On the question by Kgoshi Mokoena whether the department has any measures in place to address the challenges identified by the Auditor-General, the answer is as follows: All government departments are now expected to participate in the National Treasury's integrated financial management system, the IFMS project, to develop and implement standardised financial management systems throughout government.
The department is involved in and participates in all different IFMS work groups. This is a long-term project, with a five-to-eight-year timeline. That will not solve the current Auditor-General qualifications in the short term.
In the short term, however, the department is embarking on an initiative with the sector education and training authority to enhance its current financial management system by creating interfaces between, for example, IFMS and Persal, to address shortcomings regarding proper audit training for inland accommodation expenses and for subsistence and travel expenses.
A project is also under way to integrate the different logistical systems within the department into one system that will produce the necessary financial management information for audit and financial statement purposes. This logistical system will also form the basis for the future IFMS to be implemented within government. Members who are in that committee will realise that the greater bulk of the budget of Defence goes to logistics. So if we solve the problem of logistics, we would have gone a long way in addressing the problems.
The department is also strengthening its internal control system by enhancing the capacity and skills of the internal audit section, thus ensuring timely identification of and addressing cases of non-compliance with policies and prescripts as well as system failure.
The accounting officer has also, through the accountability management committee, established a project called ``Operation Clean Audit'' under the leadership of the acting chief financial officer. This requires of the acting CFO to continuously engage with those managers who experience problems and assist them via dedicated teams and efforts to develop and implement robust internal controls, and to deal strictly with the cases of noncompliance.
The department is of the view that these measures will, within the next two years, improve the accuracy of its financial statements, and thus lessen the number of qualifications. Until such time as the IFMS is fully implemented, the department cannot guarantee that it will not receive any qualifications, as it is relying on manual systems to produce financial information, especially in the logistics environment. Thank you.