In the Free State two by-elections took place and both wards were won by the African National Congress. In Ward 4 in Nokeng Tsa Taemane (Cullinan) Pieter Eksteen van der Watt of the Democratic Alliance is the new councillor while Rabatho John Mokotla won in Ward 2 in Mogale City (Krugersdorp) GT481 and Joseph Maramane Mogotsi in Ward 22 in Tshwane Metro (Pretoria) TSH. Both councillors represent the African National Congress.
According to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), an election period is the period during which the IEC's Code of Conduct and the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa's regulations apply. Government communicators and their departments should continue meeting the obligation of government to provide information to the people.
This allows messages, memos and letters to be sent to anybody within the Department, irrespective of where the person is situated, providing that the office has a network as described above, or to any person outside the Department, who has such facilities. One would also be able to receive messages. A policy decision has been taken that all circulars will in future be distributed by e-mail instead of using hard copies. External correspondence between offices could also consist of email rather than of letters.
Users will be trained to use applications such as MSWord, (word processing) MS Excell (spreadsheets) and MS Outlook (e-mail and diary). Some users will also receive training in applications such as Internet Explorer and Jutastat.
It is planned that officials will shortly be able to file their applications for leave from their own PCs instead of having to complete traditional leave forms. Authorisation of leave applications will also be given on-line by the supervisor with an "electronic signature". The supervisor will be notified automatically of a person's available leave days and if a sufficient number is available, the system will accept the approval and deduct these automatically from PER-SAL; in this manner ensuring that these credits are registered correctly on the PERSAL system. Also in the pipeline is a system to collect debits from outstanding S&T advance claims.
The ability of the system to automatically and timely notify supervisors/Head of Offices, or any identified person, of events or actions that were not attended to, or are overdue.
These will be automatically generated and it can be printed immediately.
In civil case management, the case is initiated by the plaintiff's attorney and electronically sent through to courts. Requests for default judgments/writ of executions are also done and granted electronically. The revenue stamps will be replaced by a transaction fee, which the attorneys have to pay. This fee still has to be determined. All pleadings will be filed electronically and the need to have large amounts of storage space, will disappear gradually. Since everything is done electronically and stored on a database, queries can be dealt with much quicker and more efficiently. Attorneys, who have access to the system, will be able to schedule set-down dates electronically.
The Rules Board and the Department is jointly involved with the drafting of the required new Rules and Acts.
The success of the e-Justice programme depends on effective change management. This is a strategic intervention that cuts across each of the projects that will be undertaken and campaigned by our human resources component.
This programme relates to management information services, content management, knowledge management and records management. This project will start shortly.