Johannesburg, 04 Jul 2008
As part of its "Siyenza Manje" initiative, the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), has implemented Post Vision Technology's Project Portfolio Office (PPO) system for the task force of engineers, project managers, town planners and financial experts deployed in low capacity municipalities to accelerate project implementation and unlock economic potential. The DBSA, in conjunction with National Treasury, launched the initiative in order to provide support to distressed municipalities in the delivery of infrastructure, accelerating service delivery and ensuring the sustainable growth of capacity in local government.
According to Dr Paul Kibuuka, DBSA Development Fund Divisional Executive, the poor rural municipalities have not had the capacity to unlock government grant funding for infrastructure development, master planning, finance and infrastructure systems implementation.
"Thus, not only will the programme assist in stepping up economic growth, job creation, advancing the rollout of basic services, revenue enhancement and improving financial management, it also aims to address the scarcity of critical skills in South Africa by providing on-the-job training for new graduates and internships in specific fields like engineering, finance and town planning to enable student access to experiential learning required for registration with professional bodies."
Dr Kibuuka explains that during the engagement with the stakeholders in the establishment phase, the DBSA ascertained that it needed a strong back office for effective management of the initiative. "With a 70%/30% split of funding originating from the National Treasury and DBSA respectively, Siyenza Manje has to be managed effectively so that spending is accounted for and stakeholders are consulted and fully informed on an ongoing basis."
Based on these requirements, the organisation opted to implement Post Vision's PPOLive solution through The Project Hub, a Post Vision implementation partner subcontracted through Nakatomi Corporation.
PPO is a web-based, enterprise capable application designed, developed and supported in South Africa to assist organisations to manage projects and project portfolios across a number of industries. "Our PPOLive offering follows the On-Demand/ Software as a Service (SaaS) model which provides organisations and individuals with access to the full PPO application on a hosted and rental basis over the Internet," explains Guy Jelley, CEO of Post Vision Technology. "This allows organisations to get the usage of this solution at a fraction of the cost and with no infrastructure-related concerns."
For the DBSA, this meant that its deployees, the engineers, project managers, town planners and financial management specialists, could access the system remotely via 3G from anywhere. "This tool as part of the project management framework is assisting us at all levels - from the identification of expertise to deployment. We can also monitor how each municipality is progressing in terms of its business plans, check performance against targets and drill right down in reporting done by our deployees," says Dr Kibuuka.
"PPO has provided us an effective system, with fully automated dashboards and reporting that looks at the national, regional and provincial perspectives, also allowing us to closely monitor the quality and completeness of data uploaded.
"Not only can we also more easily identify and rectify bottlenecks, we are currently making some modifications to PPO in order to be in a position to utilise information drawn from the system as audit evidence in the future," he adds.
"PPO has effectively given us more leverage in terms of real time information, facilitating more effective decision making," continues Dr Kibuuka. "This has allowed the DBSA to use its strong back office system to manage project delivery turnaround and ensure that we align our deliverables with the requirements of five year local government strategic agenda."
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