'Bang for our bucks?' Smart procurement needed to help SAPS keep up with the crooks
Many action movies depict cops outsmarting robbers with high-tech gadgets.
In reality it’s often the other way around.
Reports of poachers using drones in Saldanha and along the Overberg coast suggest robbers are racing ahead in the techno stakes.
But if SAPS want to win this battle they will need to vanquish another foe: the enemy within. In particular, procurement problems hogging the news headlines are symptomatic of a police force unable to make the best use of its resources.
The question now is not whether SAPS can keep up with the criminals, it is whether they can catch up.
The current brouhaha over a R360million police services tender – to provide medical screening services – is part of a bigger procurement problem that should have been addressed years ago. Nowhere is it more apparent than in the outdated equipment and ICT systems still evident despite years of investment.
Police stakeholders spoke candidly about the problem at a recent crime workshop in Cape Town. In the Western Cape, as much as in other provinces, across 1150 police stations, ordinary officers often have to rely on their intuition more than their tools. Information systems are not yet automated, a huge proportion of police budget is still spent on maintaining or fixing vehicles, and digital technology is in short supply. This despite years of substantial ICT investment, with the police IT budget being substantially more than other government departments according to the Government Technical Advisory Centre (GTAC), which highlighted the issue in a comprehensive report. “Although the SAPS has a bigger ICT division relative to other departments in government, only 11.8 per cent (R417.5 million) of ICT costs at the end of 2020/21 were incurred internally (i.e., for SAPS ICT staff costs) while the remaining 88.2 per cent (R3.1 billion) was incurred externally (i.e., for services rendered by external service providers, software licence fees, procurement of equipment, consultancy fees, etc.),” said the report, published in 2022. “The high external costs make it difficult to assess whether the Technology Management Services division in the SAPS is appropriately equipped to effectively render some ICT services in-house and to effectively monitor how SAPS divisions utilise their systems. SAPS needs improve its operational efficiencies by thoroughly assessing its ICT environment, particularly the high costs incurred for services rendered by service providers such as SITA.”
This report is revealing, if not wholly depressing because it is already three years old. The police’s ICT budget is still managed by SITA, notwithstanding SITA board controversies. Arguably the situation has got worse.
Can South Africa afford to entrust the police’s critical ICT budget to SITA? The answer is a resounding no.
It is time to question what value SAPS is deriving from its overall R122-billion budget. Surely a different procurement model is long overdue?
What is alarmingly clear is that current police stations and their equipment are still very similar to what they were twenty years ago. In far too many cases there is very little to show for years of upgrades and ICT investments.
Where there have been improvements it is often thanks to private sector involvement, which provides a clue to future success. Allowing SAPS to benefit from private sector expertise through meaningful partnership – and oversight – may just be the most practical way of making up for lost time in the fight against crime.
We cannot allow procurement problems to further demoralised an increasingly demoralised SAPS.
To be clear: nobody expects James Bond-style gizmos and heat-seeking missiles; but we do expect the SAPS budget to allow crimefighting to evolve with the digital times, rather than lag behind.
John Lawson
CEO of the Cape Chamber of Commerce and Industry