South Africa: Telkom Heads Project for Efficient Criminal Justice System

Thapelo Sakoana
Mbabane

Telecommunications giant Telkom has been behind the development of an effective e-government system, to help integrate the criminal justice system in a bid to ensure efficiency.

One of the major challenges facing the current system is that South Africa has a vast body of laws and regulations, which still use paper-based processes and administration.

The aim of the Integrated Justice System programme is to provide integration and links among bodies in the system.

The system would link and integrate the work of the Department of Justice’s 16 000 employees, the South African Police Service over 140 000 personnel and that of the Department of Correctional Services estimated 50 000 employees.

Speaking at the Pan African ICT in Government Summit, the executive for government sales in Telkom, Troy Hector said they needed to understand the value chain in government before embarking on the project.

This means that they had to understand the location and composition of the Justice, Crime Prevention and Security cluster of government.

“Once you understand this, it is easy to deploy solutions.

“After putting in place all the morden technology you then have to empower people or personnel to ensure that they are able to operate that technology,” he said.

The Chief Information Officer in the Department of Justice, Sharon Thomas said they approached the State Information Technolgy Agency (SITA) in 2006, to help address the technological challenegs they faced.

She said they both agreed that there was a need to introduce a new system that would support their e-government strategy.

Then they approached Telkom for infrastructure development.

By February 2005, the three signed an agreement in terms of which Telkom would design and implement the new network infrastructure for the Department of Justice, while SITA would serve as a government agent.

Some of the challenges facing the department include huge case backlogs, paper-based administration, missing dockets and few business applications in terms of ICT.

Ms Thomas said there are opportunities for new infrastructure, modern business applications and personnel empowerment in ICT skills.

Since partnering with Telkom, she said the department lauched the Information Technology (IT) Highway Initiative towards the end of 2006.

Key business applications for this initiative include the Integrated Case Management System (ICMS), which is known as the e-Scheduler.

The e-Sheduler seeks to improve case planning and scheduling.

It allows the user to generate information on the courts, which indicates at what stage a case is, showing the case number and the first appearance date, among others.

The ICMS, implemented in 436 courts, has been identified as having the potential to reduce case backlogs.

Another element is of this initiative is the Justice Deposit Account System (JDAS), which is used for the depositing of maintenance money, bails and traffic fines.

This has also recorded some achievement with beneficiaries receiving their maintanace money through the system.

Ms Thomas noted that there had been a lot of of “hype and attention in the roll-out of the JDAS” which was rolled-out in 70 courts.

The department has 585 service sites across the country.

A process in underway to link the ICMS with the SAPS’ Case Administration System, said Ms Thomas.

The Chief Information Officer of Telkom, Motlatsi Nzeku told BuaNews that e-government was about mordenising government processes to help deliver friendly services to the people, businesses and other countries.

He described government’s response to e-government as “focused, viewed and a tool for growth and effecient interaction with the people.”
Mr Nzeku said e-government was built on electronic systems that offered major safety elements and the absence of paper work.

“Papers can disappear, so with e-government you reduce the possibility of people tempering with government processes especially in the procurement of tender,” he said.

He said technology allowed for the bid processes for tenders to be completed speedily, while offering limited access to the system to avoid manipulation.