Home Affairs applies for permission to ditch SITA

Jan

Jan

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Home Affairs applies for permission to ditch SITA

The Department of Home Affairs has formally applied to be exempted from using the State Information Technology Agency (Sita) to procure its ICT equipment and services.

In its Home Affairs 2025/2026 Annual Performance Plan, the department blamed much of its inability to deliver effective digital services on its obligation to work through Sita.
 
SITA has overpayed idiots that dont know how to do basic work. Ive dealt with than many a time and they are really the main cause of downtime and not the infrastructure.

If you want a high paying job for doing little work? Go work at SITA
 
Juicy tenders to family and friends seem to be the norm at SITA in any case.
Centralisation of function is supposed to bring economies of scale and streamlining of process, but it seldom does...even in the private sector.
 
The_Right_Honourable_Brit said:
Wouldn't happen if it was an ANC Minister in charge. Go Leon...
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Actually, it did happen with the ANC Minister. Unfortunately SITA hit back with things like "bronze package" etc which was very misleading.

A team was put together by Motsoaledi to assist with providing information/confirmation that the problem lies with SITA precisely because the portfolio committee overseeing the earlier (ANC Minister) request was in essence hoodwinked by gaslighting like "but they are on the bronze package".

The truth was, even the Platinum package didn't receive the SLA it promised so Motsoaledi opted to stop wasting tax money and downgraded to the service that better reflects what they're getting. When he failed to convince for an exemption, one of his (at the time unknown to be) last acts was to establish a proper dinkum 3rd party evaluation of all the issues to provide an irrefutable objective overview.

When he first applied for exemption, it was SITA that had to provide the data. Talk about conflict of interest.
 
RedViking said:
Fine. But here comes a juicy tender to a family member.
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Not entirely. There's potentially a separate govt. entity capable of supporting this (and actually did do some internal improvements) for very reasonable cost, and it will be an internal transfer. Not all govt. teams are in the business of profit across govt. departments.
 
brattex said:
Not entirely. There's potentially a separate govt. entity capable of supporting this (and actually did do some internal improvements) for very reasonable cost, and it will be an internal transfer. Not all govt. teams are in the business of profit across govt. departments.
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We need more good news. So if that is true, it will be awesome.
 
RedViking said:
We need more good news. So if that is true, it will be awesome.
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I can't say for ALL things relating to DHA, but at least certain things require individuals to sign a Secrecy Act contract. Some public news articles have already mentioned the involvement of the CSIR in a recent evaluation for DHA, so that's clearly not bound as a secret any more.

I'll say this: for a period of time dating back two years, I was very excited and optimistic and felt like a meaningful difference could be made for the benefit of the country. And despite a comprehensive report being produced for DHA, some practical things happened too, which were a byproduct of technology evaluations, performance enhancements demonstrations, etc.

If the recommendations are followed through with as much enthusiasm and commitment as the initial meetings in PTA had, some time ago, then yes, there is cause to be optimistic.

I would be VERY disappointed if recommendations from recognised technology experts weren't followed, because the solutions are in some circumstances cheap to free, and require very trivial effort to implement (or have already been implemented and just need rudimentary handover).
 
brattex said:
Not entirely. There's potentially a separate govt. entity capable of supporting this (and actually did do some internal improvements) for very reasonable cost, and it will be an internal transfer. Not all govt. teams are in the business of profit across govt. departments.
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Which Government entity would that be?
 
elf_lord_ZC5 said:
Which Government entity would that be?
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There's a reference in this article about a DHA partnership with another government entity, that included remedial actions.

As part of the assessment of its IT environment, home affairs partnered with the CSIR to diagnose issues in its IT systems, perform a root cause analysis and implement remedial actions to improve its application architecture.

techcentral.co.za

Home affairs applies for divorce from Sita - TechCentral

The department of home affairs has formally applied for a separation from the State IT Agency.
techcentral.co.za techcentral.co.za
 
brattex said:
There's a reference in this article about a DHA partnership with another government entity, that included remedial actions.

As part of the assessment of its IT environment, home affairs partnered with the CSIR to diagnose issues in its IT systems, perform a root cause analysis and implement remedial actions to improve its application architecture.

techcentral.co.za

Home affairs applies for divorce from Sita - TechCentral

The department of home affairs has formally applied for a separation from the State IT Agency.
techcentral.co.za techcentral.co.za
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Remedial actions - not to supply services
 
elf_lord_ZC5 said:
Remedial actions - not to supply services
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Many government-level teams are capable of doing this sort of technical work, but certainly it is viable for the original investigative team to provide this continued support, since they did it for the duration of the partnership contract.

The CSIR provides many levels of services, ranging from public services, research, public/private partnerships, cost-based service contracts, etc. When necessary (and viable), multi-disciplinary teams are formed to provide a specific service or contract, so this type of intra-governmental support would be absolutely aligned with the role of the CSIR.

Ultimately, at the most basic level, the CSIR answers to DSTI, so if DHA requests support from DSTI, the Minister will instruct the CSIR to make it happen. In this particular instance, the CSIR has shown a capacity and capability to not only conduct the initial investigation, but to implement remedial actions (the original scope was not intended to be more than a root-cause analysis and performance bottleneck assessment).

Tom427 said:
Was that the R2 billion software package a decade ago?
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@Tom427 if that's directed to me, then no, not at all related.
 
brattex said:
Many government-level teams are capable of doing this sort of technical work, but certainly it is viable for the original investigative team to provide this continued support, since they did it for the duration of the partnership contract.

The CSIR provides many levels of services, ranging from public services, research, public/private partnerships, cost-based service contracts, etc. When necessary (and viable), multi-disciplinary teams are formed to provide a specific service or contract, so this type of intra-governmental support would be absolutely aligned with the role of the CSIR.

Ultimately, at the most basic level, the CSIR answers to DSTI, so if DHA requests support from DSTI, the Minister will instruct the CSIR to make it happen. In this particular instance, the CSIR has shown a capacity and capability to not only conduct the initial investigation, but to implement remedial actions (the original scope was not intended to be more than a root-cause analysis and performance bottleneck assessment).


@Tom427 if that's directed to me, then no, not at all related.
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CSIR may be able to deliver the service, but the article specifically states, they are looking to private sector to supply this service.

How far along the road they get, time will tell.

Too many with vested interests in helping the wheels fall off.
 
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