The Auditor General has released a report on the allegation of non-compliance with supply chain management processes during the appointment of some service providers to the Department of Water Affairs.

The report recommends that the findings should be addressed decisively by the Minister with the support of the senior management of the DWA. It continues, "corrective action limited to the specific individual findings alone would most likely address the symptoms, but not the underlying causes. This approach carries the risk of deficiencies recurring in future. It is therefore imperative that the underlying causes contributing to the deficiencies be properly understood and addressed as part of the corrective actions to be taken in response to this report".

The report then lists the underlying causes that affect sound management, namely:

• Quality of reporting: This area includes the entity’s ability to retain records appropriately and to use these as a basis to provide relevant, accurate and complete management information to the leadership, those charged with governance and the oversight authorities. Quality information management enables quality monitoring, proper decision-making and oversight.
• Effective governance arrangements: This focus area covers the effectiveness of functions and tools such as audit committees, internal audit, enterprise risk management (including fraud risk management), internal control frameworks and policy frameworks
• Adequate leadership oversight: This category underscores the importance of leadership creating the correct environment in the organisation. It includes the manner in which leadership monitors performance and compliance and the way in which ethical behaviour is promoted. Leadership oversight is also about preventing an organisational culture of impunity and acting decisively to correct deficiencies.

The full report is available to download here (672KB)