E-dockets land cops in dog house

Cape Town - A multi-million-rand electronic system supposed to minimise lost dockets and speed up police investigations, could take up to 20 years to implement, by which time it could already be out of date.

And to add to the new system’s woes, it is entirely reliant on an upgrade of the police IT network, which at the current rate of roll-out could take 10 years.

On Friday, on the fourth and final day of the police’s grilling by the National Assembly’s portfolio committee, MPs heard that R148 million had so far been spent on rolling out the Integrated Case Docket Management System.

The new system will allow officers and detectives to create “e-dockets” or scan documents into a system, which is connected with the courts.

However, despite being in development for 10 years, only 79 stations have access to the system.

In addition, Parliament heard that in those stations where it was operational, there was some resistance to its use by officers who chose to continue using the old system because they were “more comfortable with it”.

Lieutenant General Bonginkosi Ngubane, the divisional commissioner for technology services said the upgrade of the police’s electronic network was also a major stumbling block for the programme.

He said about 200 police sites needed network upgrades, and that at the current pace of about 200 upgrades per year, this could take 10 years.

Cabling first needs to be installed, before equipment is delivered. Each station requires a 2Mb internet connection.

In some instances, equipment was standing unused in stations because the laying of cabling had not been completed.

Ngubane also said no sites had been upgraded in the last year because the tender process had stalled.

Ngubane admitted it had taken 10 years to get just 79 of over 1 000 police stations onto the Case Docket Management System, and it could thus take another 20 years before all stations were fully enabled.

“By which time there will be something better than computers,” commented the visibly angry committee acting chairwoman Annelize Van Wyk.

Despite all the issues with the programme, and calls by DA member Dianne Kohler-Barnard to “just pull the plug”, Ngubane optimistically indicated he would like the project to be fully implemented in the next two years.

Kohler-Barnard called the system a “ridiculous programme” which “you can’t seem to implement”.

The police also could not account for how many dockets had so far been captured on the system and said only 32 of the 79 stations were able to communicate with courts using the system.

Van Wyk questioned whether R148m had been spent on what was no more than an “elaborate scanning and word processing system”.

She became even more agitated when she was told that new detectives were still being trained on the old system.

“That’s absolutely ridiculous” she said.

Also appearing before the committee yesterday was the Crime Intelligence unit, whose officials were also not spared the committee’s wrath.

The unit was deemed “unstable” because of the high numbers of people in acting positions, and senior managements suspensions (among them Richard Mdluli who was last year suspended as head of the unit).

Van Wyk questioned why certain performance targets were listed in a public document as being “classified”.

“If you think we’re going to give you this amount of money without any questions, you’ve got another think coming,” she said.

The unit has put in a budget of R2.7 billion.

The committee also heard that 21 members of the unit were suspended on charges including fraud, robbery, theft, murder and sexual assault.

The committee heard that the backlog on vetting continued, with just 1 019 of the 7 938 unit members in possession of a valid security clearance certificate.

Weekend Argus