South Africa cannot move past the initial stages of maturity in e-government because the State IT Agency (SITA) does not have the capacity to carry out its e-government mandate.
These are the words of government chief information officer (GCIO) Michelle Williams, in the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA).
Williams says SITA, created 10 years ago with a mandate to provide IT services to various government departments, is not fully delivering as most of its functions are duplicated across the departments.
“The major challenge is to map the core infrastructure and services that are common between the departments as well as identifying what is peculiar to each department.”
She adds there is much more that can be delivered via a shared service platform that resides in SITA, while additional resources provide specific support at a developmental level. Williams also wants to see a model implemented that combines centralised, decentralised and shared services across all departments.
While Williams says she realises not everything can be included in a shared environment, there are a number of programmes that can be centralised. “E-mail is one of them, so is the government's basic accounting system (BAS). BAS is already centralised and none of the departments question the use of SITA support for it. What they do complain about, however, is the quality of service and the pricing of SITA services.”
The GCIO adds that SITA is not competitive with other suppliers, and so some departments frequently bypass the agency. “SITA supposedly has a captive market. There are rules and mechanisms in place to force the departments to make use of SITA services. However, they mostly consider buying from SITA a grudge purchase and if they can find a way to bypass the agency, they will do so,” says Williams.
She singles out resistance to change as one of the main challenges SITA faces, adding there is a need to design a functional shared service model for the agency.
According to the 2010 UN e-government survey of 192 member states, SA is ranked at 97. The DPSA says the reason for this low ranking was mainly because of lack of horizontal government mechanisms to connect the government departments. The GCIO adds there was a lack of front and back office alignment in SA.
Looking ahead, William says SA's next-generation e-government aims to modernise and integrate the public sector, reduce cost through optimised processes and efficiency, as well as better the quality of service delivery while improving transparency and accountability.
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