It's Time To End Sita's Monopoly Over State It

In the effort to rebuild government into a capable state, IT must play a fundamental part. Departments ranging from home affairs to the police service have highlighted how improved use of IT could transform their ability to deliver by ensuring fast and effective systems. But there is a fundamental constraint on the ability of the public sector to embrace digital efficiencies, which is the State IT Agency Sita.

The ability of government to embrace and work with world-class IT systems is too important to politicise the issue. Yet, unfortunately, efforts to reform Sita have now become embroiled in party politics. Proposals by communications minister Solly Malatsi to change regulations to empower state entities to appoint their own IT service providers rather than being forced to use Sita have met with strong opposition from members of parliament. That is despite the new regulations having strong support from ministers across the government of national unity.

Sita has been bedevilled by allegations of corruption and mismanagement, leadership instability, irregular procurement processes and frequent complaints from government departments about the quality of service delivery. MPs know this because those were the findings of a report that the portfolio committee on communications digital technologies published last December.

Appropriate systems are a critical ingredient. Empowering departments to manage their own IT procurement is a key step. But we should also aim to ensure that Sita itself becomes effective and is able to compete to provide services to the public sector. Granting departments the ability to choose to use Sita or not, would result in some healthy competitive pressure to enable Sita to sort out its leadership and corruption issues.

The digital world is obviously evolving fast. Artificial intelligence, blockchain, platform economies and expanding digital infrastructure, among much else, are disrupting many business models. All of these provide opportunities for the public sector to embrace innovation and improve the quality of services that South Africans get from their government.