No smart card corruption, says SITA

The State IT Agency (SITA) says its tender issues regarding the smart ID card project were simply administrative and involved no corruption.

This was revealed by a forensic audit investigation into the matter, according to the agency.

Speaking at a Home Affairs Portfolio Committee meeting last week, acting chairperson of the SITA board, Febe Potgieter-Gqubule, said the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) had instructed SITA to prepare a tender for the supply, installation and maintenance of smart cards, raw materials, card personalisation and card production.

The tender was initiated and advertised in May 2008. On 8 September 2008, an anonymous letter was received by former SITA chairperson Zodwa Manase, alleging improprieties relating to the evaluation of the tender.

Further deliberations on the tender were prohibited by the board until the report from the auditor-general's office was finalised and reviewed.

The smart ID card will replace the traditional green ID books for South African citizens. The current green ID book is not sufficient to match new technologies and transactions under the IT modernisation project.

Key findings of the investigation were that there was general non-compliance with SITA tender procedures and SITA regulations, according to Potgieter-Gqubule.

She added that there was a failure by the DHA to submit a business case, which was peremptory in terms of the SITA Act (No 88 of 1998).

In the publication of the tender, together with the evaluation, the allocation of the preference points, which was one of the evaluation criteria, was submitted to SITA by the DHA after the publication of the tender. The obligation was upon the DHA to prepare and submit the evaluation criteria and upon SITA to ensure the tender was not published without complete evaluation criteria, said the acting chairperson.

There was also failure by SITA to open the bids in public, as required by SITA regulations. The bid evaluation committee members were appointed by the DHA, after the publication of the bid, which was contrary to the prescripts of the SITA regulations.

Potgieter-Gqubule also said not all the scoring by members of the bid evaluation committee was taken into account, on the basis that such members resigned, while there was no evidence to support their resignation and/or withdrawal. There were also discrepancies in the finalisation and consolidation of the individual scorings by the bid evaluation committee members.

She added that there was failure by one SITA employee to make a complete disclosure regarding a job offer by one of the bidders, and the employee failed to recuse himself from some of the deliberations. Where there was disclosure, he did not disclose the nature of the interest and failed to disclose the name of the bidder involved with the alleged job offer.

Potgieter-Gqubule says SITA made several recommendations regarding the report.

These include the improvement of controls pertaining to procurement processes to ensure compliance with the SITA Act, regulations, SITA procurement policies and other applicable supply chain legislation.

The agency also suggested contravention by DHA and SITA employees, who failed to comply with the provisions of the legislations, should be met with disciplinary action; the job offer made to one of the SITA employees by a bidder was irregular taking into account that it was done while the bid was under adjudication and so SITA should consider blacklisting the bidder for its irregular conduct.

Committee members said the wait for the report had been too long; however, they acknowledged transparency in SITA's presentation.

Members also said the report showed the problems were mainly administrative in nature, with no evidence of corruption. The problem, however, is that a lot of money was clearly being wasted through negligence and lack of capacity.

Potgieter-Gqubule replied that there had not been direct money involved, but it was more or less the time of the SITA and DHA officials that was the major cost.

Members added that besides taking disciplinary actions, there should be some evaluation of the capacity of officials to deal with such issues.

There was also concern regarding the disciplinary actions against the officials who had left. Chairperson Maggy Maunye said it is becoming a trend that officials do wrong in one department, resign and simply move on to another department. She added that such loopholes must be closed.

Mkuseli Apleni, DHA director-general, said the situation reported had nothing to do with the smart card ID project since the department is now handling it.

A decision had been taken that the smart card project was not going to be put out to tender and the smart card would be printed by the Government Printing Works.

A sample card has already been designed and a pilot has already commenced.

Around the world, electronic ID card projects are enabling next-generation e-government for millions of people, from simple identification cards, to fully-integrated systems extending across public sector departments and into the private sector.