06 Jul 2014

The Minister of Finance and Development Planning, Mr Kenneth Matambo has conceded that just like any other ICT system, the Government Accounting and Budgeting System (GABS), occasionally experiences slow performance but said his ministry always informs all the concerned stakeholders such as ministries and departments about the problem, while simultaneously carrying out investigations to establish possible causes of the problem.

Responding to a question from the MP for Shoshong, Mr Phillip Makgalemele on Friday July 4, Mr Matambo said the slow performance of the system initially became evident during March and again May this year and was immediately reported to Oracle Corporation, the original developers of the software.

Mr Matambo said the company then investigated the possible cause and submitted a report with recommendations which his ministry in collaboration with the Ministry of Transport and Communications is implementing to improve the performance of the system.

“In the meantime, my ministry has also advised ministries and departments to resort to manual processes through government revenue offices where GABS is not available to ensure that disruption of service delivery is minimal,” he said.

Mr Matambo said consultations with the Ministry of Transport and Communications to ring fence all the financial systems in terms of servers and human resource in order to optimise performance of GABS are at an advanced stage.

He however, said the slow performance of GABS does not always point to the capacity of servers but that in some instances it is due to issues such as power outages, network connectivity and bandwidth, which are dependent upon ministries and departments having to upgrade and provide the requisite technology infrastructure such as computers, network points and requisite personnel.

Mr Matambo however, said that save for the few hitches experienced recently, the system has remained largely valuable to ministries and departments in management of their finances and has improved service delivery across government since it was introduced 10 years ago.

The MP for South East South, Mr Odirile Motlhale however, pointed out that some government departments are reluctant to resort to manual processes as government revenue refuses to accept such, but Mr Matambo however, said that the problem is rather that some departments still prefer to use manual processes even when the GABS system is up and running well.

Giving the background to the system, Mr Matambo said it was introduced in order to create a platform for integrated set of business solutions that enable government to effectively manage budgets, record revenue collection, monitor expenditure and control spending across ministries and departments.

He said in addition, GABS allows online approvals and workflows with enhanced audit trails, access to online and real time financial reports to aid financial management and decision making as well as increased ability to track and monitor staff imprest, advances and others.

“In fact, GABS has seamless integration with the payroll system for transferring transactions to the payroll for starting the deductions from employees’ salaries and also bringing back the data after payroll run to update the monthly accounts,” he said.

He said since its inception, GABS has been effective in providing among others, relevant, accurate and timely online information to all stakeholders, and that his ministry has therefore adopted a phased rollout approach to ministries and districts.

Mr Makgalemele had complained that the slowness of the system has affected service delivery and businesses to the extent that others have collapsed because they take long to be paid something he said works against efforts of empowering citizens. ENDS