- A new regulation will loosen the grip that the State Information Technology Agency has on IT procurement in South Africa.
- Inefficiencies and mismanagement at the agency have frustrated many government entities.
- The rules will allow government entities to procure IT systems independently if they can motivate that it will be cheaper or faster than through the Agency.
- For more financial stories, go to the News24 Business front page.
New regulations will allow government entities to procure IT systems outside of the ailing State Information Technology Agency (SITA) if they can motivate that it will be cheaper or faster.
Communications and Digital Technology Minister Solly Malatsi published a proclamation in the Government Gazette that loosened SITA’s grip on the procurement of IT services.
The regulation came into effect on 1 June.
This is music to the ears of some government entities, including the Department of Home Affairs and the South African Police Service, who have complained about working through SITA when procuring critical IT systems.
SITA is the organisation responsible for procuring and maintaining IT systems for government entities.
Until now, government departments have been forced to procure mandatory IT services through SITA due to stipulations in regulations under the SITA Act. Departments were not obligated to procure so-called optional services through SITA but could choose to appoint SITA for the job.
The new regulations published on 23 May will allow departments to give written notice to SITA of a plan to procure IT services themselves when they are of the opinion that SITA will not be able to satisfy its requirements and that they will be able to procure the system either more cheaply or more quickly.
SITA will then be given 10 days to respond to that notice.
If SITA fails to respond in time; responds by saying that it is unable to procure the IT system; or comes back with a counter-proposal that does not convince the procuring entity that SITA will do the work more cheaply or quickly, then the entity has the right to go ahead and procure the system itself, following normal procurement law.
Malatsi said that the flexibility to procure outside of SITA would improve public services for all South Africans,
in a statement from April, foreshadowing the new regulations.
“This flexibility can improve public services for all South Africans by ensuring that government can respond faster and spend resources more efficiently, something which has been requested by several government departments for some time,” he said.
Inefficiencies at SITA have raised the ire of several departments.
A recent Auditor-General report stated that the average turnaround time of procurement requests at SITA is 123 days. The audit outcome of SITA also regressed to a disclaimer, and the agency is the subject of a corruption probe by the Special Investigating Unit.
In December last year, MPs in the Portfolio Committee on Communications and Digital Technology attended a 10-hour briefing during which the dysfunction in the Agency was laid bare.
READ | Inside govt's broken IT agency: Fights, and more fights
The most vocal critic of SITA has been the Department of Home Affairs, which announced that it had applied to be formally separated from SITA to procure IT systems from more reliable and cost-effective external partners.
READ | Home Affairs’ plan to divorce SITA gets messy
Modernising Home Affairs’ IT systems has been a big focus of Minister Leon Schreiber since he took office.
Accelerating digital transformation is also one of the pillars of the recently launched second phase of Operation Vulindlela.
The head of corporate affairs at SITA, Tlali Tlali, said the new regulations will give extra impetus to efforts to reform SITA.
“Our position is that these new regulations bring about an added impetus to the urgency of reforms required at SITA in the procurement environment to mitigate the risks associated with dissatisfied clients.
“It is a call for SITA to move with speed in implementing crucial interventions to avoid further erosion of confidence in our abilities to render services to our clients,” said Tlali.
He said that the Department of Communications and Digital Technology (DCDT) invited SITA to provide input on the proposed regulations before they were published.
“We confirm that we submitted our representations to DCDT and canvassed a range of critical considerations (that include adverse financial impact on SITA and security vulnerabilities to clients) we believe the shareholder had to attach weight to,” he said.
Tlali also said that, in SITA’s view, the new regulations are “an option of last resort” for procuring entities after satisfying other measures in the regulations.
“In other words, the new regulations do not unconditionally present an ‘open sesame’ to government departments to procure from the market in the first instance at the exclusion of SITA.
“This, in our view, presents a lifeline to SITA to demonstrate that we are still relevant to our clients and can continue to add value,” said Tlali.
