Cape Town 1998-08-18 14:30

Report before Parliament on the report by the
subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Public
Accounts (SCOPA), commissioned by the Auditor General.

Cherryl Gillwald, MP, ANC, Chairperson.

SPEAKER: The Honourable Miss Gillwald

GILLWALD: Madam Speaker, fellow colleagues, when our
subcommittee was initially appointed by the Standing
Committee on Public Accounts we blithely agreed to
tackle the Millennium Bug with the gung ho enthusiasm
of a buffalo stampede.  But after our first briefing by
the Auditor General in October last year it became
painfully clear that we would have to regroup.

Clearly, the Millennium Bug was as the colloquium goes
"Heeltemaal 'n ander soort Gogga" (A completely
different sort of Insect).  This preliminary briefing
also indicated that if we were to understand the full
extent of the problem we would have to place the Y2k
issue within the broader Information Technology
framework, and relate it to a variety of separate and
overlapping functions within that discipline.

The Y2k problem in Government cannot be seen as a
finite little entity on its own, it has to be
contextualised within the IT Management function across
National Departments, Provinces and Local Government.

Our ability to manage technology efficiently will
largely determine our ability to deal with the impact
of the Y2k bug on Government and Government systems.

Y2k is not just a computer problem, it could, and
probably will, occur in all systems which use time
expressed in dates as an element of a processing
function.

Affected systems are as obvious and as visible as the
date field in a database and as invisible as an
embedded microchip in a Local Government water delivery
system.

(At this point the Speaker halted proceedings and
called unruly members to order)

In his "Letters from America" series, Alistair Cook
describes the Y2k symbol as being as portentous as the
e=mc squared formula which embodied Einsteins' atomic
bomb calculations, and in his opinion, capable of
wreaking similar levels of havoc and disruption.

These "Blood Against The Wall" predictions are useful
only if they jar the complacent or ignorant out of
their reverie.  They do not however bring us any nearer
to formulating solutions to the problem.

In Government, officials from a wide range of
disciplines have been grappling with the problem for a
long time now, and a short list of relevant
role-players is indicative of the scope and complexity
of the issue.

The Department of Public Service Administration (DPSA),
Communications, Arts Science and Technology, State
Expenditure, and the Central Computer Services have
over the past years been focussing on the Y2k Problem,
each from their own specialised perspectives and
experiences.  And herein lies one of the biggest
problems identified in our committees report.

Government efforts to achieve Y2k readiness has been
marred by fragmentation, resulting in inevitable
duplication of effort and wasted resources.

Coordination of the compliance effort rests partially
with the DPSA and from an Accounting and Financial
Management point of view with the Department of State
Expenditure.  Neither of these departments, however,
have the authority to enforce compliance procedures or
norms and standards on the other departments, and even
if they did the accountability chain for IT within
departments is vague to say the least.

However, Government efforts to bring home the message
of Y2k compliance have not been in vain.  A concerted
Awareness, Impact Assessment and Remedial campaign has
at last made even the most errant departments
cogniscent of the dire consequences of non-comp liance.

And while one would hesitiate to give departments a
clean bill of health and an unconditional pat on the
back in respect of Y2k compliance, they are relatively
speaking, the least of our concerns.

The reporting of Public Entities Act of 1992 pertains
currently to 34 public entities, most of them
performing fairly significant government related
functions of some sort or the other.  Unfortunately,
some of these large parastatal organisations have not
been overly forthcoming on their state of millennium
readiness when quizzed on the matter.

The Y2k Decision Support Centres' most recent State of
the nation report does not provide statistics on this
sector, and this sectoral information would seem to be
vital to the government ability to assess its overall
readiness for the Year 2000.

Another sector about which SCOPA expressed concern in
its report is Local Government.  According to the Y2k
Decision Support Centres' latest State of the Nation
report, statistics related to Local Authorities seem to
indicate that the committees concern is not unfounded.

According to the report, only 80% of local governments
will be Y2k compliant by the Year 2000, this does not
take into consideration embedded systems which pose a
huge challenge in terms of readiness.

Only 65% of Local Authorities have prepared budgets for
Y2k compliance, 53% of Local Authorities have
inadequate skills to achieve objectives and deadlines,
40% of Local Authorities action plans are inadequate,
37% of Local Authorities have no Contingency measures
or Disaster Recovery programs in place, and Local
Authorities in South Africa have a 0.3% expenditure
ratio in respect of their budgets, as compared to
Government Departments whose spend ratio is 1.5% and
private sector corporates who are averaging an
approximate 7% spend.

To a large extent the problems experienced by local
authorities are common to most organisations grappling
with the compliance challenge, especially SMMEs who
have also been identified as extremely vulnerable to
the impact of the Millennium Bug and one of the sectors
most at risk.

Given that Small and Medium Enterprises are exceedingly
important to the employment levels in the South African
scenario, this is an extremely worrisome statistic.

One the major issues that these organisations have to
deal with is deficient skills and expertise to assess,
correct and test for Y2k compliance.

The shortage of skills and capacity is a worldwide
phenomenon with the private and public sectors
competing globally for a relatively small pool of
appropriately skilled personnel.

In this report SCOPA calls for a more integrated,
coordinated and policy-directed IT function within
government and welcomes, in principle, the creation of
a State Information Technology Agency (SITA).

It is envisaged that this agency will streamline,
coordinate and consolidate the IT function across
Departments and Provinces in terms of Resource
Procurement, Systems Applications and Management and
Functions Administration.  SCOPA however has called for
the establishment of a Strategic Policy framework to
guide the creation and implementation of such an
Agency.

In this regard the proposed draft legislation for SITA
seems not to be founded on strategic objectives.
Rather,the legislation seems to provide a singularly
inelegant vehicle for the extraction of Infoplan from
DENEL, and as such is intrinsically flawed and unsound.

Finally, I would like to conclude, that while the
committees report has identified what it perceives as
weaknesses, possible risks, traps and flaws in the
Governments IT function, especially related to
Millennium compliance, it would be remiss of me not to
commend and applaud the sterling efforts of the DPSA,
State Expend iture and the Department of Communications
to prepare Government for the advent of the Year 2000.

In this regard the remarkable achievements of the Y2k
Decision Support Centre in the short time since its
inception, are noteworthy.

Compliance is not the sole responsibility of
Government, the private sector has to stand up and be
counted on this issue, as do individual citizens across
the length and breadth of this country.

Our countries' overall compliance assessment stands at
17.6% currently, we have a long way to go in a very
short space of time.

Tomorrow marks the remaining 500 days we have to
achieve compliance.  Business, Government and people
like you and me, all have a material stake in achieving
compliance and the committee calls upon all parties to
heed the warning bells and to respond to the challenge.

I would like to thank the individual members of the
subcommittee for their dedication to the task and for
the valuable contributions made to our enquiry by all
the Government officials who participated in our
hearings.  Thank You.  (Applause)