The document discusses integrating public and administrative registries to evaluate social programs in South Africa. It provides background on South Africa's social programs since 1994. The National Integrated Social Information System (NISIS) was developed to integrate data across systems like education and healthcare to better monitor social programs, but it has progressed slowly and faces data quality issues. The South African social protection payment system (SOCPEN) interfaces with other systems but not always in real time. Fully integrating information systems remains a challenge due to competing priorities and a lack of ownership over integrated data.

1. INTEGRATING PUBLIC AND
ADMINISTRATIVE REGISTRIES IN
THE EVALUATION OF SOCIAL
PROGRAMS
Boraine, H., Nhlapo-Hlope, J., De Klerk, S., Lentsoane, L., Musekene, E., and Ruch, W.
1

2. PRESENTATION OUTLINE
A. Background
B. South Africa’s social wage regime since 1994
C. National Integrated Social Information System
D. SOCPEN
E. Other information systems supporting social
wage regime: education, healthcare, basic services,
public employment programmes, human settlements
F. Obstacles to integration
G. Conclusion
2

3. BACKGROUND
• Democratic state inherited a divided nation, with
high poverty levels, inequalities, discriminatory
practices and inequitable distribution of income.
• There has been significant progress since 1994
BUT South Africa still faces:
• official unemployment rate of 25.5%
• high poverty levels: estimated 20.2% of the
population lived below the food poverty line.
• high and growing inequality:
3

4. BACKGROUND continued
Poverty Headcounts 2006 2009 2011
Percentage of the population that
is poor (below the UBPL)
57.2% 56.8% 45.5%
Number of poor persons (millions) 27.1 27.8 23.0
Percentage of the population living
in extreme poverty (below the FPL)
26.6% 32.4% 20.2%
Number of extremely poor persons
(millions)
12.6 15.8 10.2
4

5. BACKGROUND: MONITORING AND THE EVALUATION
SYSTEM
• National Monitoring and Evaluation Framework of Outcomes: Introduced
2009
• Current development priorities derived from the Constitution and further
articulated in the NDP 2012: Vision of Equity and prosperity by 2030
• Defines 14 outcomes: Quality basic education, skills development and
healthcare; Reducing crime and corruption; Jobs and inclusive growth; Economic
infrastructure; Rural development ands spatial equity; Sustainable human
settlements; Local government; Sustainable development- the environmental leg;
Better Africa and better world; Competent Public service; Social protection; nation
building and social cohesion
• Performance agreements for ministers and signed with the president
• Civil servants assisting include: Content and data specialists and various
forums established including data forums, implementation forums to
encourage coordination IMCs and War on Poverty coordinated by the
Deputy President
• Public involved
– Citizen based monitoring
– Public POA 5

6. Links
to
out-come
web-sites
6

7. BACKGROUND cont: THE EVALUATION SYSTEM
• National Evaluation Policy Framework: by Cabinet in 2011
• Derives mandate from Constitution: The Constitution (section 195)
mandates that in the principles of public administration; the PFMA; MFMA:
• Defines evaluation as: The systematic collection and objective analysis of
evidence on public policies, programmes, projects, functions and organisations to
assess issues such as relevance, performance (effectiveness and efficiency), value
for money, impact and sustainability and recommend ways forward.
• Some Evaluation done: ECD, 2012/13 Nutrition for children under 5 years,
impact evaluation of evaluation of grade R outcomes, comprehensive rural
development programme, evaluation of the urban settlements development grant,
implementation evaluation of the restitution programme, 2014 plan evaluations
includes EPWP, impact evaluation of the Funza Lushaka bursary scheme, impact
evaluation of the national schools nutrition programme
• Source of data: Official survey done by STATSSA; NIDS; other surveys done by
private and public entities, not yet mined other systems due to unscientificness of
the data.
• Evaluations plan 2014/2019 recently approved by cabinet 7

8. THE CONSTITUTIONAL MANDATE ON SOUTH AFRICA’S SOCIAL WAGE
Constitutional mandate Social wage Who must deliver
Section 27: Social security State Old Age Pension; Child Support Grant;
Disability Grant; Foster Care Grant;
Veterans Grant; Care Dependency Grant
Section 27: Clean water 6kl per household per month Local government
Section 50kwh per household per month Local government
Section 26: right to housing Reconstruction and Development
Programme (RDP)house
Department of Housing:
Province municipalities
Section 29: Right to education No fee School Department of Basic
Education: Province
Section 27: Right to Health Care Free health care for under 6 and pregnant
women and later NHI
Department of Health :
Province
Social Insurance Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) and
Compensation for Occupational Injuries and
Diseases (COIDA)
Department of Labour
Public employment programmes Expanded Public work Programme and
Community Work Programme
All three spheres of
government
8

9. GOVERNMENT SPEND ON THE SOCIAL WAGE
• Out of a total population of 52
million about 16 million people
receive social assistance
• Government spends about
US$100 per month per household
on the poorest 40% of
households on the social wage,
including social grants
• 60% of government spending
allocated to the social wage
• 19% of GDP is spent on the social
assistance).
9

10. THE CASE FOR TRACKING ACCESS/COVERAGE and THE
RETURN ON INVESTMENT ON THE SOCIAL WAGE
• Despite this huge investment, poverty persists. Panel study show that 40% of the
poor in 2008 remained poor in 2013; those that did not, their status improved
because of employment and grants. Those that became poorer; non health, job
loss
– Employment has become skills bias: High skilled employment rose by 50%.
Low skilled employment fell by 20%. This could largely be because increased
trade has enabled the adoption of unskilled labour saving technology (Wood,
et al., 1994); government policies and investment subsidies between 1993-97
exacerbated an already capital intensive production structure and sectors that
mopped up unskilled labour either declined or adopted more capital intensive
methodology sectors that come immediately in mind include agriculture and
mining. (Rodrik, 2006 p. 12) hence the importance of education
– Poverty rate: without social grants = 0.43. With social grants =0.25
– Health care including access to basic services
10

11. NATIONAL INTEGRATED SOCIAL INFORMATION
SYSTEM (NISIS)
• Approved by Cabinet in 2008
• Funded by the National Department of Social
Development by 50% of the funding. The other half
comes from Rural Development and Land Reform
which is responsible for the War on Poverty and
the Comprehensive Rural Development Programme
• Targeting all households in the poorest wards but
not systematic and Results collated by Community
Development Workers are fed into a referral
system.
11

12. NATIONAL INTEGRATED SOCIAL INFORMATION
SYSTEM (NISIS) Continued
• NISIS was developed to:
• provide a database of households living in poverty to enable service delivery
monitoring, a service referrals system and poverty analysis.
• establish a platform to enable the coordination and integration of social
protection initiatives by
• To provide reliable, integrated and detailed view of households living in
poverty;
• Enable the coordination of anti-poverty efforts across the spheres of
government;
• To minimise duplication and inefficiencies from the maintenance of a
multitude of deficient beneficiary registers and registration processes;
• To enhance policy development and monitoring and evaluation
capabilities by providing tools and data for evidence based analysis and
decision making;
• To reduce fraud by providing visibility of individuals’ participation across
major social programmes.
12

13. NISIS FIELDS RECORDED
• Personal details: address, name, gender, age, marital status, ID, ID type,
disability type, level of education, school attendance, walking to school,
distance to school
• Individual: Skills, employment status, participation in sport and other
community activities
• Government service needs assessment: Educational services, Health
services, Social grant applications, Home Affairs (birth, marriage, death
registration),Small business development, Labour services
• Per household: Access to land, water and markets for the production of
live stock, Land ownership and utilisation, Food consumption and source
of food, Household involvement in small business (type), Access to basic
services (water, sanitation, electricity, refuse removal), Access to free basic
services (water, sanitation, electricity, refuse removal), Household income,
Dwelling type
13

14. CHALLENGES WITH NISIS
• Snails pace: Since profiling of
households started in 2009, 1 013
488 poor households out of
estimated 4.75 million poor
households had been profiled
and captured on the system in
October 2014, At this rate it will
take 12 to 16 years to complete
the profiling of poor households
(i.e. households living below the
poverty line)
• Ownership is important: Building
a database of poor households is
a resource intensive exercise,
requiring sustainable long term
funding and support of key
players such as National Treasury.
• Data systems must be utilised and
utilisable if to be sustainable but
– there is poor quality control (garbage
in)
– all the social wage departments and
systems linking and meeting demand.
So all that NISIS has done is to
generate a massive needs list
14

15. SOCPEN
Biggest payment system in South
Africa; by Department of Social
Development and South Africa Social
Security Agency
SOCPEN interfaces with other
government information systems
more importantly Department of
Home Affairs and can provide real-time
information from the population
register and PERSAL, to cross-check
income data.
Biometric systems are in place for
beneficiaries to collect their money
and prove their identity, including
fingerprints and voice recognition.
Legacy information management
system running a comprehensive
system of social assistance grants and
processes more than 16 368 403
grants monthly 15

16. SOCPEN PROCESS
16
SOCIAL GRANT LIFECYCLE
1.
Application on
demand-SASSA
office
2.
Screening of
applications
3.
Processing of
applications within
21 days
4.
Approve/reject
application
5.
Applicants informed on
6. outcomes
Enrol applicants into
the scheme
7.
SOCPEN’s payroll produces
payment schedule
aggregated by provinces
and payment service
providers

17. CHALLENGES(SOCPEN)
Limits include:
• Reaching its ability to be customised and being overtaken
by many technological changes
• Processes producing substantial volume of paper and
forms
• Not being an organisation-wide system covering all SASSA
operations
• Maintain other operational MISs which is inefficient and
leads to duplication of data storing (making reporting,
monitoring and evaluation difficult)
• Linking with other MISs but not always in real time
• Not being set up to integrate data and information
management, which means its overall focus is on
managing operational processes for grant delivery rather
than on policy coordination and oversight.
17

18. LESSONS LEARNT (SOCPEN)
• Old is gold. Even though it is a legacy system
built on a non-graphical user interface based
on mainframes, SOCPEN has delivered
relatively well.
• SITA plays a pivotal role in supporting and
maintaining SOCPEN.
18

19. OTHER INFORMATION SYSTEMS
SUPPORTING SOCIAL PROTECTION
• Education: Learner Unit Record Information and Tracking System
(LURITS)- 2008
– Unit record data for each learner. Appr. 12 million records per
academic year.
– The data includes ID number, date of birth, gender, address,
telephone number, parents (alive or deceased), province of
origin, grade, whether receiving state funding for grade R, class,
school attendance last year, whether receiving a social grant,
whether boards at hostel or at home, whether benefits from
school feeding scheme, special school or mainstream school,
disabilities, language (home, teaching preferred), languages
taken as subjects, matriculation subjects (for grades 10-12), and
extramural activities.
– Each learner has a unique identifier (LURITS number)
– Quality of data, LURITS number not sticky
19

20. OTHER INFORMATION SYSTEMS:
HEALTHCARE AND HOUSING
• Healthcare: fragmented information system, lacks
interoperability between the 42 heterogeneous Health
Information systems
• Housing:
• National Housing Needs Register launched in 2009; web based
system to enable provinces and municipalities to register
housing needs.
• Housing Subsidy System:
• Tracks subsidies given and records the progress of subsidy allocations made.
• Managed at national level by the Department of Human Settlements and by
provinces,
• Allows users to register, edit and verify applications
• Capacity at national level to support municipalities inadequate. Users at
municipality level find it difficult to pull out information as and when they
need it.
20

21. OTHER INFORMATION SYSTEMS: PUBLIC
EMPLOYMENT
• Unemployment structural
• Participant Manager’s application that can run on mobile phones to manage
attendance for thousands of people on a daily basis that are based at multiple
locations. The app is available as native Android or iPhone apps. It is built on
HTML 5.
• Functionality: registers new participants onto the programme; uploads identification
documents, bank account details and a participant photo and uses a server-side facial
recognition API to compare recorded images against reference images. It tracks time and
attendance for a group of participants and relays to the Payments App to enable
participant payment using Biometric verification and Client side facial detection. The
same system is used by the manager to allocate tools and other resources to a
participant and has offline data storage capability and immediately synchronises with
the server when internet becomes available.
• Payments app is accessible via a user interface (from within the Participant
Management app) or a comprehensive REST API. It is built using Java, Apache
Tomcat container, Spring Security implementation, ZKOSS RIA for user
interface and MySQL for the database.
• Functionality: It is used to manage $9 million in wage payments each month for about
170,000 participants. It uses the attendance and wage rate data received from
Participant Management app to calculate the payroll for workgroup. All payment is
submitted via the gateway directly to the banking system and a full reconciliation is done
on payments submitted, per transaction with the bank account.
21

22. OTHER INFORMATION SYSTEMS:
INDIGENT REGISTERS
Indigent registers – municipalities - free basic services.
• Definitions of “indigent” vary across municipality
• Criteria used to determine indigent households vary from
municipality to municipality. Most use income as a broad
measure
• Maintenance problematic: some municipalities update them
monthly, others quarterly and some only annually.
• Reliability and quality of the data remains suspect for
monitoring and reporting purposes.
22

23. STATE OF NATIONAL INTEGRATED SOCIAL
INFORMATION SYSTEM
– Information generated by NISIS should enable government to
act locally and respond to needs at the household an
community level; aggregated information allows government to
act strategically by tracking progress and by prioritising resource
allocations where needed most.
– Currently, no single national database integrating the different
elements of the social wage, namely: social assistance, primary
healthcare, housing, free basic services, no fee schools and
school feeding programmes, unemployment insurance and
public employment programmes.
– BUT …
23

24. EXAMPLES OF DATA INTEGRATION
Local level: City of Johannesburg’s Expanded Social Package
Siyasizana
• Registration system is established as the single window for social
assistance as the single access point to all City of Johannesburg
services provided to poor and vulnerable populations.
• Examples of Success
– The link with SOCPEN enabled the CoJ to automatically target social grant
recipients through an SMS campaign and expand coverage rapidly by an
additional 150 000 beneficiaries.
– Comparisons against COJ’s Housing waiting list identified 4,773 (9.6%)
applicants earning above threshold, 968 of which earned over R10,000 a
month
– The ESP has allowed the CoJ to multiply its coverage of FBS beneficiaries
several fold .
24

25. EXAMPLES OF DATA INTEGRATION: cont
• Provincial level: KwaZulu-Natal ‘s integrated service
delivery model Operation Sukuma Sakhe,
– database is sourced through a manual collation of information (data)
from households by Community Care Givers (CCGs). A summary
report with the identified needs is used for referrals to government
departments.
• Examples of Success
– There is a clear structure of information flow from the community
caregivers to a “War Room”, local, district and provincial task teams
and government departments which enables reporting and escalation
of issues and feedback to the households.
– model’s integration is that it provides a comprehensive and packaged
solution to the basket of needs
25

26. INTEGRATION OF SYSTEMS
• Basic level: systems designed in such to allow
data collected by one system to be integrated
with data from another system.
• Advanced level: IT systems and their
databases designed to ensure a change in one
system automatically cascades the change to
the related system.
26

27. OBSTACLES TO INTEGRATION
• Sustained political will in the face of
competing priorities. Benefits of integration
not evident to decision-makers
• Tendency to emphasise data collection rather
than utilisation
• Access to data and lack of metadata, difficulty
to establish MOU’s for data flow
• Quality of data in administrative systems
27

28. OBSTACLES TO INTEGRATION
(CONTINUED)
• Legacy administrative systems
• Systems not designed for integration and
analysis as objectives
• Technical Capacity
• Privacy issues
28

29. CONCLUSION
• Limited integration of registers
• We have systems with rich data, all potential
candidates for integration.
• These systems are variable in quality and
completeness, so some work would be
needed to prepare the individual systems to
realise the benefits of such an exercise.
29

30. OBRIGADO
THANK YOU
ENKOSI
DANKIE
30