Over the years, the Administration programme has become critical given the institutional incapacity of the Department to deliver on crucial services due to lack of proper management of assets and contracts, and the general poor resourcing of key programmes. In response to these challenges, the Department established two key positions to further enhance institutional capacity, i.e. that of the Chief Operations Officer (COO) and Chief Information Officer (CIO). However, there were also other notable challenges such as high vacancy rates in critical positions due to high staff turnover. As such, the Department has a total of 304 vacancies. Some of the provinces with high vacancy rates are KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape, Western Cape and Mpumalanga.