Cape Town - Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi has asked Parliament to grant an extension to the Government Printing Works (GPW) to submit its 2021/22 annual report in September after the entity suffered yet another crash on its data server.
Motsoaledi made the request in a letter addressed to National Assembly Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula and National Council of Provinces chairperson Amos Masondo.
In his letter, Motsoaledi said the head of GWP was required to submit financial statements within two months after the end of the financial year to the Auditor-General for auditing and the National Treasury to prepare consolidated financial statements.
The audit report was to be submitted within five months of the end of a financial year to Parliament with the institution’s annual report and financial statements.
“If an accounting officer is unable to comply with any of the responsibilities determined for accounting officers in this Part, the accounting officer must promptly report the inability, together with reasons, to the relevant executive authority and Treasury.”
Motsoaledi said GPW experienced a power surge which led to a hardware failure in February 2021.
“Failure of a hardware called EVA affected a number of systems because it hosts multiple servers, including those of the tender bulletins, e-Gazettes, financial management system (Dynamics AX system), emails and other technical systems.
“GPW subsequently lost critical data dating back to November 2019 which was contained in the servers, when this hardware failure occurred.”
He said despite all efforts to recover the data, GPW could not retrieve and restore the required data.
“As a consequence, the unavailability of this critical data adversely affected the status of GPW to fulfil its legislative obligation of compiling credible annual financial statements and timeously submitting them to AGSA for auditing.”
The minister said GPW had previously committed to submitting two sets of annual financial statements by May 31.
GPW submitted the first set of annual financial statements for 2020/21 for auditing on May 31.
“However, GPW suffered yet another system crash in March 2022 at its Bosman campus which led to the collapse of the infrastructure that housed among others, the databases with financial information and supporting schedules for the GPW financials, that could have assisted with the compilation of the second set of the 2021/22 Annual Financial Statements.”
Motsoaledi also said the Auditor-General should audit the figures for the 2020/21 financial year first before the next set of the 2021/22 financial year is audited.
“GPW requests an extension to submit the second set of the 2021/22 Annual Financial Statements on September 30, 2022, in order to allow the audit process for the 2020/21 financial year to be concluded.”
He listed steps taken by GPW for assessment of its entire ICT infrastructure and systems by the State Security Agency (SSA).
When the SSA officials started with their work in December 2021, they had to halt their operation after they found that their gadget had been disconnected from the socket where they had plugged it into.
“An immediate investigation was conducted and concluded by GPW and a report was submitted to SSA,” he said.
Motsoaledi also said a further request was made to SSA management for their officials to return to GPW to conclude the scanning and assessment of GPW.
“SSA returned and concluded their scanning and assessment and subsequently submitted a report in May 2022, for implementation of their recommendations.”
He also said a forensic investigation was in the process of being undertaken to determine the real causes of the system crashes and data losses.
Cape Times