Fight over South African government’s IT company

The chairperson of Parliament’s portfolio committee for communications and digital technologies, Khusela Diko, has said that Minister Solly Malatsi cannot devolve powers from the State Information Technology Agency (Sita).

This follows Malatsi’s proposal to amend the regulations governing Sita after the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies (DCDT) recently found the agency cannot adequately fulfil its mandate.

The state agency’s current mandate requires all government departments to procure IT equipment and services from the agency.

Therefore, Malatsi’s rationale is to allow smaller departments to procure their own equipment and IT services, allowing Sita to better serve bigger departments such as Home Affairs.

“On the issue of Sita, Malatsi seeks to issue regulations that effectively devolve the powers and functions of Sita to the various government departments,” Diko told 702.

“The Minister cannot do this because the State Information Technology Agency Act is very prescriptive that Sita is the sole procurement agency for the government on IT services. It has mandatory and non-mandatory services.”

However, Diko points out that the Act does not empower the Minister to alter any of its fundamental provisions.

She said that several other solutions exist to bring stability to the state agency, such as appointing a new board and executive team to help the Minister achieve his intended goals.

Diko also suggests automating the procurement system, which was first proposed during South Africa’s fifth administration.

“However, he’s not looking at doing any of those things. Instead, he wants to throw out the baby with the bath water and chooses to cripple the system instead of strengthening it,” argued Diko.

“There was a very good reason why Sita was formed right in the beginning, and that was to ensure that it drives the digitalisation of public service, ultimately benefiting the citizens.”

“Standardisation ensures the elimination of duplication and interoperability of our systems, but the minister doesn’t seem to be interested in giving effect to any of those,” she added.

Malatsi later issued a statement saying that the proposed Sita regulations would allow departments to procure outside of Sita if they could provide a viable business case at a faster turnaround time and a lower cost.

He added that these proposed regulations have gained “overwhelming support from Ministers in the Government of National Unity” and are fully aligned with existing laws on government procurement.

“This flexibility can improve public services for all South Africans by ensuring that the government can respond faster and spend resources more efficiently, something which has been requested by several government departments for some time,” Malatsi said.

The IT agency is currently tasked with the needs of over 250 national, provincial, and municipal departments, which it has shown it cannot adequately do, causing frustration in numerous departments.

“We’ve received some feedback from a number of government departments, and there have been extensive complaints regarding delays in service delivery,” DCDT Director General Nonkqubela Jordan-Dyani recently told Diko’s committee.

“You find that it becomes tedious when you are sourcing an iPad, and you have a new staff compliment, and then experience delays of three months, sometimes even four to six.”

Most recently, the Portfolio Committee on Justice on Constitutional Development criticised Sita for impeding the functioning of South Africa’s courts.

Following an oversight visit to entities within KwaZulu-Natal’s justice portfolio, the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development told the committee that Sita could not deliver on integrated justice system (IJS) projects.

It said this is because the agency is overwhelmed by having to work on and allocate its resources to several other projects simultaneously.