The State IT Agency (SITA) has declared war on mediocrity and complacency. CEO Llewellyn Jones says the award of a partial ISO 9001:2000 certification shows it is winning.
Jones acknowledges that SITA was sometimes rightly criticised for failing customer expectations, saying the state agency has achieved "mixed results" in meeting customer requirements.
But he adds the ISO 9001:2000 accreditation proves SITA "has the building blocks in place to be recognised as a world-class information and communications technology company".
SITA yesterday received certification for its Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal regions, the Department of Defence project office in Cape Town, as well as its Pretoria headquarters, inclusive of its Erasmuskloof, Perseus Park, Centurion, Numerus and Beta offices.
"These regions and offices join SITA's Department of Defence client business unit, which is already ISO certified," Jones said at a ceremony to mark the occasion in Sandton.
"This achievement bears testimony to SITA's concerted efforts to continually improve the quality of our service offering to our customers, while recognising and validating our commitment to improve customer satisfaction levels, which is central to our strategic objectives.
"Our ISO certification is an important milestone in our journey to implementing a full-scale quality management system that conforms to international best practice.
"Moving forward, we will endeavour to certify the reminder of SITA's regions, as well as seek to attain higher levels of maturity in our quality management."
International arena
To this end, SITA has already engaged the Johannesburg Centre for Software Engineering, at the University of the Witwatersrand, as well as the Software Engineering Institute at the Carnegie-Mellon University, in Pittsburgh.
SA Bureau of Standards CEO Martin Kuscus says the accreditation launches SITA "from an unknown and secluded information technology shop into the international arena".
The SABS conducted stage one of the ISO audit in November 2007, focusing on the various internal procedures that SITA utilises to manage quality assurance in the organisation.
Kuscus says the audit was extensive, covering document management, corrective and preventative action, trend analysis, business reviews, resource management, as well as process improvement management and management responsibilities.
Dr Ger Maathuis, a lead assessor at the Dutch Raad voor Accreditate (RvA), says the SABS is today one the top 10 certification agencies worldwide, with a footprint in 46 countries.
"SABS meets all RvA's accreditation requirements and we have great admiration for their competence in performing ISO audits. The fact that SABS conducted the audit on SITA speaks volumes for the integrity of the process and the outcome."
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