Cape Town - Teams from the Department of Defence are to visit Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom next month to learn what accounting and auditing systems these countries have in place for their defence force.
This comes as the department last month received a qualified audit from the Auditor General, because of concern over its record keeping for its tangible and intangible assets.
Briefing the media in Parliament today, Minister of Defence Lindiwe Sisulu said she had hoped earlier this year to persuade the Auditor General, Terence Nombembe, to drop the one qualification he had made against the department on the records of its tangible and intangible assets.
She said the problem was that the measures on tangible and intangible assets were based on NATO - a military alliance of democratic states in Europe and North America - standards, which had disadvantaged the department when it came to records keeping.
While the team would study best practices in these countries on defence force accounting systems, another team from the department had just returned from Russia after benchmarking defence-force practices from various countries.
At the Portfolio Committee on Defence earlier on today, the department presented its Defence Amendment Bill, which aims to create a separate dispensation outside the public service.
Sisulu said the department had mooted this in its first budget vote last year and that the security services have their own dispensation which was working well.
The Bill would also provide a clear definition of the military command and would provide for reserve forces to be used in peacetime services to help carry out the department's new obligation to patrol the borders.
There are presently 19 000 reserves, but the department aims to lift this to 25 000 by the end of February next year, said Sisulu.
An ombudsman for defence would return to the armed forces and would fall outside the usual defence force system.
The minister was also going to suggest to Cabinet the need for an armed forced day, such as those held in other countries, to recognise the role the defence force plays.
Sisulu said this year had not been an easy one for her department.
"It has been a tough job because of issues that have had to be resolved, but I think we are at a position where things can only get better," said Sisulu.
