Anti-corruption strategies in the South African public sector : perspectives on the contributions of complexity thinking and ICTs

[摘要] Among the multitude of problems that contemporarySouth Africa is faced with, is corruption. Corruption in contemporary South Africa hasspread to a systemic level, as evidenced through national and international research,official government statements, and the media. The leakage of billions of Rand fromgovernment coffers to greedy individuals is alarming. Allegations of corruption areincreasingly implicating top government and party officials.Some of government payrolls are invaded by ghost workers; government accounts arecharged by over- and under-invoicing, phantom billing and ghost beneficiaries.Resources are diverted and leaked in the process of supply chain activities. Against these,ICTs are not well placed, despite their capabilities to counter administrative corruption.The dissertation focuses on exploring the answers to the following questions in the SouthAfrican public sector.i. What is corruption and why is it still increasing, despite the availability ofICTs that can effectively assist in tracking and tracing irregularities in thefinancial system?ii. How sufficiently and effectively are ICTs designed to minimise susceptibilityto corruption in financial transactions, HR issues, and the activities (elements)of the supply chain?iii. How cohesive and integrated are the sub-systems and systems in the anticorruptionindustry (organisationally, nationally and internationally) in orderto close the loopholes for corruption?iv. Is there a nationally centralised database system that is used as a frame ofreference in administrative decision making?v. What general problems are there in the anti-corruption system?6In the effort to move from the conceptual to the empirical level, these problems providethe main stimulus for exploring the status and role of information technologies in theanti-corruption system.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University