The minister of public service and administration Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi last night announced the appointment of Colin van Schalkwyk as MD and CEO of the State IT Agency (Sita), after the decision was approved by Cabinet.
Sita, which is to command government's entire R2 billion IT budget, recently admitted to having internal problems, not the least of which was the loss of two MDs in its short history.
The announcement was made at a gala event at VodaWorld in Midrand, where Sita also launched its new corporate identity to the public.
"We went though three rounds of interviews. We were looking for someone with global perspective," said Fraser-Moleketi, adding that Van Schalkwyk had committed to stay at Sita for at least three years. "At the pace IT moves, we may want someone else there by then."
Van Schalkwyk was most recently the business development manager at Cisco Systems locally, and has worked as head of special projects at the government department of communications. He holds a masters degree from the University of Illinois in policy economics.
"He was involved in the inception of Sita and headed up the government Y2K centre," said Fraser-Moleketi. "He is not an unknown quantity."
At the time of the announcement, Van Schalkwyk was out of the country and could not be reached for comment.
Sita has spent much of its time since formation last year under acting MDs after the resignations of its two permanent appointees, and was at one stage run by a committee of three.
"At least we now have a leader at Sita," said chairman Sello Rasethaba. "At least for the past two days I have been able to work at Transnet and not have to be at Centurion [where Sita has offices]."
Rasethaba said IT vendors and consultants had exploited government's lack of co-ordination in the past and had profited handsomely from doing so. This, he promised, would change under Sita.
"We want to be partners with you," he told vendors in the audience. "We are not partners now, we are just junior partners that do what you want. You don't hedge rand funds. If the rand goes down, we pay, but if it goes up, you don't pay us."
Fraser-Moleketi, who is ultimately responsible for the agency, agreed that vendors "obviously took the gap given to them" because of poor intra-governmental communication on technology issues, but promised that Sita would eliminate duplication and take advantage of economies of scale in procurement.
"All 33 [government] departments and nine provinces need to be part of the programme," she said.
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