Technology takes justice to the people of South Africa

13 September 2002

by Kathy Magrobi

Two years ago, the Legal Aid Board, the body created by the South African Constitution to provide legal support to those in need, was on the verge of bankruptcy and faced a contingent liability of between R600-million and R1-billion. Handicapped by mismanagement, it faced a real threat of being closed down by Parliament. A quick and decisive action plan was needed.

The Legal Aid Board had to be realigned to meet its democratic mandate of giving civil and criminal legal assistance to people living in poverty, especially women, children, rural people, landless people and people living with HIV/Aids.

With support from the Cabinet, a strong interim management team was pulled together under the chairmanship of Judge Mohamed Navsa.

Today, the Legal Aid Board is back on its feet. It has recently received a clean audit report, its entire executive team is in place and 250 000 people from marginalised communities have access to justice each year via the 31 Legal Aid Board Justice Centres that have been created countrywide. A further 31 justice centres are planned by 2004.

According to Kumaran Naidoo, the finance and information systems executive brought in as a part of the fix-it team two years ago, the clearance of the backlogs, the implementation of good control systems and techno-savvy have underpinned the turnaround at the Legal Aid Board.

"The financial mess of the Legal Aid Board was largely a result of a lack of a sound control environment. The system was lumbered with outdated financial software. There was very little good management information available on the system, and there were no controls in place to ensure ethical business processes. No financial statements had been produced for four years and some accounts going back to 1995 were still unpaid."

"The Legal Aid Board made a strategic decision to provide its services through local offices, Legal Aid Board Justice Centres, in communities of need. Each centre is like a large legal firm offering a one-stop service for civil and criminal cases. Each centre serves between 10 and 20 courts, which means that the legal representatives spend most of their time in court. We need to use technology to simplify and speed up processes that free our Justice Centre staff to spend their time effectively on service delivery. Operating in remote parts of South Africa, we need an integrated, online, real-time software solution if we are to achieve this."

The first step in this process looked at business and control systems. "These have been implemented thanks to the hard work of our staff," Naidoo said.

Although not ideal, as an interim measure the existing financial software was tailored to conform to the new business processes and control systems. The next step is to develop a new admin and financial system, which is currently being procured.

The business analysis has been completed and the request for proposals has already been advertised, with the closing date being September 20 2002. The planned implementation of the new admin and financial software is April 1 2003.

According to Naidoo, the advantages expected of the new software are:

• The decentralisation of processing to the Legal Aid Board's offices throughout the country;
• The availability of online, real-time information for decision making; and
• Greater automation of the control environment.

In anticipation of the implementation of this software, a wide area network has recently been implemented, connecting all of the offices to each other.

"Our wide area network brings to the Legal Aid Board the ability to monitor standards and create uniform processes in line with our drive for strong corporate governance. It also allows us to do this without centralising everything at head office, causing delays in decision making, or relying on similarly cumbersome processes," commented Naidoo.

Each Justice Centre will have its own Internet Cafe setup and will, via the wide area network, be able to track cases and precedents, monitor its budgets, and produce its reports. "Ultimately, all of our business processes will occur online," he said.

"When you're sitting in an isolated community like Butterworth or Umtata for example, and you are dealing with the cutting edge of justice as it faces impoverished communities, the ability to operate in real-time with the best resources available in South Africa really can mean the difference between success or failure in terms of our mandate of "Justice for all". It certainly means improved quality, and quantity of services," Naidoo concluded.

Finally, the effective implementation of the above technology requires intensive training. The Legal Aid Board has taken cognisance of this and has made adequate budget provision for it.