Govt CIO spot vacant since April

Government has been without an IT head since the resignation of CIO Michelle Williams a few months ago.

Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) spokesperson Dumisani Nkwamba has confirmed Williams stepped down from her position as government CIO.

Her last day of service was 30 April and a new government CIO has not been appointed in her place. Williams took up the position in November 2007.

Nkwamba says the post will be filled when the recruitment and selection prescripts for senior management posts in the public service have been completed.

Chief director of operations at the office of the government CIO within the DPSA Walter Mudau has been made acting government CIO until a replacement for Williams can be found.

The DPSA is also without a deputy director-general of public service ICT management. It advertised the position on 22 June and the closing date for applicants was 11 July. An appointment has not as yet been made.

Commenting on the current lack of a government CIO, national chairperson of the Black IT Forum (BITF) Darryl Dennis says the very nature of the CIO position is critical.

He explains that this is because the CIO sets the ICT benchmark for the rest of government.

The DPSA as a department is a critical component to government as a whole when it comes to ICT, considering it governs entities like the State IT Agency (SITA), adds the chairperson.

He says until the position is filled, there will be a vacuum. SITA and other government entities have no one to turn to for guidance on ICT matters if there is no CIO.

“The fact that the appointment has been delayed has dire consequences for the country as a whole in terms of ICT.”

Dennis also says the vacuum causes fundamental challenges for the private sector since it leaves a gap in their engagement with government.

Williams, who also served as SITA's deputy chairperson, was embroiled in the high-profile controversy surrounding the resignation of the agency's CEO, Llewellyn Jones, in 2009. Jones, a respected ICT veteran, left the agency abruptly less than a year into his tenure, citing personal differences with Williams.

This dispute between the two arose when Williams was alleged to have instructed Jones to sideline the winning bidder for a SITA tender - formally chosen by the agency's tender adjudication committee - and hand the deal to another company that had also punted, unsuccessfully, for the contract. Williams always denied any wrongdoing and stated she had legitimate reasons for overturning the original tender decision, as certain government criteria - mostly around BEE - were not met by the initial winner.

In the same year, she was also accused of bringing SITA into “further disrepute”, in a risk assessment report compiled by enterprise risk assessment firm Henderson Solutions. The report revealed large-scale fraud and corruption plaguing the agency's procurement processes.

The report fingered Williams for having a 26% interest in a company called Tswelopele Engineering, and her status as an active director of the business had been traced through the Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office.

The report further unveiled that Tswelopele Engineering owned a subsidiary, Tswelopele Solutions, a company active in the IT sector. It concluded that Williams' involvement in Tswelopele Engineering and Tswelopele Solutions made for “clearly significant grounds for asserting this relationship is in clear conflict of interest”.

In response, Williams claimed she had severed all ties with the any private sector companies when she took up her government posts.

She stepped down from the SITA board in October 2009, but remained government CIO.

Despite the allegations that were levelled against Williams, secretary general of the BITF Motse Mfuleni says government is better than the private sector for placing women in CIO positions, so losing someone like her at such a senior level is a backward step.

“We hope she will not be lost in mentoring other women in the sector. I think she played a good role. The online character of government changed very nicely.”