The Department of Home Affairs has dismissed Simphiwe Hlophe, chief director: infrastructure management for information systems (IS), who was found guilty on counts relating to gross negligence and gross dereliction of duty.
Hlophe was responsible for IT issues that involve network outages (offline), system downtime and IT capability which affect the department’s commitment to service delivery and governance.
He was charged with:
* Gross negligence or dereliction of duties in that he certified an invoice of the State IT Agency (SITA) that included services not rendered;
* Contravention of National Treasury Regulation 8.2.1, gross negligence (alternative negligence) in that he authorised other expenditure against a credit note issued by SITA; and
* Gross dereliction of duties or dereliction of duties in that routers and switches were procured, but remained in storage, and were not deployed.
Last year, the Department of Home Affairs together with the Department of Communications & Digital Technologies and SITA, presented a plan to deal with system downtime in Home Affairs offices to the Joint Portfolio Committees on Home Affairs and Communications and Digital Technologies.
SITA undertook to totally overhaul their networks while Home Affairs undertook to buy a certain number of new routers and switches. These routers and switches were procured and Hlophe reported that they were being deployed. It was discovered later that they were still in storerooms.
The sanction was served on 19 August 2022.
System instability has negatively impact Home Affair’s ability to deliver frontline services.