Government may sideline its State IT Agency
Government may be questioning the relevance of its State Information Technology Agency (SITA), following continuing failures to deliver on its mandate.
Speaking at an e-government industry event this week, Telecommunications and Postal Services Minister Siyabonga Cwele warned the agency that its repeated delays and failure to follow its mandate would not be tolerated.
Notably, the agency has still failed to implement a national strategy and road map, far surpassing the original 31 March deadline.
“Last year SITA informed us that it was seriously putting implementable measures on how to increase the value to the State by leveraging economies of scale and improving service delivery through digitisation and use of technology,” said Cwele.
“If SITA is viewed as irrelevant by the departments and organs of State that it serves, it may be side-lined.”
“We were informed that SITA was building internal capacity to deliver IT services for the benefit of citizens we serve. We were informed that the organisation was committing to consolidate and maximise government data centres.”
“SITA committed to upgrading bandwidth and network to be in line with South Africa Connect. We noticed that SITA was spending only 15% of its procurement spend on SMMEs. There was a promise to increase this to 30% and to increase focus on enterprise development.”
“I (want) to impress upon SITA management and our officials to ensure we don’t succumb to the temptation of having endless consultations but to make sure we implement the outcomes of gatherings such as this one.”
Cwele also noted that he was disappointed with the country’s e-governance performance in the UN’s global ICT rankings. According to the UN E-Government Survey of 2016, the country ranks 76th worldwide.
“SITA is our lead agency tasked with the finalisation of our National e-governance strategy and roadmap. The deadline for this strategy was 31 March 2017. This target has not been met and to date has not been completed. This strategy has to be finalised. It is a key strategy that will guide SITA on its mandate. It is a key strategy to make SITA relevant.”
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