Government is struggling to reconcile just how many public servants there should be with the number displayed on its electronic payroll system (Persal), and still has to draw up a proper open source strategy.
These points came to light at yesterday's parliamentary media briefing by the governance and service cluster of ministries.
Public service and administration minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi says there seems to be a discrepancy of more than 300 000 posts between what government departments say they should have and Persal's headcount of 1 079 000 public servants.
"Part of the reason for this discrepancy is that there is a lag from changes to a department's personnel and to what is entered on the Persal system," she says.
Fraser-Moleketi says this happens when someone leaves the department and that position is considered redundant. It takes time to update the Persal system.
Persal is a 30-year-old system that is central to the managing of public servants employed in most national and provincial departments.
Richard Levin, director-general of the Department of Public Service and Administration, says despite its age Persal is running well.
"We are considering replacing some of its human resource functions with a module on the Integrated Financial Management System, however, this will not replace the payroll functions of Persal," he says.
Open source
Levin says despite Cabinet's statement at the end of 2006, that all government departments should start implementing open source software, little headway has been made.
"SITA [the State IT Agency, which falls under his department] is responsible for drawing up the strategy, along with us and the Department of Science & Technology. However, we are still waiting for the Department of Communications (DOC) to come on board."
Levin went on to say: "It makes sense for the country to adopt open source, but we need to have the main drivers on board."
This is the second instance this week that a government department has said it is waiting for input from the DOC. On Tuesday the Department of Trade and Industry said it was still waiting for the DOC to issue specifications for the digital TV set-top-boxes that have to be manufactured in preparation for the migration from analogue broadcasting signals, due to start in November.