The Government IT Officers Council (Gitoc) will place a stronger focus on IT skills development going forward, says public service and administration minister Richard Baloyi.
In tribute to its 10th anniversary, the council last week launched a book: “Gitoc: Celebrating 10 years of ICT transformation” - in collaboration with ITWeb Brainstorm.
Gitoc chairperson Julius Segole says the reason for publishing the book is to explain to a wider audience the role and purpose of the council, and to document its achievements.
“Looking back, we can be proud of how far the council has come in such a relatively short time. There has been a lot of hard work by our members to create a forum that exists today to allow the free exchange of ideas and opinions among government's CIOs and IT directors.
Gitoc is the principal inter-departmental forum focusing on ICT and information management in the South African public service. Its two major roles are to advise government on ICT policies and strategies; and to bring CIOs together to collaborate on common solutions.
IT vanguard
Speaking at the book launch Segole said the council has definitely made a mark in the last decade. However, he also says there is still much work to be done.
“While the council is expected to address a range of issues, special attention will be paid to the development of IT skills, the advancement of service delivery-focused IT research, the establishment of proper channels and functions for communication and liaison, and effective co-ordination and monitoring,” says Baloyi in the book.
He adds that, moving forward, Gitoc will be the facilitator that will transform the public sector into an information age-enabled government.
“It is my fervent hope that when the time comes to celebrate Gitoc's 20th anniversary, we will be lauding the council for transforming SA's public sector into one that can serve as a shining to the effectiveness of ICT in government.”
The minister also says Gitoc is in the vanguard of helping SA to realise its collective vision of enabling e-government and ensuring service improvement, thereby creating a more efficient and effective government.
Collective muscle
“Gitoc plays such a crucial role. One of the achievements has been to put SITA [State IT Agency] in line. Gitoc came up with the turnaround strategy because before, this government was creating a monopoly with SITA,” said first Gitoc chairperson Patrick Monyeki, in an interview with ITWeb.
He added that, because SITA was a monopoly, there was no sense of service delivery and Gitoc allowed CIOs to come together and air their frustrations before the SITA board. “Gitoc allows for a collective muscle to make these changes.”
Bheki Zungu, a former government CIO and consultant to the Department of Public Service and Administration, says the council has achieved some, although not all, of its objectives.
He adds that the achievements include the National Integrated Social Information System, an enterprise architecture development framework, and an open source software policy.
“The issues remain the same as when the concept of a CIO forum was first proposed, albeit to a lesser extent. The opportunity to break down the silos, particularly with technology, is still there.”
Archaic debates
“I think they've come a long way in some areas, but in other areas there has been little movement. I still find that sadly, the issues we were debating years ago are still prevalent,” agreed Monyeki.
“In a council like this we need finishers. We have a lot of starters, but we need to come to end solutions.”
He added that there are clear achievements that have been made by the council, with certain developments during each chairperson's reign.
“There are pockets of excellence, but there are some challenges remaining. I expect the Gito council to take the lead in ensuring skills development in IT. If I have one regret from my time at Gitoc, it's not focusing on skills development, professionalising IT or influencing curricula.”
He explained that the challenge with not professionalising IT is that people appointed as network operators are very proficient technically and get promoted over the years.
“They become CIOs and can't speak one word of business. A clear growth path for IT personnel is needed. I believe this is one of the big failures in the 10 years of the Gito council.
Think small
Monyeki said the third component revolves around government's affinity for big IT projects.
“The risk and procurement cycles with these projects are larger. So service delivery suffers. We need to encourage smaller projects so that there's faster delivery and smaller risk.”
The final challenge that the former chairperson named is government's hesitancy to adopt fully packaged solutions.
“There are so many of these in the market and if we were smart in procurement we would utilise them, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel and tailor make solutions.
He said if government systems are streamlined, these market solutions could be easily adopted.
* Gitoc: Celebrating 10 years of ICT transformation” was published in collaboration with ITWeb Brainstorm and in association with EMC2. It will be distributed as a supplement to the June edition of Brainstorm.
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