Question NW1935 to the Minister of Social Development
06 June 2022 - NW1935
Masango, Ms B to ask the Minister of Social Development
With reference to her reply to question 1000 on 8 April 2022, what mitigation strategies has the SA Social Security Agency implemented to ensure delivery of grants during the (a) downtime and (b) system failure cases?
Reply:
SASSA has a target of 97% system availability, and in recent periods has managed to maintain an average of 99%. When systems are down, SASSA is still able to process grant applications manually; thus, enabling the delivery of the service during these times.
Where downtime is as a result of power failures or load shedding, most local offices are equipped with backup generators to keep the systems running.
Furthermore, SASSA is moving towards the implementation of an online applications system. This has worked exceedingly well for the COVID-19 SRD Grant and has been rolled out for the other types of grants.