IT expert claims officials stole her idea
● The Gauteng education department is embroiled in a stand-off with an IT specialist who claims officials stole her idea for an online admissions program that parents use to place their children in schools.
Melissa Laing is in conciliation meetings with the department, organised by the public protector’s office, with a view to reaching a possible settlement agreement.
While the department denies it used Laing’s program, she has an audio recording of a discussion she had with a former department official this month, in which he says the department used her idea.
In the recording, which the Sunday Times has heard, the department’s former IT director, Dick Rayner, who was responsible for the roll-out of the system but has since retired, tells Laing that another official had taken her idea and given it to him to work on.
Rayner tells Laing: “She [an official] translated the user requirements to me, and I got the developers to develop it. She took your idea and gave it to me. We were developing something at the time which was different to yours, and we ended up developing something that was the same as yours.”
The online registration system was implemented in 2016. Parents can register Grade 1 and Grade 8 pupils for their preferred school.
According to meeting minutes which the Sunday Times has seen, Laing complained that when she introduced the concept to the department during a presentation in October 2012, a senior official dismissed it as “a stupid idea”.
Laing filed a complaint with the public protector in June 2016 after a meeting with department officials failed to get them to recognise her as the inventor of the system.
She said she came up with the idea after waiting for hours at a school to enrol her son in Grade 1. “I had a vision of no more long queues to register your child.”
She was furious when Gauteng education MEC Panyaza Lesufi implemented the system in 2016. “The very same people who mocked us and told us how stupid our idea was were now implementing the same idea three and a half years later.”
In 2017 the public protector found that evidence provided by the department was sufficient to corroborate that it had a similar idea to Laing’s.
Oupa Segalwe, spokesperson for the public protector, said that at last week’s conciliation meeting, Laing had asked for compensation from the department for using her idea.
“It was explained to her that the public protector does not have jurisdiction to adjudicate where matters of compensation are concerned. She was advised that it was the terrain of the courts.”
Gauteng education department spokesperson Steve Mabona said that at the time Laing met officials, the department had already decided to automate the admissions process for Grades 1 and 8.
“If Mrs Laing alleges that the online system is her invention or idea, she had all the opportunity since 2012 to patent or copyright the invention … she has not done so.”
Reacting to Rayner’s comments, Mabona said that they were calling on him to put his claims in an affidavit.
Rayner this week confirmed making the comments but said the department ended up “developing something that was similar to Laing’s, not the same as hers”.