Strengthening the management information systems and information management within the Department of Higher Education and FET colleges

Sector

Further Education and Training (FET)

Project budget

The maximum budget for this project is € 2.4 million.

Organisations

This project has been developed by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET). The tender for this project expired on 29 October 2010. Nuffic has awarded this tender to CINOP.

Project description

South Africa's Further Education and Training (FET) college sector currently comprises 50 colleges. Each college has a main campus and several satellite campuses.  The FET college sector falls within the portfolio of the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), a newly created department merged from the Departments of Labour and Education in 2009. Building a strong public FET system in South Africa is critical to ensuring that the country produces adequate numbers of high quality, market-relevant middle to higher level skills.

DHET is tasked with monitoring and evaluating the performance of the FET colleges. A pilot Business Management System (BMS) project in the DHET and three colleges has tested the functionality of the pilot modules on student administration, HR and finance.

This NICHE project will roll out the modules in four new FET colleges. Furthermore, the full functionality and integration between the modules need to be assessed. The BMS project is viewed as a National FET sector solution in order to avoid the need for FET colleges to purchase software on an individual basis. The software is hosted and maintained at a central location. FET colleges pay a fee to access the software.

Objectives

The project aims to strengthen DHET and FET colleges to implement, manage and use the BMS. The specific objectives are:

• Consolidating the investments made in the BMS for Orbit, Ehlanzeni and Tshwane North FET colleges;
• Implementing the BMS in four additional FET colleges;
• Designing a data warehouse for a BMIS for the FET sector in order to improve governance, planning and management of the sector and enhance the flexible delivery of programmes by FET colleges.