The ICT challenges that South African government departments face are not unique, but part of a global challenge, delegates at a government conference organised by the Business Zone at the Rosebank Hotel heard yesterday.
The objective of the conference was to find ways to extract maximum value out of existing and proposed government ICT systems. Representatives from national, provincial and local government, as well as the ICT sector, took part in the event.
According to research presented by Accenture and BMI-TechKnowledge, even the developed countries face the challenge of ICT funding, skills shortage and lack of monitoring tools to assess the impact of deployed programmes.
Citizen needs a key driver
Accenture SA senior manager Isabel Malheiro said results from the 2005 e-government roadmap showed that in many countries, services were not rolled out based on citizen need.
"There was such a drive to put services online that government forgot to ask the citizens what they need," she said.
The scope of the roadmap involved 22 countries of varying technological and development levels. Accenture has been tracking the ICT implementations of these countries since 2001.
Lack of monitoring tools
Another key finding was that there were instances where governments rolled out ICT programmes without a clear view of the outcomes they would bring.
Malheiro said governments` emphasis on first getting the services online and then promoting adoption to citizens means they often make investments at random. Governments therefore still need to apply a consistent approach to measuring the value of their ICT programmes, she said.
Senior BMI-T analyst Natalie Bryden said the company`s research also showed that SA has the problem of a lack of monitoring of government ICT. She said government must move from tactical relationships with vendors to forming strategic partnerships.
She said as the concept of public-private partnerships takes hold both locally and globally, vendors must come up with new and innovative technologies that enhance government`s service delivery mechanisms.
Bryden also pointed out that although communicating with government departments is challenging, the sector is a lucrative market.
Government procurement to go online
Conference chairperson Mthunzi Mwaba said in SA, the difficulty in monitoring ICT implementation in government has been made worse by departments that undertake procurement of services on their own without working with the State IT Agency (SITA). He also pointed out the need for SITA to improve its customer service levels, which he said were unacceptable at 47%.
Dr Shaheen Khotu, a delegate from the Department of Health, said the above problem would soon be addressed when the government tender process goes online. This will ensure government-vendor relationships are easily monitored, he said.
The conference ends today.
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