The State IT Agency (SITA) has expressed shock and regret at the news that its former GM for research and development, McKay Motshabi, and a junior SITA employee, Neo Lekgetho, were killed in a car accident on the road to Pretoria at the weekend.
Motshabi joined SITA in 2000 as a business development executive and at the time of his death, he had left SITA to join Microsoft.
Described by colleagues at SITA as a humble man, he held a PhD in educational psychology from Howard University in Washington, DC, with a focus on research design, measurement and statistical analysis.
At SITA, Motshabi was responsible for determining the best products and services for the agency's clients.
He joined SITA as one of the first executives appointed to establish and grow the company, which was transforming after the amalgamation of three previous IT arms of government of the Department of Defence, South African Police Services and the Department of State Expenditure's Central Computers Services.
By 2002, SITA's E-Services division was firmly established, and Motshabi was reassigned to establish a technology research unit.
Under his leadership, the unit undertook pioneering work in many areas and made breakthroughs that saw pilot projects in enterprise architecture, which were done at five different departments. It was later packaged as Master Systems Plan, and referred to commonly as MSP-in-a-box. Others include telemedicine and corruption detection.
"McKay had immense experience in the field of data processing, data manipulation and statistical analysis using conventional statistical packages," says SITA CEO Mavuso Msimang. "He had joined SITA from Ernst & Young, where he was manager of Data Engineering Services, where he introduced and was subject matter expert of IT end-user satisfaction surveys. He was one of the people SITA relied on to deliver citizen-focused programmes for government, and he did not disappoint."
Prior to his appointment at Ernst & Young, McKay was a principal consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Washington, DC, which he joined after working as a statistical consultant at the Gallup Organisation, a research organisation also based in Washington, DC.
His interest was always in the areas of data mining, decision support services, customer relationship management and e-government.
At the time of his death, Motshabi was driving with Lekgetho, who was also employed in SITA's research and development division. "His passing away robbed SITA of invaluable OSS knowledge," says Msimang.
Lekgetho had recently completed a Linux course. He was recruited from the DPSA, where he was an intern, to work on SITA's open source research projects.
"His passing away leaves a huge gap, which we might have to go outside to fill. He was working on a total knowledge exchange project for all CIOs, and he was on the verge of launching a portal for the project," says Msimang.
Related story:
McKay Motshabi joins Microsoft South Africa
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