The Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office (Cipro) believes the fight against white-collar crime could be given a boost through the deployment of a new enterprise content mana- gement (ECM) system that will improve intra-agency visibility, which could, in turn, assist in uncovering fraud.

Cipro is a business agency formed as result of the merger of two former directorates of the Department of Trade and Industry, namely the South African Companies Registration Office and the South African Patent and Trade Mark Office.

“It will allow Cipro’s database to be linked to other government departments and agencies, such as the Department of Home Affairs, the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) and the South African Revenue Service (Sars).

“This means that when a company is to be provisionally liquidated, Cipro will advise the UIF about employees that will need unemployment grants and Sars will also take appropriate measures for the affected em- ployees. All this will take place before retrenched employees even enter the UIF’s doors,” says Cipro CEO Keith Sendwe.

He adds that the new e-Cipro project will be a major catalyst in moving South Africa up higher in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index and the Entrepreneurial Index.

The agency has over two-million legal entities on its books, which, it notes, will allow it to achieve its electronic transformation drive. Firstly, the ECM system will be implemented with service-orientated architecture (SOA).

The agency’s CIO, Dr Michael Twum-Darko, says that the ECM will allow the two-million entities to be kept in a uniformed format that can be read by several different kinds of devices, from computers to cellular phones.

“The SOA will allow current and future applications to be intro- duced with very little change to the environment. For example, should South Africa wish to enter into new bilateral agreements, we would be able to introduce this seamlessly,” he adds.

By using a single eform, the agency will be able to capture data from all its clients, which will assist in improving the agency’s annual return and increase its revenue.

To achieve the ‘new-look’ e-Cipro, a different business approach, a new strategy and organisational structure, and skills and systems are being implemented.

The agency’s large database of companies in South Africa will enable it to interact with small, medium-size and large companies to increase economic activity.

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