Page 23 - CAO Annual Report 2024/2025

In June 2024 we accepted twenty-five interns funded by the National Skills Fund for a two-year internship. Their stay with us and the training they received contributed to ten of these formerly unemployed graduates being offered permanent employment with various companies.
Our IT Department has taken a leap forward with a custom-built Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and advanced cloud computing. This system integrates and automates our core business processes. Disaster recovery has also been improved and not even the fire in May last year that devastated a number of our offices, our Data Capture and Finance Departments prevented us from continuing with the work and in spite of being relocated to a different part of the building not a singe day’s work was lost.
In addition to the work with the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) universities and other post school institutions in KZN the CAO is also the implementing agency for the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) commissioned Central Applications Service (CAS) and the Central Applications Clearing House (CACH). In short, this means that we can only do what DHET instructs us to do. While the agreements were only signed in December of 2020 - still during the COVID 19 pandemic, eight months later on 1st September 2021 we were ready to start accepting student applications to the five universities that had volunteered to participate in the CAS Pilot Programme.
Further enhancements to the system were made during 2022, amongst others, the acceptance of TVET College applications. Even though a number of enhancements that necessitated complex and time-consuming changes to the applications system, they were all completed and operational within the deadlines set by the DHET.
However, during 2023 the request from DHET for enhancements slowed down considerably and while a number of TVET Colleges were brought on board, only a couple additional universities were onboarded. This trend continued during 2024.
On Saturday, 11th January 2025 as the embargoed results were made available to institutions by USAf and within minutes of attending a virtual information session hosted by the Department of Basic Education we were informed that there had been an unofficial disclosure (leak) of the results and that all downloading and processing of results had to cease.
This created great confusion as all the careful planning with the preparation for the 2025 entry cohort was thrown in disarray. Decisions had to be made and work schedules changed. The uncertainty and lack of further information from the department left everyone unsure of how to proceed. We chose to proceed with an alternative plan.
CENTRAL APPLICATIONS OFFICE
ANNUAL REPORT 2024/2025 | 21