Government weaves a tangled web

It's probably fair to say the interaction between government services and the good citizens of SA is in desperate need of improvement. All too often, technology is seen as the silver bullet that will magically effect this transformation in the blink of a keystroke.

Sadly, it's not that simple. Not only does the public sector lag behind the private sector in how it uses technology, but it frequently doesn't seem to have a coherent strategy of what it wants to achieve, and when. Where the strategy is present, there seems to be little support or understanding of the lofty goals at the lower levels of the organisation.

In the meantime, government agencies are under growing pressure to put information at the fingertips of their employees and the citizens of SA. Problem is, much government-related information remains scattered across silos. It is hard to find and often outdated. Systems cannot talk to each other and operators are woefully unskilled at making them work.

Each silo typically has its own set of IT applications, which are often not integrated, resulting in duplication of data as well as infrastructure. If a government department's overall business strategy was more clearly aligned, with all units within the department having a coherent idea of what it needs to achieve, duplication of data and infrastructure would be eased.

Departments and agencies tend to focus on the supply of specific products that focus not on the whole citizen, but on a particular aspect of that citizen. So a single, unemployed parent might be a welfare claimant to one department, a parent to another, a patient to a third and perhaps a learner to another. This is totally different to the way that real people want to relate to public services, as anyone who has ever been shunted from pillar to post in search of something as simple as an ID document or a driver's licence will tell you.

Indeed, we could spend all day talking about IT debacles like eNatis and Hanis, which were supposed to bring enlightenment and speed to government's operations. But we won't. Suffice it to say, the only reason the public sector should be using IT is to improve service delivery to the people - and in that respect, its record is a tad patchy.

Let's be fair, though. The various tiers of government are facing immense challenges as stakeholders demand more from scarce government resources. The existing processes and systems are struggling to meet these needs, which is why government could really do with some flexible, integrated solutions that can adapt to government changes and meet the needs of the country's citizens.

Although public sector ICT budgets are set to rise over the next three years, the main criteria for success will be the impact that the spend has on ordinary citizens. This will be measured mainly in terms of social deliverables, such as job creation, access to and use of government services and reduction in crime, says Adam Rabie, head of public sector IT at Bytes Technology Solutions.

We need to give more credit where it is due. eNatis was not an easy birth, but it has definitely worked.

Pule Ganyane, MD, Ciber Information International

"How do we measure success? We need to know what we have to achieve in a specific timeframe, at a specific cost and at a specific risk. Afterwards, we must be able to measure how we have done against what we set ourselves. Right now, though, we must stop the bleeding in government IT, and then start growing and empowering our people," says Rabie.

The way to start staunching the bleeding is for government departments to look closely at their business processes from a clean slate perspective and see how they can best construct these processes to improve how they conduct business. Developed applications are being implemented, but business processes are not changing accordingly and individuals are still doing things the old way. Business process re-engineering is essential in effectively reaching business goals.

Another obstacle to a slick IT machine in the public sector, says Louis Murray, industry principal at SAP South Africa, is that many government tenders are simply not awarded. The solutions are getting more hi-tech every day and a plethora of vendors has ideas on how to fix government. But perhaps government is simply not yet ready to adopt these technologies.

"A lot is being done right," says Murray. "There are extremely successful implementations of technology taking place, like the VOIP roll-out at the Department of Foreign Affairs. There are also some really nifty local government implementations at the City of Cape Town and Johannesburg. So we're not too sure why there is not more being done."

Fact is, there are success stories where public sector organisations have managed to use technology to improve their operations and service delivery exponentially. For an example, you need look no further than the taxman, who is bringing in billions of rand more than expected every year. This success is almost exclusively due to a new strategy that is being implemented by the right people and supported by the right technology.

People, process, technology. To most people in the private sector, it's a familiar troika. But as the panellists at a recent roundtable discussion at ITWeb's offices in Rivonia agreed, the first two legs of this pot are often left behind in the public sector's mad rush to deploy technology.

Cecil Thokoane, Internet Solutions' executive for public sector solutions, says the technology itself is not the problem, but rather the soft issues.

"What is it that is preventing these technologies from creating value within government? This is the issue that should be debated at all levels of government. Once that is addressed, we might see some tangible wins from the amount of money that is being spent," says Thokoane.

Pule Ganyane, MD of government supplier Ciber Information International, says process is critical within projects. He suggests the only thing really wrong with eNatis was project implementation. For the rest, he says, it's a great project.

"We need to give more credit where it is due," says Ganyane. "eNatis was not an easy birth, but it has definitely worked. If I have an application that does 60 000 transactions per hour and has done more than 800 000 a day as opposed to the old 350 000, where did this thing go wrong? Where did all the bad publicity come from? It was mostly just inexperience."

That's a matter of some debate. Problem is, many of government's IT initiatives fail through a lack of experience and understanding in terms of managing IT systems, and analysing and implementing systems according to the country's needs.

Ask Vusi Magagula, current CIO at the Department of Public Enterprises, and former CIO at the State IT Agency (SITA). He concedes that government has "challenges" in implementing strategies, saying that planning is the key to success - and it's not happening at lower levels.

"People are either not taking decisions or not living up to them. Government is spending hundreds of millions of rand on huge projects, but somewhere along the journey, you found yourself alone," laments Magagula. "Your colleagues are just not taking ownership of their own segments. They are making it IT's responsibility instead of taking responsibility themselves."

In other words, technology is often failing to achieve vital buy-in at an operational level. This leaves vendors and service providers flabbergasted when they arrive at a government client a few years down the line to discover that the solution, initially implemented with such gusto and vision, has become shelf-ware. The primary cause in 80% of these cases, says Gerrardt le Roux, senior manager of alliances at Cognos SA, is a lack of user buy-in and training.

The true measure of success of any IT project is the amount of use the application gets and the amount of value it delivers to the organisation.

Gerrardt le Roux, senior manager of alliances, Cognos

"Any IT project has to be a strategic and operational decision, and knowledge transfer has to be an integral part of the initiative. Where knowledge transfer takes too long, no one is held accountable for delivering a return on the investment. With a lack of impetus, user fatigue results and projects are shelved. The true measure of success of any IT project is the amount of use the application gets and the amount of value it delivers to the organisation. This needs to be top-of-mind at the start of any IT initiative," says Le Roux.

Inana Nkanza, MD of Ilayo Software Solutions, believes vendors must start playing a more active role as solution providers to government, helping to address challenges and deliver on mandates rather than simply dumping a solution and taking the money.

"When we provide a solution to government, that solution should not be something you simply delivered according to tender. It should be the final delivery of functionality that the department needs. This could include delivering a team of 20 people, for example, who then get seconded into the public sector," says Nkanza. "This provides continuity in the project, injects skills into government and generates revenue from the tender."

Magda Britz, public sector GM at Unisys Africa, says there is still a trend in government departments for IT divisions to prescribe to business divisions what they need, instead of the other way around, resulting in IT solutions and not business solutions.

"Government departments need to alter their mindset, with business dictating, according to their strategy, what projects are needed. Technology alone is not the answer. Government needs to understand its mission, align its operating policies and procedures with these principles, and only then look towards technology to address challenges," she says.

As Schalk Roelofse, head of information management at e.com institute, points out, IT projects don't only fail in the public sector; when they do fail in the private sector, the consequences are felt far more acutely. He says the reward framework government employs is a particular contributing factor to the failure of IT projects in the public sector.

There is a great deal of interaction between various departments, and effectively integrating these activities produces massive benefits.

Vincent Williams, public sector business unit executive, Faritec

"Since government uses numerous different IT service providers, it is hard for any single contractor to give a discount on volume business and still make a reasonable margin. And, since there is already an industry-wide dearth of high-level IT and project management skills, you can be sure public sector rates will not attract top ICT professionals. Nor can IT service providers afford to place their top resources on these projects," he suggests.

Instead, more junior staff, with lower qualifications and less experience, are assigned to public sector contracts with only a few high-level ICT professionals overseeing the job. This compounds the already serious problem the public sector faces with regard to a lack of skilled IT professionals and project managers. In addition to skills shortages and limited resources, government is burdened by the demands of best practice standards, transformation requirements and corporate governance regulations.

Ashley de Klerk, head of public sector IT at Microsoft South Africa, says government has a golden opportunity over the next decade to provide better public services at a lower cost to taxpayers. The key lies in the way it invests in and deploys new technology.

"The true innovations from technology will be realised only if there is a clear agenda that cuts across current government departments, silos, agencies and delivery organisations," he says.

"The best innovations will be those that use new channels to create genuinely new approaches to service delivery."

A worldwide trend in public sector IT is governments reorganising themselves to be more responsive. This is a process that involves not only integration of systems and information silos, but a culture change, one that encourages collaboration between all stakeholders, namely government, business and citizens.

A clear theme to emerge from discussions with industry players is that the public and private sectors need to align their activities. Government needs to communicate its needs, so that business can devise appropriate solutions. Experience and high-level IT and project management skills are essential to the smooth, fast roll-out of any solution. Collaboration creates an interface with the rest of the organisation and its stakeholders, ensuring greater transparency and allowing decision-makers to gain a wider perspective on issues.

"A lack of access to a single knowledge pool impacts efficiency within an organisation. And when decisions are made in isolation, their impact can skew outcomes and delay the attainment of strategic goals," says Linos Siwedi, public sector channel manager at Printacom.

"Decisions need to be made in context. They must be aligned with other initiatives and the larger strategic intent of the organisation. This requires decision-makers to have a broader insight into other departmental or organisational projects, issues and initiatives that can assist them to make better choices to deliver positive outcomes."

Justin Thorpe, business development executive at MTN, highlights the clear lack of communication between the different levels of government. The people who do the real groundwork of delivery are municipalities, but they are often overlooked when it comes to creating and driving technology strategies.

SA's local government agencies and municipalities are facing rising pressure to put accelerated service delivery plans into action, but are severely hindered by insufficient resources.

Vincent Williams, public sector business unit executive at Faritec, says there are ways to accelerate service delivery using existing resources, and these organisations need to consider alternatives if they are to provide the quality and quantity of service demanded by the government and South African citizens.

A key principle is accuracy - of billing systems, asset management and logistics. It is far more cost-effective and efficient to spend time on ensuring this information is accurate than to operate from inconsistent databases. Like any public sector body, municipalities need a high degree of departmental integration.

"There is a great deal of interaction between various departments, and effectively integrating these activities produces massive benefits," says Williams.

Typically, each department has its own systems that don't integrate with any of the other departments' systems. A fully integrated system is essential as it cuts out manual processes, enhances accuracy and reduces duplication.

One solution to the current public sector logjam could be public-private partnerships (PPPs), which will enable public sector entities to concentrate on their core business, be it law and order, utilities or traffic control, while leaving IT to the experts. Outsourcing has been particularly successful in the private sector because the objectives of outsourcing align very well with its profit motive. These objectives include reducing cost as well as improving operational efficiency and the quality of service.

Still, it remains to be seen which models best suit the public sector. Various models, such as shared services, business process outsourcing and ICT outsourcing, can be used to assist government to deliver. This means looking at how the profit motives of the private sector can be balanced with the social motives of government.

The DPE's Magagula says this issue goes to the heart of the nature of IT in government.

"Are we trying to make government something it is not? Should government be an entity that does everything itself, or one that outsources the implementation while retaining strategic control?"

Ultimately, though, the challenge for government is to embrace not only today's technology, but also tomorrow's, and to ensure it deploys that technology in a way that is driven by enhancing the contact between people and services.

That is not something that can be solved overnight - but a coherent strategy, driven by government and implemented by its various delivery arms, would certainly be a start.