The crash of the server of the Government Printing Works (GPW) last year was due to gross negligence on the part of the entity’s IT department and specifically former chief information officer (CIO) Anele Apleni, an investigating panel has found.
The GPW, a national key point, prints official documents such as government gazettes, passports, visas, birth certificates, smart card identification documents and examination materials. The crash of the server, which supports corporate services and is the repository for e-gazettes, resulted in the irrecoverable loss of financial data for the entity’s 2020/2021 and 2021/2022 financial years. In 2019 it generated revenue of R1.5bn.
The GPW’s website was also down for about a month in January and February after a hardware failure that rendered much many e-gazettes containing laws, policies, regulations and notifications unavailable.
Home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi told a meeting of parliament’s home affairs committee, which was briefed on the findings and recommendations of the investigating panel, that he would personally oversee the implementation of the panel’s recommendations.
He appointed the panel after being told that the server crash on February 4 2021 was due to sabotage, but this could not be verified by the investigating ream. However, the panel rejected Apleni’s claim that it due to a power surge after load-shedding. Eskom and the City of Tshwane told the panel there were no outages on the relevant days.
Motsoaledi said Apleni had resigned from January shortly after being interviewed by the panel. “Mr Apleni’s leaving was not innocent,” he said.
The panel found the surge was due to non-compliant electrical installations in the server room that were pointed out in 2019. These weren’t attended to and meant the server could collapse at any time, panel chair Papati Malavi told MPs. Also, data was not backed up as required.
Malavi said poor maintenance of antiquated servers was to blame for the crash “due essentially to the fact that the CIO and his team did not know how to perform proper functions on the server such as loading discs, scrubbing discs before loading new data and ensuring that there is proper backup should there be a problem.” The uninterruptible power supply (UPS) was outdated and poorly maintained and its batteries failed on the day of the crash.
Apleni had also acted recklessly in deciding in 2016/2017 to cancel contracts with external service providers and instead insource ICT governance without having the necessary in-house resources and skills. The decision was endorsed by former acting CEO Thandi Moyo, who failed to verify Apleni’s assurances that there were sufficient skilled staff to take over the work and that all the preparations were in place.
The panel recommended disciplinary action against Apleni and Moyo had they still been employed, along with the director and two deputy directors responsible for IT security, infrastructure and databases.
Current GPW CEO Alinah Fosi was absolved of any blame. Malavi said Fosi had tried to put things in order but had come across a “toxic” environment and a lack of accountability. There had been a “total collapse” of governance at the entity before 2019, he said.
The panel found various shortcomings in contract management and recommended that a forensic audit be conducted into two contracts, with DAC Systems and Intervate. The loss or theft of critical human resource management information has been referred to the Hawks for investigation.
Motsoaledi said the 2020/2021 financial statements had been reconstructed and submitted to the auditor-general and GPW was busy reconstructing those for 2021/2022.
The GPW has agreed to undertake printing for the Namibian and Kenyan governments and talks are under way with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Motsoaledi told the committee.
ensorl@businesslive.co.za
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