E-government suffering from labour pains

The multimillion-rand first phase of the Government Gateway project - a portal supporting call centre facilities that will afford citizens easy access to government information - is expected to be completed within the next couple of months.

The tender for this first phase was awarded to T-Systems, an IT and telecommunications service provider. This initiative, the first real in-your-face deliverable to citizens from the SA government`s e-government initiative, will enable users to access information centred around life events, such as births, immunisation programmes, pension payouts, deaths, etc. It`s aimed at providing a service that will alleviate the need for South Africans to stand in queues at different government department offices for different information requirements.

Desmond Seeley, GM of strategy and market development at T-Systems, says the project has a price tag of over R32 million. As the primary contractor, T-Systems teamed with Lechabile and Sifikile Consulting to implement the Microsoft-based portal. Cornastone and Siemens Business Solutions are delivering on the call centre component, while Star Consulting is handling change management issues. The portal project team is based at the State IT Agency`s (SITA) Erasmuskloof premises and the call centre is being installed at SITA`s offices in Centurion. This seats 10 agents, has enough capacity to accommodate another five agents during peak demand periods and will eventually be expanded to include a further 70 seats, says Seeley.

We`re just looking at the provision of information in this first phase, which is going very well.

Desmond Seeley, GM of strategy and market development, T-Systems

"Phase two of the project will probably see government teaming with the private sector," says Seeley, adding that this next phase will involve the completion of transactions online, rather than just accessing and downloading information. "We`re just looking at the provision of information in this first phase, which is going very well."

He might be optimistic about this part of the e-government initiative, but several IT vendors are more than a little unhappy about progress to date, how SITA is handling e-government-related projects and the frustration involved in often having to engage in three-way negotiations between themselves, the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) and SITA. There is also widespread concern as to how government intends to deal with the significant change management issues involved in taking a paper-based, sluggish civil service into a real-time, dynamic virtual environment.

While spending more than R32 million on a portal and a small supporting call centre might seem a tad excessive to some, it pales in comparison to the overall IT government spend expected during the next few years.

The latest research from local IT research house BMI-TechKnowledge shows that IT spend by the 34 national government departments reached R2.5 billion in the 2002/03 fiscal year. BMI-T expects this to increase on a compound annual growth rate of 7.2% to reach R3.3 billion by 2006/07. This projection is significantly lower than previous estimates, says BMI-T, because the major spend is moving from a national level to provincial and metropolitan government structures.

Some examples of provincial and metropolitan spend on technology implementations that will have a definite impact on SA`s attempt to take government services online include the City of Cape Town`s decision to go ahead with a SAP enterprise resource planning installation aimed at supporting up to 5 000 users, and a move on a provincial level to roll-out SAP by the Gauteng Shared Services Centre. These are both multimillion-rand projects that will take a look at the back-office functionally required to both directly and indirectly support Web-based citizen interfaces.

Another key achievement is that the Department of Justice has implemented a sharing of information portals which attorneys, for example, can use in checking which courts are dealing with what cases.

Thabiso Tenyane, GM for the public sector, Comparex Africa

Yet another project that is expected to ease interactions with government is the supplier registration and verification database shared by the City of Cape Town, the Western Cape Provincial Government, the Western Cape Parliament and the Boland Regional Municipality, which incorporates 20 local municipalities. This centralised supplier database, recently launched by trading hub TradeWorld, adheres to current legislation with regards to preferential procurement and will serve as the registration base for all suppliers wishing to conduct business with the parties involved.

Thabiso Tenyane, GM for the public sector at business solutions provider Comparex Africa, is among those industry spokesmen that believe in giving credit where it`s due. "One of government`s key [e-government] achievements has been the e-enablement of the SA Revenue Services [SARS]: with eFiling and i-Tax, citizens can now interact with SARS and submit tax returns and IRP5 forms online," says Tenyane.

"Another key achievement is that the Department of Justice has implemented a sharing of information portals which attorneys, for example, can use in checking which courts are dealing with what cases."

However, he points out that while these technology implementations have certainly improved the user experience involved in specific citizen-to-government, business-to-government and government-to-government interactions, there are various HR-related issues that may seriously hamper the full roll-out of the overall e-government initiative, and limit it to individual departmental and ad hoc implementations.

"The biggest key challenge government faces is in the lack of education and training of citizens, including civil servants, both in the use of ICT and in the culture of e-government, which goes against the traditional training of civil servants in a particular silo. E-government will require much more process-based thinking, where a Department of Health official, for example, can seamlessly point a citizen to another department or another service," says Tenyane.

His concerns are shared by other industry spokesmen such as Mauritz de Villiers, director of Bateleur Financial Solutions, a division of IT solutions group Bateleur Holdings. He believes government departments - whether central, provincial or local - need to fully understand the implications of e-business. Unrealistic expectations and inadequate business processes are the greatest stumbling blocks to SA`s e-government initiative, he says.

"At the moment, there`s a lot of talk without much substance. We have seen very little action and I believe more concrete steps need to be taken.

"It is critical that expectations are carefully managed, and that government departments come to terms with the need for new technologies, systems and applications. Developing staff through e-commerce training is also vital, as these skills are lacking in many areas," he says.

At the moment, there`s a lot of talk without much substance. We have seen very little action and I believe more concrete steps need to be taken.

Mauritz de Villiers, director, Bateleur Financial Solutions

Commenting on the benefits of e-commerce to government departments, De Villiers says service delivery to the public should be enhanced through the process. "However, if one looks at the current service delivery of all levels of government, it`s clear that a change in attitude on the part of our civil servants is necessary for this initiative to succeed," he says.

Even those close to the e-government initiative have raised concerns around the human component involved. Ntlai Mosiah, a director at Deloitte Consulting, was lead client services partner for this consulting firm, which was appointed as a strategic advisor on the first phase of the Government Gateway contract.

"Among the major challenges during the switch to e-government will be marrying the new generation of thinkers on the call centres and portal with a traditional approach from current operational staff within the public service. Also a major headache will be deciding who does what with regards to particular work processes, including where a requirement gets handed over from front-line staff and who will take ultimate responsibility for completing a service," says Mosiah.

Maphum Nxumalo, public sector director at Unisys South Africa, concurs. "Change management will be a major issue during the e-government initiative. This is key to any government deliverables from the e-government project."

While tenders being issued by SITA do include change management requirements, he believes this will result in "small pockets" of change management taking place within the specific departments involved in these tenders and not an overall, over-reaching initiative. "We ideally need an across the board approach as this is a big issue that needs to be addressed seriously," says Nxumalo.

Semela Tseka, CEO at IT systems integration company Choice Technologies, states: "The main problem with SITA is that it has kept public servants as its engine, and appointed business-minded leaders. This means it has people within its ranks who weren`t delivering anyway. Any change management that has taken place so far has been driven by technology issues, rather than by the merging of these two types of individuals. We still have old ladies walking around in government with date stamps in their hands. How will we change the way they work? If e-government doesn`t provide life skills and empower people then it will have failed."

Mosiah points out that among the key success factors on the road to e-government is how well the "glue" - business processes and authentication systems - will stick. In Nxumalo`s opinion, "in terms of policy and vision around e-government, the government has done a great job. But the implementation process is very slow and the old 'silo` mentality still prevails in government. There are too many initiatives being handled in isolation by government departments, such as Hanis by Home Affairs. This could have been very effectively used as a springboard to e-government in terms of identifying and authenticating users, but it simply isn`t being sufficiently leveraged.

"Another example involves the Post Office, which wants to position itself as the paymaster of choice for government. It certainly has the countrywide infrastructure available, yet it has no formal relationship with the Department of Home Affairs. This might lead to it creating its own system, which means the very inefficiencies we are trying to eliminate are still multiplying."

In addition, he says, small "pockets" of the Afis system are being created within departments, which is eradicating the benefits it promised as a nationwide system.

Tseka is one of many industry spokesmen who believe the need to interact with the DPSA, SITA and the government department directly involved in a particular IT project is creating unnecessary delays and confusion. "There are too many stakeholders in the mix when dealing with e-government issues. It`s difficult to establish who to talk to."

In terms of policy and vision around e-government, the government has done a great job.

Maphum Nxumalo, public sector director, Unisys South Africa

Mojalefa Moseki, CIO at SITA, says that as the DPSA has commissioned SITA to implement government IT projects, vendors should be discussing any related issues with his organisation. However, once the Government Gateway project starts getting rolled out to individual departments, things are definitely going to get more complicated. Each department will be expected to get its own initiative up and running, based on an overall framework supplied by SITA. Although a certain amount of standardisation can be expected, different departments will appoint different vendors and co-ordinating this mix on a national level is likely to be more than a little problematic. Further complicating this scenario is that fact that some departments have chosen to side-step SITA and implement their own e-government interfaces. A "lack of skills and capacity" at SITA is apparently behind their decision to go it alone.

Moseki underlines the logistical problems when he remarks that the reason the Government Gateway project got off to a late start was due to the difficulties experienced in sourcing user requirements across the 34 national government departments. Extending this process down to provincial and local departments is bound to further aggravate the situation.

Says Moseki: "The e-government project is one of the biggest ever undertaken in SA. Big projects always have problems and unpacking this one [into departments] is going to be a problem."

Yet another widely voiced concern appears to centre around the many changes in management over the past few years at SITA, with many saying this has impacted on the organisation`s ability to deliver and has also contributed to the implementation of the first phase of the Government Gateway running about a year behind schedule.

Moseki responds that "management changes at SITA are like those that take place at any other IT company - as technology changes, leadership changes also take place". Granted, he has a point. Management tenure at many IT companies during the past few years has been rather short-lived. And many leadership changes have taken place while IT companies were sliding off the JSE or applying for liquidation due to management mix-ups.

As early as last week, SITA announced yet another change - the appointment of a new group CEO to step into the shoes of COO and acting group CEO Ken Modise. Mavuso Msimang, currently CEO at the South African National Parks Board, will take up his appointment on 1 October.

In the midst of the concerns about the e-government initiative, some organisations - such as the CSIR - are quietly getting on with the job of taking civil servants, citizens and business from standing inline to interacting online. Says Laurens Cloete, programming manager, Computing Programme at CSIR icomtek: "We are currently contributing towards two aspects of the e-government initiative, firstly by attempting to make the government`s engine more effective and secondly by improving its interface with its citizens."

The CSIR is establishing an Open Source Resource Centre, aimed at addressing some of the issues raised during the ongoing debate as to whether the e-government initiative should go the open source route or not. "We`ve appointed a manager and are busy with the business plan. The basic function of the centre will be to remove open source adoption barriers. Currently, open source doesn`t enjoy formal support so we`ll be levelling the playing field to a certain extent by providing this."

Cloete says there is also an element of advocacy involved, in that the centre will promote a more objective view as far as the use of open source is concerned. "We`ll try not to be too radical either way," he says.

There are too many stakeholders in the mix when dealing with e-government issues. It`s difficult to establish who to talk to.

Semela Tseka, CEO, Choice Technologies

Open source, he says, is less costly, will make inter-operability and integration between government and business easier and will make SA less reliant on imported software. The centre, he says, will be business-focused as opposed to centred around mainly ICT research, and will enter into mutually beneficial business relationships.

Icomtek is also exploring how technology can support equal access in 11 different official languages. Within the next two years, says Cloete, it will develop appropriate human language technologies that, among other things, will support serving a customer in the language of his or her choice.

The CSIR`s approach could go a long way towards ensuring citizen-government communications are facilitated, but the industry and government would appear to have a considerable amount of work to do before both begin to speak the same language in so far as how the e-government initiative moves forward from here on.