The sinister side of �system e down�

Mbongeni Mguni | Friday July 11, 2014 12:45

Beads of sweat glistening across their foreheads, the roomful of expectant customers has waited patiently to be assisted by the government officer. Each second the clock ticks over and every step the queue inches forward, heighten the unspoken fear the customers telepathically share.

“Bagolo, go tlaare le eme pele, system e down.” No other words are more dread-inducing, fury-inspiring and common in public-facing government offices. In most instances, the civil servants in direct contact with the enraged customers appear equally stumped by the reasons behind the system failure.

After all, the technology carrying an entire government service is simply too complex for the poor cashier or the roomful of customers to even attempt to comprehend. Thus, everyone is helpless; the system is simply down and the only option is to wait it out, if you can.

While gravely inconveniencing, the matter is as simple as that.

Ephraim Balebetse is not convinced. And unlike the roomful of frustrated customers, he does understand the complexities of ICT networks even those encompassing the entire central government.

As national ICT coordinator in the Transport and Communications Ministry, Balebetse’s views are authoritative, unlike the conspiratorial mumblings of customers left stranded by the system.

“We have noticed a trend where some public servants will say the system is down instead of working,” he told a parliamentary committee hearing on Tuesday.

“Most of the time, our systems are up, but sometimes it’s laziness or corruption and we are addressing this with the ministries so that accounting officers attend to this situation.”

According to Balebetse, ICT experts and systems are continually monitoring bandwidth requirements across government offices, for the express purpose of preventing bottlenecks.

“We are monitoring bandwidth to each office to see utilisation and once we reach a peak, we raise it without the officers’ knowledge,” he said. “Most of the time, it’s also not a problem of connectivity.”

Bandwidth and connectivity; two important terms in the “system e down” story that the average public officer and his customer are most likely unfamiliar which.

Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be carried from point to another in a given time, while connectivity is the ability of a computer or software application to connect to another computer or software application.

Problems in either bandwidth or connectivity or both are usually behind all genuine “system e down” announcements.

In genuine downtime scenarios, the transmission of large amounts of data simultaneously by users, through inefficient hardware, causes bottlenecks within the system, experts say.

However, the E-Government Unit, which moved from the Communications Ministry to the Office of the President this year, says it is tackling the challenges around system availability.

Acting deputy E-Government coordinator, John Vassiliadis says the Unit has set up an Integrated Project Management Office (IPMO) that will assist line ministries and department assess their ICT needs before establishing offices.

This new office, he told parliamentarians, will handhold departments so that even an office in a remote area will have its bandwidth requirements thoroughly assessed prior to equipping.

“The E-Government Unit’s mandate is to deliver 24/7 access to government services,” he said. “To date, we have established the IPMO which will also vet all government projects that are ICT based to remove duplication.”

As noble as the latest initiatives to stamp out “system e down” are, one factor remains stubbornly tugging at the loose string in the E-Government 2011 – 2016 strategy.

The age of many of the hardware components in central and local government has been a contributing factor to system downtime, allowing unscrupulous civil servants to use the “system e down” excuse.

“We conducted an assessment recently at the Office of the President and some of the equipment there was as old as 15 years,” Vassiliadis said. “We intend to conduct an audit of the rest of the ministries to establish the trends.”

The E-Government Unit, together with its partners in the Communications Ministry, have an ambitious timeline in which more than 300 services will be available online by 2016.

“By 2016 all appropriate government information and services, in excess of 300 services, will be available through a single government portal,” the Strategy reads.

“The government portal will not linger on the make up, mandate or history of the Ministry responsible for the programme.

“Instead, the portal will be very service-oriented, providing clear instructions for users which will allow them to easily and quickly complete forms and transactions.”

Services due to go online include visa applications, building permits, applying for replacement birth certificates, vehicle licensing, registering a company, applying for a patent or trademark, movement of livestock and applying for a wide range of pensions, grants and benefits.

Services such as corporate tax payment, business name search and SMS notification for several ministries have already been initiated.

From 2016 and beyond, government’s ICT chiefs believe the e-government initiatives will reduce the crowds in public offices and allow civil servants the legroom to efficiently process enquiries, without the “system e down” recourse.

For the “lazy” and “corrupt” ones, however, e-government could mean the end of a not-so-distinguished career in the civil service.