Home Affairs CIO 'by October'

By Leon Engelbrecht, ITWeb senior writer

Johannesburg, 05 Sept 2007

Department of Home Affairs (DHA) director-general Mavuso Msimang will likely appoint a CIO by late next month to drive his department's R2 billion IT upgrade.

Msimang said in June he would prefer a recruit from the private sector. He added the major difficulty would be to pay such a person a market-related salary.

Speaking at a media briefing on the state of Home Affairs yesterday, Msimang again said in connection with recruiting that "lots of people ask too much money".

It is unclear if acting CIO Sol Ngubane is in the running for the slot. In the meantime, the department has also roped in former SA Revenue Service CIO Ken Jarvis as a consultant.

Msimang appointed a team of consultants, including former SA Chamber of Business CEO Kevin Wakeford and FeverTree Consulting, previously AT Kearney SA, shortly after being appointed in May to form a turnaround task team to inform the department's rebuild.

The DG said indications are the task team will stay on after the current contract lapses at year-end. However, he must still decide how long they will be retained in terms of a new contract.

Leadership woes

Msimang also did not mince his words on the lack of capacity in the department's leadership cadre. He said this must be addressed for the turnaround to work.

"There is a clear lack of capacity. The consultants have done a great job re-engineering processes, but it is the leadership who must take things to implementation."

Saying he did not want to bash his own department too vigorously, he added that, while there were some "bad guys" in the department, there were also "lots of good guys".

To help the latter, training was being stepped up and management technology introduced.

Msimang said a pilot project in the ID book manufacturing pipeline, involving 80 managers, has already shown significant morale and productivity improvements.

In the scanning department, the daily average in July was below 500 images a day. Five weeks later it hovers around the 1 300 mark, he noted.