Manual and electronic software systems

According to the Johannesburg and Witbank CSO and Supervisor Individual and Group participants, most work is done manually, which causes backlogs. A Johannesburg Supervisor said, “We still work with paper, that’s our biggest challenge... Like I said, we still

have to take manual things, and do them manually at all times.” The participants recognise

the existence of software programs within the DoL like ‘Siyaya and ‘ESSA except that the technology has inefficiencies, hence the use of a manual system. A Johannesburg Supervisor said about Siyaya, “...is not doing what Siyaya is intended for... we still open up file, we still

send it to the processing, we still take the very same file and file it.”

Another challenge is password related according to a Johannesburg CSO, “… since I got

back from the sick leave9 November 2012, I’ve been struggling to be issued with the

password of Siyaya and my work entails taking UIF applications daily. I have to borrow other people’s password of Siyaya. They activate it today, I use it and within an hour it has switched me off, I can’t have access anymore.” The findings at Johannesburg and Witbank

are that participants spoke about a variety of inefficiencies of the software system and participants’ resort to a manual system, which causes backlogs and therefore poor service delivery in terms of standards and requirements. The findings on one participant’s situation is a password that has been non-functional from 2012 and the password was still not activated in 2013, yet the Supervisor expected the participant to continue to perform, and take the risk of using another CSO’s password. On the question of the risk of potential defrauding of the state because the participant is using another’s password, the participant said, “Yes, that is

possible, according to the way I also heard, but now as I had returned, at the end of the day, I must give my Supervisor my stats. ‘What have you done from 08h00, 07h30 until 16h00’… he wants stats. The Supervisor knows that your computer is not usable at the end of the day he wants stats.”

The use of paperwork in Witbank is problematic in that, in some instances documents are displaced or are lost resulting in restarting the application process according to some CSOs, “There’s still more papers... You take the information of the client you pass it to the

Supervisor. It goes, move from one person to another then... there will be a document that is

9

The participant was interviewed in August 2013

missing there... The client must now start afresh, even to you it becomes a burden, it’s more work on top of you of that particular work.”

According to some Witbank CSO participants, clients are negatively affected when the system is down for days because clients report to the office daily only to have an accumulation of clients on the day the system is up, said a Witbank CSO. The forms may be collected manually but the processing of the applications is dependent on the electronic system, “... almost every day. It depends that maybe like today, there’s a retrenchment of

some sort and that date they are to come back, they will all come back on that date that we have allocated for them, only to come back and find the system down... Sometimes you can find that when you are at the help desk, they quarrel with you.”

There are competencies that the system performs like early detection of fraudulent activities according to a Johannesburg Supervisor, “For instance, let’s say uhh you come to apply for

Unemployment Insurance and then there’s a company that is appearing on the system and then you request a document from that company, you say, I never worked for that company... Ok. There’s a possibility that there’s a duplicate of application maybe the error from Home Affairs or it’s a fraud, someone is using somebody’s identity.” The above situation is then

escalated to the DoL Risk Management Unit (RMU) for investigation, “I’m glad because

RMU is intervening on that one... even though they will be taking longer.”

The Siyaya software programme is unable and or does not have the competency to inform clients in advance about the status of their applications. And the system cannot accurately plot the number of payments from inception of first to the last payment according to the Johannesburg and Witbank CSOs and Supervisors, “When a person claim for UIF… we were

supposed to maybe have a system that can inform clients that no, uhh, there are so many remaining, or next month is your last payment.” Instead, due to the shortcomings of the

system the clients, the CSOs and Supervisors, are kept in the dark and all parties concerned only know on the day when benefits have been depleted that that is the case, “...we don’t have

any means of telling clients that your money is about to finish, do not come again.” The

frustration for participants is that clients were encouraged to fill in a UI6 form that prepares for payment. Clients have also not been afforded an opportunity to plan their finances timeously. Only on the day they return to check why a payment has not gone through does the system inform of the depletion of benefits, “I remember last, yesterday... Another man

was crying at “such and such a place”, saying man, why didn’t you tell me that my money is about to be finished. I came here, I dropped the form and you gave me another form that I must bring back next month on such, such date, why didn’t you tell me that my money will be finishing.”

The participant also spoke about the inefficiency of the system to give a decipherable report, “... maybe that person gets paid once, when they come for the second time, we say the money

is finished. We did not inform them but you find that maybe the person has worked for 10 years or for 20 years but gets paid once and then it’s finished.”

The inefficiency of the system is also a policy issue in terms of restrictions and prohibitions according to the Johannesburg Individual and Group CSOs and Supervisors, “Like for

instance also the issue of the Internet. You can’t access Internet. Which is the basically, one of the fundamental things in terms of uhh, offering the excellent service.” The blanket control

of internet hampers officials’ work knowledge because there are no processes to ensure that updates in the amendments of legislation is communicated to all staff simultaneously, “You’ll

hear the information, somebody, a client maybe tells you something, which you didn’t hear about, you don’t know about...because they got access to that, they use Internet mostly.”

The restrictions and limits to access the internet have an adverse impact on frontline employees that are currently studying, according to some Johannesburg CSO participants, “I

do understand there are people who abuse access. Like those of us who are studying, sometimes we need to do some researches, at my salary, if I have to go and sit in the Internet café, is not much I can afford to pay to do research. Yet these researches I am doing, it’s something in line with my studies as I’m doing safety management, occupational health and safety, IES, compensation, UIF everything.”

As far as the manual and electronic software systems are concerned, it was revealed that there are challenges with the DoL software systems used at Labour Centres. It was also revealed that the issue of the DoL software systems is a clear detachment between the Labour Centres and Head Office. For instance, according to the DoL Key Informant, the Siyaya program is efficient, except for some ESSA glitches, “It takes long for people to register their

particulars. So, you may still find in our Labour Centres people queuing to register with ESSA. But it’s something that we know about and it’s something that the Department is

doing something about.” In fact, according to the DoL Key Informant, the problems of

inadequate service delivery as a whole lie squarely at the door of the inefficient IT performance, “Ok, meaning currently the problem is the IT? The IT yes. Yes; That is the cause of the sloppy service delivery? Yes ja because if you go for ESSA and you see it being

too slow, is not uhh like mainly because of the human element. Is the system itself that is too slow and is not enabling our guys to do their work as fast as they can.”

The researcher is of the opinion that the expectation that frontline staff maximise performance in the face of defunct, offline and inefficient software is a demotivating issue (Jasperson, Carter and Zmud, 2005). The missed potential role in the application of the systems and organisational theory including quantitative research methods of occupational social work in the production and operations management in the DoL, is clearly illustrated in this situation (Gould and Smith, 1988). The latter support the narrative that occupational social work needs to move from the narrow approach of casework and avoidance of work related issues to a macro orientation of the workplace (Maiden 2013).

Due to the working tools challenges, there are long queues on an almost daily basis at the Johannesburg and Witbank Labour Centres according to the Johannesburg and Witbank Individual and Group CSO and Supervisor participants, “Johannesburg Labour Centre is

packed until people queue outside on the streets.” In Witbank according to a CSO, “…all the time when you arrive in the morning you find that already there’s a queue outside, people queuing outside.” According to a Witbank CSO, “…there is a lot of work that needs to be done and now when you add the long lines on top of what we need to do it becomes an issue.”

Another participant in Witbank said, “Here you must come and sit on the queue, you follow

queue by queue... It’s time consuming... many people sit there the whole day, the public sit in front of you, you know you must get them out, you got only eight hours a day, and you must serve those people, they want to be served.” The process is frustrating to clients who have to

sit waiting for services and the CSOs who must provide the service, “...the public become

cross with you, and they say, I’m sitting here now so long, now you walking around but they don’t know they busy doing something else... They frustrate them as well because they know, I must serve my customers in front of me.”

There are help desk facilities to control queues in both the Witbank and Johannesburg Labour Centres, according to some Witbank and Johannesburg Individual and Group CSOs and

Supervisor participants. A Johannesburg Supervisor said, “If you look at the help desk also.

We don’t even have a proper help desk.” A Witbank CSO said, “Everyone has to start at the help desk, and then some don’t go to the help desk, they just pass... the help desk is anyway forever full, they just pass and go and sit wherever. And you find that the person where they are sitting they are sitting at the wrong place.”

The queue management system challenge in Witbank and Johannesburg, according to some Individual and Group CSO participants, is caused by chaos and clients not complying with requirements to start at the help desk before proceeding to core services. A Witbank CSO said, “It gets mixed-up inside here. If maybe if there could be,… different offices, so that

when the clients comes in, they would know exactly where to go to. Because presently you say, ‘go there, at the chair right at the end.’ And then when they go at the end, they get lost… that is why some clients end up sitting and waiting at the wrong place.” A

Johannesburg CSO said, “For instance, you cannot, if I’m at help desk you cannot just walk

past me. Why is help desk created... you disrespect me if you come just pass me.”

The chaos of queues causes an adverse misunderstanding between frontline CSOs and clients according to a Witbank CSO, “Some get angry, and sometimes it seems as if you as a Client

service officer you don’t want to help them.”

The queue challenge of the Johannesburg MLC is exacerbated by the minimal space of the venue; as a result, clients queue outside, “Some of them can bask in the sun for almost an

hour, coming to queue.... Raining and so forth… there’s barricades neh, then ja, some of them they go as close as that, some of them we accommodate in that boardroom you know, it’s very, very difficult when, especially when it’s raining. It’s better when it’s sunny because they can just go, they know, the queue.” MLC officials improvisation of the situation is, “… most of the time we take those who their health is not good and then we take them and we take those who are highly pregnant out of the queue... and shelter them from uncomfortable weather conditions on the veranda shades.”

As far as the queues at Labour Centres are concerned, it was revealed that there are long queues in Johannesburg and Witbank Labour Centres. The concerns expressed particularly by Witbank participants, is the lack of skills and leadership from management to manage the queue, a challenge that is a daily occurrence. The impact of the queue on clients in Witbank

is such that sometimes it evokes anger in clients directed towards officials. The study has found that Head Office is detached to the realities of the queues in the DoL service points. Instead, DoL Head Office understand the matter as a historical occurrence of a slow IT with one programme and will with another, improve. To cite the DoL Key Informant, “Eight

years, when you came here, you know, queues were very long at Labour Centres... You know we used to go the Pretoria Labour Centre. You would find the queue snaking there. Why? Because the systems were too slow, and the system was too much manual.” However,

according to most of the frontline staff at the sampled Labour Centres, the system is still very much manual, to quote a Witbank CSO, “We do everything manually. We taking

applications manually, we are taking the, the UI6 documents, and the payments documents manually, the CVs, they have to take them manually and put them away, unfortunately then it becomes a backlog.”

The daily long waits by clients for government services are not consistent with the Batho Pele intentions. Public service queues are said to be a symbol of inefficiency and tend to put officials under stress and tension (Babes and Sarma, 1991 quoted in Obamiro, 2010); and causes inconveniences to individuals and economic costs to organisations. Key to the scientific angle of the queuing theory is its application to increase efficiency and improve quality of service (Obamiro, 2010). The latter is the responsibility of management which is espoused as a terrain that occupational social work can assist in if empowered with the knowledge of queuing theory (Gould and Smith, 1988). This view is supported by MacDermott and Stone (2013) who looked at similar pressures on the Australian bureaucratic system, highlighting various unintended consequences of decisions by management and how closely linked these were to the ability of members of the public to trust the effective service delivery by their government.