Govt ups SITA spend

Johannesburg, 19 Sept 2007

The State IT Agency's (SITA's) annual results for the year ended 31 March reveal government is increasing its spend with the agency.

Often criticised for being slow to decide on tenders, the agency yesterday said it had increased its revenue by 15.6%, to R3.3 billion. Gross profit rose 34%, to R712 million.

Peter Pedlar, SITA's acting-CEO, admitted the agency had been quiet, but had been hard at work behind the scenes.

"There are a lot of exciting things happening at SITA and its customers. We haven't been as successful as we could have been in communicating that to the market, but we hope to address that in coming years," he said.

Making progress

Operational highlights for the year under review included the installation of virtual tape systems, implementation of a disaster recovery plan, and a mandate from government to filter inappropriate material on its networks.

Progress in strategic projects with its public sector customers included engaging Cisco experts from around the world to help the organisation roll-out SA's e-government programme.

Included in this programme was the implementation of the identity document track and trace SMS system for the Department of Home Affairs. This system was launched on 29 March, and both the notification and querying applications are now operational, says SITA.

Another key delivery in the e-government programme came through the implementation of an interactive voice response system. This system enables citizens to access and navigate the Internet using a telephone instead of a computer.

Supporting municipalities

Pedlar also noted progress in the delivery of the Integrated Financial Management System for National Treasury.

"So far we have awarded two of these tenders: the integrated development environment tender, as well as the procurement module tender," he said.

As for its objective to support local municipalities, SITA said it developed a go-to-market strategy, or a municipal ICT blueprint, which is already receiving much interest in several municipalities.

"Our private sector partners have already rolled out three proof-of-concept projects around the country and they are working well. These projects came at no cost to SITA or the municipalities. We are now speaking to several regions to understand how best to implement within their needs."

Pedlar thanked ex-CEO Mavuso Msimang, who was not present, for driving the organisation's success during the year.