SITA improves PM capacity

By Damaria Senne for SITA
Johannesburg, 04 Jun 2007

The State IT Agency (SITA) has improved its project management capacity, resulting in reduced ICT costs for government and improved quality of service.

The state-owned agency, which has been tasked with providing efficient ICT products and services to national, provincial and local government, has strengthened its ability to add value to government's service delivery through the use of ICT, says Jonas Bogoshi, SITA's chief of strategic services.

SITA has also has strengthened its internal processes to improve its capacity to deliver quality services, he says.

Bogoshi acknowledges SITA used to manage projects in a "chaotic" manner. "Some of SITA's large projects were spectacular failures," he says.

Vendors complained and when SITA evaluated its problems, it found the problems were not just about technologies deployed, he says. The problem was that there were limited project management protocols in place, and if there was an incident, it was addressed based on the discretion of the person addressing it, he says.

Bogoshi says SITA implemented protocols for help-desk, incident management, problem management, configuration management and change management by the end of March.

"Now when a customer has a problem, the way it is resolved is predictable. The way the problems are handled no longer depends on individuals and their skill levels but on systems in place," he says.

SITA is now moving from a state of disarray to a state where it can be reactive to problems, he says. The goal is for SITA to grow to the extent that it becomes more proactive in its management of projects.

The organisation is also monitoring how it engages with the ICT industry to ensure it does not compete with it, he adds.

The planning required to achieve this is, however, a challenge, as customers typically need to have problems addressed immediately - a need that goes against the proactive planning approach, he notes.

It is for this reason that SITA will continue to address immediate challenges, even while it sets out to put in place systems that proactively prevent some of the potential project management problems, he says.

Open source PMO

Bogoshi says SITA was recently tasked with putting together a project management office (PMO) for open source for government. The PMO will be responsible for the management of government's migration to open source. The South African government has made a policy decision to migrate its ICT infrastructure to open source.

Bogoshi says SITA has put together a framework for open source migration and is now assessing for opportunities where government can reap quick returns on investments.

SITA is also evaluating the cost of migration to open source, as well as the cost of ownership that will be incurred in a five-year period, he says.