Johannesburg, 24 Apr 2006
The State IT Agency (SITA) has revealed details of its partnership with Belgian IT group CIPAL - the Centre Informatika Province of Antwerpen and Limburg.
SITA will work with CIPAL, a publicly-owned IT company specialising in municipal solutions, to improve municipal service delivery, according to SITA CEO Mavuso Msimang.
He earlier described the plan as a multimillion-rand project.
"It [CIPAL] is a company that's really focused on solutions for municipalities," says Msimang.
Some SITA representatives will be sent to Belgium later this year for training, he notes.
Msimang says the CIPAL partnership will be focused largely on the smaller municipalities throughout the country, adding that some larger municipalities like Cape Town already have a viable enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution in place.
He adds that the systems SITA aims to implement in partnership with CIPAL will be more comprehensive than an ERP solution.
"The municipal solutions will cover the total suite of essential services," he says.
Msimang declines to comment further on the details of the partnership, saying it would not be appropriate at the moment since SITA is "still busy with the logistics of the CIPAL plan".
He adds that the partnership will not mean the end for municipal tenders for local businesses, saying: "It will not preclude us from using other solutions that are out there - we're not taking the 'one shoe fits all' approach."
The implementation of the project would also include local partners, he confirms.
Deployment of the systems, of which no further elaboration was forthcoming, will begin in some of the municipalities before the end of the financial year, he says.
Related story:
SITA in multimillion-rand municipal project
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