in November 2014 with a new approach on how to address the IFMS solution within government departments for a Tier 1 ERP Commercial of the Shelf (COTS) IFMS Solution. The intention was to get one supplier to address all these requirements that would be transversal to other government departments. SITA was supporting government departments in terms of ICT and the entity was doing a very good job in terms of maintaining the existing system within the Department. The DoD was currently working in isolation and not connected to the Internet or any other IRP systems with other departments and this was because of the design of the systems and security reasons. Training of personnel should be a high priority considering that this was a huge project and therefore everyone needed to be familiar with the new system to be introduced. There were no accurate figures in this point in time on the cost of maintaining the current system. 

Mr S Marais (DA) commented that the presentation painted a bleak picture and it seemed like this was consistent with other presentations made by DMV. There was an impression that the Department was aiming to expand the Defence Force while the allocated budget had been dwindling and this required a tremendous scale down in terms of cost efficiency. He wanted to know if the Department had absolutely required a new technical innovation compared to the old system in order to be able to service the Defence Force. It was important to know if the Department had looked at the comments made by the Auditor General (AG) about the inefficiencies of the Information System in the Department. It was concerning that there was no mention of the money to be allocated to the IDES initiative in the recent Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) and this was relevant to the question that had been asked about the funding for the initiative.

Mr Marais wanted to know if the system of the Department was not integrated to the system of the Department of Public Service (DPS), as this was the Department that was spending a lot of money on IT. The Department should perhaps provide clarity to the Committee on where it needed assistance in this initiative. 

Col Hough admitted that one of the biggest problems in the Department at the moment was on IT and this would require planning and the upgrading of the existing system. The intention was to do an overhaul of the whole system in order to start afresh and do away with the old system. The other problem was that the systems of the Department were not fully integrated and a lot of work still needed to be done to facilitate that integration. In relation to the question on the comments that had been made by the AG regarding the inefficiencies of the Information System in the Department, the Department was still addressing those inefficiencies but was still prevented by the moratorium that was placed by NT on national and provincial departments restricting upgrades, enhancements and renewals of their core business applications. It was difficult to even provide the projected figures of the cost of the whole IDES initiative and the projected figures could be expected as soon as the Department was able to produce a design of the system. There were HR systems within other departments like DPS but the Department was not integrated into any of those systems.

Mr J Skhosana (ANC) said the reality was that the old system was not assisting the Department in terms of executing its work. What measures were put in place to ensure that the existing system was able to function properly? It seemed like the old system was not functioning at the moment and everything was stuck. He also asked the Department if the Committee could provide any assistance on the way forward in unlocking the challenges.

Col Hough responded that the first aspect that needed to be unlocked was the IFMS within government as a whole and there were other IRP systems running within other government departments. The Department would continue with the planning of the IDES initiative so as to see the gaps between the transversal solutions that would come from the NT out of the IFMS and this was likely to take time.

Brig Gen Simphiwe Sipika, Chief Director: Staff, DMV, added that the Department decided to come up with the IDES after the IFMS was put on hold in order to breach the existing gaps. However, the NT decided that the IDES also needed to be put on hold, as it was not part of the IFMS. The Department was requesting assistance from the Committee in order to continue with the IDES initiative which could assist in identifying gaps in the short space of time while still waiting for the IFMS and the Department was indeed stuck at the moment. SITA would be part of the IDES initiative so as to address the challenges coherently. The Department had just bought a new server system in an attempt to balance everything but buying these servers in pieces would not help in addressing the underlying problem, which was the whole obsolete system.

The Chairperson thanked the Department for the presentation that had been made and highlighted that the concerns of the Department had been noted and there would be an attempt to address those challenges. The interest of the Committee was to ensure that the kind of Information System that the Department had would assist in achieving its constitutional requirement and this was something that was not to be compromised.

Budget Review and Recommendations Report (BRRR)
The report was adopted with reservation from Mr Marais, who had expressed concern that an amount of R100 million had been allocated to staff members without any cogent justification.

The meeting was adjourned.