Is government spend on ICT effective?

Johannesburg, 23 Mar 2009

The United Nations defines e-government as the capacity and the willingness of the public sector to deploy ICT for improving knowledge and information in the service of the citizens. Capacity in this context is a very broad concept, involving the financial, infrastructural, human capital, regulatory, administrative and systemic capabilities of the state.

Conceding this, Tertia Smit, senior analyst at BMI-TechKnowledge, told delegates at the ITWeb eGovernment conference that government is realising the benefits of e-government are similarly broad. They include improved efficiency, greater convenience, and better accessibility of public services by the people.

As Smit pointed out, government is responding to an awareness of the multiple benefits of e-government by increasing spending on IT, but Smit wondered if the government's ICT spending is being properly managed. “Is it strategically planned?”, she asked. “Is it co-ordinated and cooperative? Is it being timeously monitored, evaluated and adjusted accordingly?”

For Smit there are four main drivers of ICT spend nowadays: the need for greater cost-efficiency in tough economic times, increased ICT competition, the 2010 World Cup, and new technology, with increasing demand for broadband access, convergence, unified communications, managed data services, virtualisation and outsourcing. She added that government is also implementing ECA as well as growing its e-government spend to address the digital divide.

Current government spend

Smit noted that government is continuing to increase its ICT spending despite the difficult economic times. Major ongoing projects include:

* Who am I online: Department of Home Affairs - Gijima AST (R2 billion over five years);
* Global Deployment of VOIP: Department of Foreign Affairs (R112 million);
* IFMS Project: Department of Public Service and Administration (R4 billion). The scope of this project covers financial management, HR management, supply chain management, asset management and business intelligence across both national and provincial levels;
* Human resources business process management system: Department of Public Service and Administration - SAP (R800 million);
* Learner Tracking System, records keeping and provincial education projects: Department of Education - Sams Treasury has allocated R136 million towards this project, to be shared among the provinces while R30 million has been allocated at national level;
* Local wireless broadband: Cape Town is currently rolling out its own wireless broadband, with the first phase to cost R275 million over five years.

This is certainly a crowded field of important projects, representing a sizable slice of the government spending pie, but as Smit warned, there are dangerous inhibiting factors in the mix, such as the ongoing economic slowdown and the worsening exchange rate.

On a technology level, bandwidth constraints, interconnection prices, ICT skills shortage and lack of ICT market consolidation are major hurdles, Smit argued, saying that these cause persistent delays in implementation when it comes to government projects.