The Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) has yet to decide what to do with a risk assessment report that exposes large-scale corruption and irregularities within the State IT Agency (SITA).
This is almost nine months after the report, compiled by enterprise risk management firm Henderson Solutions, was handed to public service and administration minister Richard Baloyi.
The 613-page document reveals a seemingly total breakdown of the internal control environment, and questions how these widespread illegal practices could have escaped SITA management and its internal audit committee.
Despite the potentially explosive allegations made in the report, the DPSA has yet to make any kind of statement regarding the contents, or what course of action - if any - it plans to take based on the findings.
This morning, DPSA spokesman Sefako Nyaka stated he is unable to comment on any steps taken in regards to the report, as the minister is still consulting stakeholders about how to proceed with the matter.
Tough talk
Contrary to the tough stance taken by Baloyi, shortly after he took over the public service and administration portfolio in September 2008, his tenure so far has been seemingly low-key. Baloyi stepped into the ministerial post with the resignation of Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, who resigned when the ANC recalled former president Thabo Mbeki.
In January last year, Baloyi admitted serious problems plagued SITA, including poor leadership, fraud, corruption and mismanagement. Baloyi hinted at a possible large-scale purge within the organisation and also vowed to address the issue of finding a CEO for the agency, which has seen more than a dozen acting and permanent chief executives pass through its doors since its inception.
At the time, Baloyi also deployed a task team to investigate SITA and put forward proposals to address the agency's various problems. None of the task team's findings or recommendations were subsequently made public, nor have there been any sweeping changes, as promised by Baloyi.
When rumours of the risk assessment report surfaced last year, several well-placed sources and industry players expressed fears that the ministry could ultimately “bury” the document.
Vague acknowledgement
In July last year, Baloyi's office confirmed the minister received a copy of the report as far back as April, but would not comment on the contents. In September, during SITA's annual GovTech conference, ITWeb exposed the contents of the report, but the minister and the agency's senior management ignored the brewing storm and carried on with the conference as usual. This despite growing calls from delegates that the agency and DPSA need to come clean about the report.
So far, the only public acknowledgement of any action being taken on SITA by Baloyi was when he addressed Parliament in October last year. When questioned by the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Public Service and Administration, the minister stated that certain investigations into contracts and “issues” concerning SITA were under way and could be jeopardised if they are revealed at a public forum.
Baloyi effectively deflected politicians from posing questions about SITA and some of the issues that it faces.
Nyaka this morning could also not say how far the DPSA had progressed with the appointment of a CEO for the agency, and SITA last week confirmed it had nothing new to report on the matter. A spokesperson confirmed the organisation is still being run by a temporary three-member CEO team that was put in place last year.
Cop-out
Meanwhile, the SAPS elite crime-fighting unit - the Hawks - has yet to see the risk assessment report. The report names a former director of the SAPS as being “involved in less than arms' length transactions with companies in which he has vested financial interest” and links these companies with irregularities at SITA. The director retired from the police service towards the end of last year.
Hawks spokesman Musa Zondi says SITA has not handed over the report yet and could not say if or when this would happen.
Last year, Zondi stated that the police are conducting preliminary enquiries “until such time as we land our hands on the actual report and understand what it says”.
“They [SITA] know we are interested and they will get it to us once they have finished their process around the report,” Zondi stated at the time.
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