The State IT Agency (SITA) has issued a tender for the services of a restructuring advisor, to provide “best practice insight and guidance”, as it prepares to embark on the restructuring phase of its turnaround process.
The agency is currently implementing a turnaround strategy, announced by public service and administration minister Richard Baloyi.
The agency has been plagued by large-scale corruption and irregular procurement practices, as highlighted by a risk assessment report concluded last year.
Three top SITA executives were suspended in August, pending the outcome of an investigation into alleged tender irregularities and collusion.
In response to SITA's tender, interested parties had until last Friday to submit bids for the fast-tracked tender, issued by the organisation two weeks earlier.
SITA recently held a compulsory briefing for potential bidders, outlining the turnaround framework, which was approved by Parliament, in March, and the resulting turnaround strategy, which the recently-appointed board has developed over the past few months.
Bidders are required to present a new organisational design for the agency and outline the project plan they propose employing to implement the restructuring process. The contract includes role profiling, job evaluation, establishing key policies, process management and management of the industrial relations process.
The contract would last six to eight months, with bids weighted at 90% on technical expertise and cost, and 10% on government's empowerment rating requirements.
The attendance register for the briefing reveals the agency could receive as many as 56 bids for its restructuring requirements. However, SITA will not disclose how many bids were actually submitted.
Behind the scenes
Despite Parliament having approved the latest in the series of SITA turnaround strategies seven months ago, SITA spokesperson Anthea Summers says the organisation has not been idle.
“The minister [Baloyi] established a framework to instruct the turnaround, which Parliament approved. In July, he reconstituted the board and charged the new team with developing a business strategy based on the framework. This business strategy needed to be concluded and approved before addressing SITA's operations,” she explains.
Last month, acting-CEO Nontobeko Ntsinde presented SITA's new vision at the annual GovTech conference and promised “radical changes” in the way it operated.
Despite commending the aspirations, many in the audience revealed they doubted the agency's ability to reach the ideals, due to the absence of information on tangible, operational interventions to achieve the vision, and SITA's deep-rooted dysfunctional history.
Says Summers: “The board, and the agency at large, has committed itself to transparency and effective implementation of the strategy. The board is determined to get this right, so that when the implementation is complete, SITA can put turnaround requirements behind it once and for all. We also need to build market trust in the agency and its management. For this reason, we put this requirement out to tender, despite it not exceeding government's threshold for contracts that can be appointed privately.”
Gaining momentum
Equally important is the urgency to finalise the turnaround strategy, adds Summers. Accordingly, SITA reduced the response time from the standard month or longer, to two weeks.
“Timelines are absolutely crucial, even if we do need to balance this with our transparency commitment. Yes, the pressure was placed on service providers, but we are also looking for organisations that are agile, flexible and delivery-focused. The shorter timeframe will weed out those who don't fit that profile.”
The bids now enter the evaluation process, allowing the organisation to scrutinise the offerings and make the most appropriate choice. Summers declined to speculate on the timeframe for this assessment, but reiterated there is an underlying sense of urgency.
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