Home Affairs divorce wish comes true

Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies, Solly Malatsi, has opened a path for government departments to drop the services of the South African Information Technology Agency (SITA).

After consultation with stakeholders and the Minister of Finance, Malatsi gazetted new regulations for the State Information Technology Act, allowing departments to conditionally procure IT services elsewhere.

SITA is responsible for providing IT services to the government and is the backbone of its centralised systems.

However, several departments have complained about the quality of service delivered by SITA.

The Department of Home Affairs has been particularly bruising in its views of SITA, blaming the agency for the department’s persistent issues with downtime.

The DHA said that its public services could skyrocket if it could drop SITA and gain access to “proper” IT systems.

Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber has outlined the department’s big ambitions to digitise, but flagged SITA as a massive stumbling block, holding these plans back.

In the DHA 2025/26 annual performance plan, he outlined plans to transition away from SITA and explore partnerships with private IT providers to boost service delivery.

“These alternatives are expected to reduce downtime, streamline procurement processes and optimise costs,” he said.

SITA has repeatedly denied responsibility for the DHA’s issues, saying the department has been using its lowest-end service package.

It said that the DHA is consuming only “core services” from SITA at a cost of about R243 million of the department’s R1.2 billion ICT budget allocation.

“SITA has become an all-too-convenient scapegoat for project failures or inefficiencies, even in cases where we had no operational role to play,” the group said.

However, other departments, like the South African Police Service, have also complained about SITA’s services.

SITA noted that government departments have a combined ICT budget of approximately R24 billion annually, of which only R7 billion is channelled through the agency.

A report presented to the Portfolio Committee on Communications in December 2024 outlined various issues at the SITA, including allegations of corruption, instability, and irregular procurement processes.

This ultimately led to proposals by Malatsi to change regulations to empower state entities to appoint their own IT service providers rather than being forced to use SITA.

This has resulted in the new changes gazetted on Friday (23 May), allowing government departments to ditch SITA in favour of other service providers if certain conditions are met.

How departments can drop SITA

The new regulation 17.8, which will take effect on 1 June 2025, allows a government entity to switch service providers if SITA cannot satisfy their requirements.

Given adherence to the Public Finance Management Act, the Preferential Procurement Policy Framework Act and the Public Procurement Act, the department may give written notice to SITA if it finds a provider able to provide services faster and at a lower cost.

The notice will need to set out the business case, the user requirement specifications, and the period within which the department requires information technology goods or services.

After receiving the notice, SITA must respond within 10 working days whether it has the capacity to procure the information technology services required by the department within the specified period.

If SITA does not respond or cannot meet the department’s requirements, the department may then acquire information technology goods or services from other providers as per the relevant laws.

If SITA can procure the information technology goods or services required, and the department does not want to use other providers, the department must notify SITA to proceed with procurement.

Further details on the regulations can be found in the gazette below:

Not a popular move

The move away from SITA could be another point of contention between the DA and ANC in government, following ructions over the Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Act and the Expropriation Act.

Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Communications and Digital Technologies, Khusela Diko, criticised the move to move away from SITA when Malatsi previously proposed it.

She said that allowing government departments to use IT services outside SITA does not align with the SITA Act and would cause fragmentation of government services.

However, Malatsi said that the proposals were fully aligned with existing laws on government procurement, having already had the concurrence of the Minister of Finance.

Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA) CEO Busi Mavuso warned that the conflict over SITA is a political game that the country cannot currently afford.

She noted that SITA is a fundamental constraint on the public sector’s ability to embrace technology and digital solutions.

She added that reforming the government and building a capable state would be pointless without IT systems to support them.

Nevertheless, she said that giving an option to avoid SITA shouldn’t be the last step, as many government departments cannot take this route.

“Empowering departments to manage their own IT procurement is a key step. But we should also aim to ensure that SITA itself becomes effective and is able to compete to provide services to the public sector,” she said.

“Granting departments the ability to choose to use SITA or not would result in some healthy competitive pressure to enable SITA to sort out its leadership and corruption issues.”