Two officials of the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) in Kroonstad achieved the overall third place at the 19th annual CPSI Public Sector Innovation Awards in the category Innovations Harnessing Technology (ICT and other Frontier Technologies) on 25 February.
The new system that was developed by Ettienne van Wyk and Johannes Pretorius was able to turn around the DCS audit outcome to receive an unqualified audit opinion on Audit of Performance Objective (AOPO) for the first time in the history of the department.
The CPSI Public Sector Innovation Awards are open to innovators of all levels of government and public institutions who are working on solutions to problems with service delivery.
Innovation sought by the CPSI involves the application of new ideas, which results in benefits through cost saving, efficiency improvements and new products or services, using technology and other solutions – which may involve process adjustments, culture change, institutional change or management development.
The duo says they designed an automated Excel template for the Annual Performance Plan (APP), explaining that they saw it was time-consuming to manually calculate the vast amounts of data in the old template during one of the regional APP sessions they attended.
“In 2015 we designed a prototype automated reporting template for the Bizzah Makhate Management Area, which was eventually accepted and piloted by the Free State and Northern Cape Region in 2018,” says van Wyk.
“Ntungufhadzeni Mafenya, director of strategic planning, management and monitoring, requested that we refine and enhance the technical element of the reporting template, which was finally introduced nationally during 2019-’22.”
The two officials are already working on cutting-edge technology, as well as other vital initiatives that the DCS may adopt in the future.
