Govt in multibillion-rand ECM project

The State IT Agency (SITA) has awarded a tender to 25 companies for the supply of enterprise content management (ECM) solutions in government departments nationwide.

"There are over one million estimated workstations in the government sector, which need to comply with [data management] acts and regulations," says SITA communications officer Sifiso Ndlazi, who adds the agency plans to make state departments less paper-intensive.

The tender basically serves as a "SITA stamp of approval", meaning state departments can approach any one of the 25 approved IT companies, explains Kevin Hurwitz, MD of AmVia, whose data management products will be deployed through GijimaAst, Business Connexion and Intervate.

Other notables on the approved list include Africa Legend Technologies, arivia.kom, Bytes Technologies, Choice Technologies, Datacentrix, Faritec, IBM and Tibco.

"From a business efficiency and a compliance point of view, it is becoming increasingly important for public and private sector institutions to deploy ECM solutions," Hurwitz says.

The standards that state departments (and all organisations) must comply with include the National Archives and Records Service Act, the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, the Promotion of Access to Information Act, the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act, the Public Finance Management Act, and the Municipal Finance Management Act.

Another senior industry source, who wishes not to be named, estimates: "If government is to follow its own compliance standards, it would likely cost around R3 000 per workstation to become ECM compliant."

One million workstations at R3 000 would mean the project could carry a total value of about R3 billion.

However - Jaco Grobeler, FileNet product manager at another of the tender winners, Lechabile, says the project will probably span about five years. He describes the project as "huge".

Governmental bodies are struggling to implement sound information and records management practices which will accommodate the paper-based and electronic environments, admits Ndlazi.

"The quality of the services that governmental bodies deliver to their clients and stakeholders depends on how well they can create, store, retrieve, use and manage relevant information," he adds.

Ndlazi lists the core components of the ECM solutions to be deployed as being:

* Imaging/scanning
* Document management, digital asset management and Web-content management
* Records management and integrated document archive and retrieval system
* Business process management and supporting components
* Search and retrieval
* E-mail archiving
* Forms management
* Portal management

He adds: "The Knowledge and Information Management Workgroup of the Government IT Officers' Council, in conjunction with the National Archives and Records Services and SITA are of the opinion that service delivery problems could only be solved by addressing the content management problems."

For a full list of the tender winners, click here.