Case Study: The e Pays Project $-$ South Africa's Payroll Modemisation Challenge

In $2023,$ the South African Department of Public Service and Administration $($DPSA$)$ initiated the ePays Project, a national payroll system designed to modernise and centralise the processing of government employee salaries. With a budget of R$120$ million, the system aimed to integrate biometric attendance tracking, automate tax submissions to SARS, and replace fragmented provincial payroll platforms. Despite strong political backing, the project faced early setbacks due to limited stakeholder engagement during the planning phase. The project charter was developed without consulting provincial HR departments, leading to resistance and misalignment in implementation priorities. The project management plan failed to address data migration challenges from legacy systems, and training material was insufficient, especially for remote and under$-$resourced provinces.

As implementation began, provincial departments raised concerns about biometric surveillance, prompting a surge in uncoordinated change requests. The absence of a formal change control system meant that changes were inconsistently processed, affecting the project timeline and scope. Knowledge transfer mechanisms relied heavily on online guides, ignoring tacit knowledge sharing through peer training. Five provinces failed to migrate to the new system on schedule, and yet the project was declared complete to meet political deadlines. No formal closure procedure or lessons$-$learned review was conducted. The ePays Project revealed critical gaps in project integration management, especially in stakeholder engagement, change control, and execution planning in complex, multi$-$tiered government environments.

Question $1[35$ MARKS$]$

$1.$ Critically evaluate the ePays project using the six key processes in project integration management. Identify where integration failed and recommend realistic improvements. $[20$ marks$]$

$2.$ Design a change control system suitable for ePays. Include processes, responsible roles, and how union feedback and urgency will be addressed. $[15$ marks$]$