INTEGRATED GOVERNMENT DATA CAN PROVIDE DEPARTMENTS WITH DEEP SOCIAL INSIGHTS

By Lumka Oliphant

• Integrating all government department’s data systems has never been more urgent.
• Gone are the days of working in silos. The transformative policies and programmes aimed at changing people’s lives for the better must be data-driven.
• It is time to understand the importance and meaning of the data being gathered; the digital transformation we all speak of should be central to service delivery.

The need to integrate all systems of government has never been as urgent as it is now. And as for public service officials, the days of working in silos and not analysing the data shared by the Minister of Basic Education every year when she gives the results of the National Senior Certificate are over.

As officials of government and the people tasked with ending gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF), we should be worried when the basic education statistics continuously tell us that boys are not making it to Grade 12 compared to girls.

We should be worried when we are told that one million plus children start Grade 1 but just over 720 000 sat for the final exam of their 12 years of basic education last year.

We should be worried that 1 069 of those who wrote their matric in 2024 were in conflict with the law and that our children who are in conflict with the law are arrested and sentenced for serious crimes.

Let’s look at these numbers: there were 248 girls and 816 boys in conflict with the law. The numbers shown by our probation management case system paints a grim picture: 486 children were arrested for assault; 150 for rape; 132 for theft; 42 for murder; and seven for possession of a firearm, to use just a few examples from the data. Of the 1 069 in conflict with the law who registered to write, 737 passed the matric exams in 2024.

While, as the Department of Social Development, we are doing everything to correct behaviour, we should also be worried about these numbers.

But the question remains: why are we all silent about the boy child? Why are we not discussing the plight of the boy child, and putting resources into finding out why these annual statistics are not changing?

I suspect that the children have been right all along – that when we speak about gender-based violence, we actually mean women and girls, and not boys.

I have been pondering what it is that the children saw in us for them to notice this while we, the adults, missed it.

A few weeks ago, when I tried to speak about the plight of men not having access to their children, I was met with silence. I approached some of the organisations and individuals working in the area of GBVF but got no response.

In my work, I have had the privilege to speak to children who are in conflict with the law. Recently, I spoke to two boys (13) who are serving sentences for rape, and one girl (14) convicted of murder.

The first boy I spoke to shared that he had been sodomised. He said he saw how much the man enjoyed himself and he also wanted to experience what that man felt. The second boy shared that he had had access to pornography, and he too wanted to experience it.

The14-year-old girl, who was convicted of murdering her baby by suffocating him, said she felt unloved as the only child at home.

Although all three have now turned a corner, I am using their experiences to paint a picture of the complexity of the situations, and to emphasise that we need to start paying attention to the meaning of the data coming from the social cluster, not only for the purposes of gathering intelligence but also for better planning and policy development.

I have been intrigued by the data coming from other departments as a result of the Department of Social Development and the South African Social Security Agency integrating their data systems with other government databases, and I wondered if anyone was listening.

Recently, as a department, we repatriated a five-year-old girl from a Mauritius prison who was born there after her pregnant mother was incarcerated for drug trafficking.

On talking to the South African Embassy in Mauritius, we learned that all South Africans in prison in that country were arrested for drug trafficking.

As a someone working with social workers, I wondered who in South Africa was looking out for the children of the women incarcerated in Mauritius. Are they receiving any services? Maybe those are some of the children who drop out of school before reaching Grade 12.

Are we even thinking about the intelligence that can be gathered from those women and men in those countries to get information on how international drug dealers operate?

Closer to home, here at the Department of Social Development, we were told by the Department of Basic Education that there were children who wrote the 2024 NSC whose child support grants had lapsed.

 On taking a closer look, we found that there were just over 34 000 children, with some 3 000 of them having applied for the Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress Grant of R370. Just over 1 000 applications were approved.

These numbers piqued my curiosity, and I wanted to find out why two-thirds of the applicants were declined despite having been on a Child Support Grant. Were they not poor? Did they even qualify for the Child Support Grant in the first place?

Is there a space for us to discuss an amendment to the regulations to look into the learner who turns 18 in their year of completing Grade 12?

If one takes another closer look at the data from the Department of Basic Education, more than half a million children pass Grade 12, but the institutions of higher learning cannot accommodate all of them.

Is the National Youth Development Agency looking at these numbers? Who is feeding all the Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs)? Is there room for the private sector to play a role?

Most importantly, are we as policy makers shifting gears to develop policies and programmes that will speak to the numbers the Department of Basic Education shares with us every year.

As an official of the Department of Social Development, I am looking forward to our department realising the National Integrated Protection Information System – a technological innovation that will streamline service delivery, enhance accountability, and promote inclusivity across government departments – and linking this information to the Integrated Justice System (IJS) for the planning and protection of the citizens of this country.

It is time to understand the importance and meaning of data and that the digital transformation we all speak of is especially important for the delivery of services.

Lumka Oliphant is the Acting Deputy Director General: Corporate Support Services at the Department of Social Development.