Roadmap

On 14 September 2005 Cabinet approved the Integrated Management System programme to replace the ageing, costly and disparate administration systems that supported national and provincial Public Service departments under the partnership of:

• National Treasury (NT) as the sponsor and policy owner for Financial Management,
• Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) as the policy owner for the Human Resources Management, and
• State Information Technology Agency (SITA) as the solution provider and prime system integrator.

The approved IFMS programme was adopted based on the Hybrid solution architecture consisting of Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) and bespoke modules. COTS modules included Human Resources Management and Procurement Management, while bespoke modules comprised Financial Management, Payroll and Supply Chain Management. The main aim of commissioning the IFMS was to integrate Supply Chain Management, Human Resource Management, Financial Management, Payroll and Business Intelligence functionalities in the Public Service. Thus, supporting the implementation of legislation such as the Public Finance Management Act and the Public Service Act by providing standardised, centrally hosted and integrated Financial, Supply Chain and HR management solutions through automated technologies. In addition, the objectives of the IFMS included:

• Automating and standardising processes,
• Achieving interoperability, security, economies of scale, and eliminating duplicates IT systems across the public service, and
• Improving quality of data and ease of access thereof within a secure environment.
• Support implementation of legislation;
• Enhancing integrity and effectiveness of financial management, human resource management, supply chain management, performance reporting and decision making in the Public Service; and
• Improving management decision making.

In preparation for the transition to the IFMS, Cabinet approved that all legacy systems continue to be managed as per the status quo at the time until migration to the IFMS was considered feasible. This would translate to the decommissioning of all legacy systems including BAS, PERSAL, LOGIS, FMS, POLFIN and PERSOL upon the inception of the IFMS. A moratorium (National Treasury Practice Note 7 of 2006) was further placed on the acquisition of new systems with the same functionality as IFMS in the said domains (HRM, Fin, Payroll and SCM).

As at 2013, certain functionality of the HR Management, Asset Management, Item and Service Master, Catalogue Management and Procurement Management components had been implemented at a few National and Provincial departments while other components had not been completed. The applications had not been integrated at that stage except for partial integration with legacy systems at pilot implementation sites. The extended timeframes taken to implement the IFMS posed a great concern leading to the commissioning of three independent reviews, by Gartner, World Bank and Ernst & Young, on the overall enterprise architecture, solution architecture and project governance. On 20 November 2013, after significant consideration of the outcomes of all three reviews, Cabinet endorsed a recommendation to change the approved hybrid solution architecture (consisting of bespoke and Commercial Off the Shelf solutions) in favour of a single Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. This COTS architecture was to be considered with the intention to implement a “Vanilla” COTS solution where customisation to the system would be kept at a minimum. Hence the two versions of the IFMS; the IFMS1 which was the initial programme mandated by Cabinet in 2005 and the IFMS2; mandated by Cabinet in 2013 as a result of the recommendations from the three independent reviews. The IFMS2 was still to be under the same partners however with SITA’s role being changed to hosting, support and maintenance as opposed to solution owner as per the 2005 Cabinet decision. The IFMS Steering Committee (Steercom) made a number of changes to the Programme to give effect to the change in approach approved by Cabinet in 2013, the most significant changes and actions included:

• Conducting planning activities to implement the revised approach.
• Establishing programme governance and associated methodologies.
• The NT issuing a tender for an ERP solution to be supplied by an Original Software Manufacturer (OSM) through SITA.

• The initial bid lapsed after objections were received, however, after the consideration of the objections, the Bid was republished in November 2014 for COTS ERP software and licences including on-going support and maintenance of the software. Four bid responses were received.
• By June 2015, with the bid evaluation process having been completed, a letter of conditional award was submitted to Oracle Corporation (South Africa). After a systematic value assurance process was conducted, extensive engagements and negotiations took place and a contract was signed with Oracle.
• The National Treasury Practice Note 7 of 2006) note was updated.
• The IFMS Chief Directorate at NT as well as a Programme Management Office (PMO) in 2014/15 located in the Office of the Accountant General was established and resourced.
• The PMO was established and further resourced with service providers for Project Management, Strategic Technical Advisory Services, Probity Services, and Change Management and Communications.

• During 2015/16 a revised Governance Structure was approved, the Original Software Manufacturer (Oracle) was appointed & licences were procured. Programme Strategies were also implemented e.g Organisational Change Management Strategy, Human Resource Management Strategy, Document Management & Configuration Strategy, Communication Strategy, etc.
• As from 2016, all Oracle licences (available in the IFMS suite) that are currently on the accounts of various National and Provincial departments would have to be consolidated into the new Oracle (IFMS) licence, saving on licence spending in the Public Service.
• In November 2017, the Enterprise Architecture Planning and Design process started. The Architecture Planning and Design allows the IFMS to focus on IT-related architecture and strategies, and to define the business vision and governance strategies with the aim of developing a blueprint of the IFMS solution.

• In 2018 a high-level implementation plan was approved, and the hosting environment (Private Cloud Application) was secured.
• The Architecture Planning and Design was completed by September 2018 which resulted in the Architecture Blueprint for IFMS and comprised the following documents:
  • Future State Enterprise Architecture;
  • Business Architecture;’
  • Application Architecture;
  • Target Operating Model;
  • Implementation Roll Out plan; and
  • High Level Policy Gap Analysis.

IFMS roll out will be carried out according to readiness of the various national and provincial departments. The readiness will be measured based on various business considerations like infrastructure and availability of resources to commence.