He said the older systems which currently provide financial, human resource, supply chain management and business intelligence functionality were at the end of their useful life.

The minister said it was becoming difficult to keep the old system. “If the public service of 2011 does not have a modern, agile, web-enabled back-office (e-government) system, it will not be able to support the needs of a developmental state,” Baloyi said.

The current systems such as Persal, BAS and Logis will gradually be phased out over the next years and be replaced by IFMS.

According to the minister, the new system is expected to eventually support the HR management requirements of almost 1.2 million public servants located in thousands of offices spread across 150 departments.

The IFMS is part of a public service wide migration to an e-government. The e-government programme seeks to provide facilitated access to government services and to ensure that those services are citizens-focuses and beneficial to business and government departments.

The three components of the e-government system are the provision of services from government to government, from government to business and from government to citizens. 

The new system will ensure improved capacity of the public service to manage its human resources more effectively and efficiently. It will also harmonise and align the implementation of Public Service HR management policies and processes. It will also support the monitoring and evaluation of HR policies for the public service.

Baloyi said the new system will also enable the department to accurately track and manage the filling of vacancies, that also means that people will be able to apply for vacancies on-line through the e-recruitment portal.