Panel finds gross negligence at Government Printing Works, Motsoaledi
promises to act
08 July 2022 – Times Live
The ministerial review panel which investigated maladministration at the
Government Printing Works (GPW) has found that there was a failure of
management and supervision that led to the crashing of the server at the
institution.
“All of this accompanied by a lack of support and maintenance contracts
with service providers for the servicing of ICT-related equipment.
"Underpinning these issues, however, is a failure of management and
supervision at various levels which are the ultimate cause of systemic failures
at the GPW,” said panel chair Papati Malavi.
Home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi and his team briefed parliaments'
committee on home affairs on the investigation on the financial data and loss
of curriculum vitae (CVs) at GPW and an investigation by Hawks on the
allegations of corruption levelled against the chief executive officer of the
organisation.
Malavi said on February 4 2021 the server supporting corporate services
and e-gazettes at GPW crashed.
“The crash resulted in the loss of critical data, a part of which, the
ministerial review panel has been informed, may never be recovered. ICT
division staff members informed the panel that the crash was caused by a surge
in electricity when power resumed after a blackout/load shedding.”
However upon investigations with Eskom and City of Tshwane, it was
established that there was no power outage on the said days. Subsequently it was
discovered that the surge was caused by non-compliant electrical installations
at pavilion 2, which housed the crashed server.
Therefore, he said: “The panel’s key direct finding is that the incident
of 4 February 2021 was caused by poor maintenance of the ICT infrastructure due
essentially to the fact that the CIO and his team did not know how to perform
proper functions on the server.”
Malavi said this included the loading of discs, scrubbing them before
loading new data, ensuring that there was proper back-up should there be a
problem "because ICT equipment does fail".
On consequence management, he said, disciplinary action should be
considered against the acting CEO during 2017/2018, Thandi Moyo, in relation to
“acting in reckless disregard of GPW business continuity in approving the
business case for the termination of the contracts of the service providers who
provided the outsourced ICT skills and thus putting GPW’s business continuity
at risk".
He said disciplinary action for gross negligence
should be considered against the chief information officer, Anele Apleni, as
head of ICT. Apleni resigned after he was confronted with the damning
allegations this year.
Former chief financial officer Josephine Meyer should be cautioned for
her decision to appoint Kuberndran Moodley for two positions, namely the bid
adjudication committee and bid evaluation committee, “which practice is against
the principle of good governance, especially the code of conduct for bid
adjudication committees issued in 2006 by the National Treasury,” said Malavi.
Disciplinary action should also be considered against the head of
security for identified security breeches.
“Disciplinary action should be considered against the deputy director in
infrastructure specialist, Kobus Bezuidenhout, and the deputy director database
specialist, a Mr Jakuj, for failing to ensure that replacement disks to the
crashed server were scrubbed and that data centres were adequately backed up,”
Malavi told MPs.
He added that Bezuidenhout had since resigned from GPW.
Motsoaledi welcomed the recommendations, saying he will personally make
sure that they are implemented and that a number of shortcomings were being
dealt with.
He said he became suspicious when people like Apleni resigned after
being confronted.
“I needed to stop it but I consulted experts who said you can’t stop a
person from leaving an institution if they want to leave. We need to find a
recourse to the law for somebody who makes damage and then leaves.”
While the panel did not find “a smoking gun of sabotage", it found
that there was gross negligence at GPW.
“In my view you can sabotage an institution by neglecting the things you
are supposed to do and gross negligence can be a form of sabotage but
unfortunately I cannot point out that there was sabotage. I made those comments
on the assertion of somebody who was working there that this was an accident
waiting to happen and that people were aware of it.”
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