Durban — The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) has entered into memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with several organisations with the aim of preventing corruption through data analytics.
Through these partnerships, the SIU will embark on statistical research efforts, proactive strengths and risk exposures, sector-based data analysis, awareness and advisory initiatives, capacity building, and integrating data analytic and predictive analysis into the institutions’ risk management systems. The SIU signed an MOU with the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) Anti-Corruption Coalition and the Transparency, Integrity, and Accountability Programme (TIP) of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH.
The signing of the MoUs was attended by SIU head advocate Andy Mothibi, Valieta Barnard from the National Treasury, Valeska Onken from the GIZ, and Dr Wendy Orr from GIBS, along with members of their respective teams who will be involved in the work stemming from the MOUs.
Mothibi highlighted that this was the first collaboration of its kind in the space of digital and AI-based anti-corruption interventions in South Africa.
Mothibi went on to say that the SIU aims to take a leading role in South Africa to prevent and combat maladministration, fraud and corruption by focusing on societal values and systems that make it difficult to engage in acts of impropriety.
The MoUs are also part of the SIU’s implementation of the National Anti-Corruption Strategy, in particular the whole-of-society approach, which is an integrated approach to fight corruption. It calls on all sectors to participate in the fight against corruption and encourages collaboration between the government, the private sector and civil society as one of its fundamentals.
Through these collaboration agreements, the SIU seeks to ensure that its anti-corruption tools are advanced and enable it to move towards the prevention of corruption. The SIU plans to publish sector data intelligence and use a prevention, advisory and awareness capacity to advise stakeholders on systemic measures to pro-actively identify and prevent maladministration, fraud and corruption.
Bluff Ratepayers and Residents Association (BRRA) chairperson Norman Gilbert said it was encouraging to see that these agencies were starting to embrace a proactive approach to fighting the surge of corruption which was crippling the country.
Gilbert said the Zondo Commission was the perfect example of an activity designed to achieve the identification of the perpetrators – which it did – “but where are the prosecutions?”
Political analyst Thobani Zikalala said using data to fight corruption was great and that such tools were important to address issues of maladministration and the sources of corruption.
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