The approval of the Eastern Cape provincial government’s ICT strategy by the Executive Council has been withdrawn following confirmation that parts of the strategy document from the foreword to other sections of the document were plagiarized.
“The only part of the document that was not plagiarized was the implementation plan, projects to be implemented and location of the projects to be implemented as part of the strategy,” said Mvusiwekhaya Sicwetsha, Acting General Manager: Provincial Communication Service Eastern Cape Provincial Government.
“When this information came to the attention of the Premier of our province, Mr Oscar Mabuyane, he ordered an investigation to look into the matter and circumstances that led to the plagiarizing of contents of another document, which was passed to the provincial government as the provincial ICT strategy.”
Sicwetsha added that when plagiarism was confirmed by the investigation, at the instruction of Premier Mabuyane, the strategy document was withdrawn from all government institutions where it was submitted as required by the operational and reporting systems of government.
“At the last meeting of the Executive Council, a decision was taken by the Members of the Executive Council to withdraw the ICT strategy from the records of the Executive Council, its committees, forums, structures and from other government institutions.”
Sicwetsha said that the Executive Council has directed that a new ICT strategy of the provincial government be developed with proper guidance and attention to the processes, contents of the document and teams that work on the strategy to avoid a repeat of this embarrassing situation.
“Disciplinary action will be taken against individuals, who plagiarized this document because plagiarism is an act of misconduct, dishonesty and in this case, it has brought the provincial government into disrepute. Systems are being explored by the Office of the Premier to make it easy to pick up plagiarized documents.”