Question NW1000 to the Minister of Social Development
08 April 2022 - NW1000
Masango, Ms B to ask the Minister of Social Development
With reference to visits to some offices of the SA Social Security Agency (SASSA) that revealed ongoing and disruptive downtimes that sometimes run for up to whole days, causing problems for grant application and resulting in a loss of working hours, and in view of the social pension (Socpen) system cited as being too old and unable to take the load, (a) what (i) number of whole day downtime has been experienced by SASSA offices nationally over the past two years, (ii) are the causes of most of the downtimes and (iii) is being done to reduce and/or eradicate downtime and (d) how old is the Socpen system?
Reply:
(i) number of whole day downtime has been experienced by SASSA offices nationally over the past two years
The Socpen system downtime experienced started in May 2021 and the hours downtime was measured from September 2021. The system downtime was never more than three (3) hours per system incident or on any given day. Where it was longer than three (3) hours, it was linked to other contributing factors such as load shedding, electricity failures, network or server malfunction etc. The table below illustrates the downtime incidents per month as a consequence of the Socpen system. In each instance, the downtime did not exceed four to six (4 - 6) hours downtime per incident.
|
Month |
Total Incidents |
|
May |
15 |
|
June |
2 |
|
July |
6 |
|
August |
10 |
|
September |
15 |
|
October |
17 |
|
November |
17 |
|
December |
4 |
|
January |
11 |
|
February |
13 |
|
March |
9 |
|
Total |
119 |
(ii) are the causes of most of the downtimes
Some of the downtime can be linked to when verification of transactions using the Biometric solution was rolled out nationally. We are however, continuously monitoring the system to identify if there could be other causes.
Some of the downtime is attributed to other causes such as power failures, network or server malfunction.
(iii) What is being done to reduce and/or eradicate downtime
Currently Software AG and IBM who are respectively the product owners of the Mainframe Technology and MQ (Messaging and Queuing middleware) on which SOCPEN is running have been requested by SITA to assist with the investigation and resolution of the intermittent system downtimes.
In order to further eliminate some of the possible causes, on 15 March 2022 a system change was done on the Mainframe. Since its implementation, no downtime has been recorded. The implemented change is still being monitored on an ongoing basis until we are certain the problem has been resolved.
(iv) how old is the Socpen system?
The Socpen system is about 25 years old.
The Agency has a five (5) year target to replace the legacy systems, including SOCPEN. The implementation of new technology such as the online application and the SRD R350 systems, is a step towards achieving this target. This will amongst other opportunities, enable ease of integration and interface with other new technology systems.