During the election, more than 38 000 results slips were printed with barcodes and scanned at the results capturing sites in order to provide a visual image turned into electronic results. This solution was made available to all staff at national, provincial and more than 300 local offices. The new system provided accuracy and efficiency in the results auditing process. Auditors and representatives from political parties can look at a scanned image of the election result slip of a particular voting station and compare it with the data captured on the result system. This has resulted in a marked saving of storage costs, as physical results can now be disposed of after the required period, yet still be available electronically as required.  The innovation has further allowed the IEC management to be able to track the result capturing and scanning process on an on-going basis.

Despite having to scan 38 000 result slips, the efficient implementation of scanning technology ensured that the IEC could capture, verify and scan all the results within two days, with 96% of all results being available within 24 hours. Consequently, fewer objections were raised as compared to previous elections.

A the same ceremony, a second CPSI Public Sector Innovation Award winning department, the Gauteng Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, will also be awarded as the first place winner for Africa in the category “Advancing Knowledge Management in Government”.  The department will receive an award for their Integrated Decision Support project. 

The department, entrusted with the sustainable management of natural resources in the Gauteng Province, introduced a GIS system in 2005 (updated in 2009) to help the Department to deal with silo mentality by facilitating the sharing of information between line functions with ease of access.  Through the system, turnaround time was reduced and decision-making related to application or requests for development were improved.

Using the layers of the GIS, environmental officers can now easily pick up if the proposed development is located in an environmental sensitive site, on a reserved site of importance to agriculture development or on a site protected for conservation purposes.  One of the innovative aspects of this project is its ability to combine different datasets into one application, resulting in improved data quality and management.

As an internal and external tool used by both by government and environmental practitioners, it has contributed to improved decision-making by all stakeholders.