Home Affairs IT disaster

Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber has said that the State Information Technology Agency (SITA) is an obstacle to the technological progress of his department and government as a whole.

Schreiber made these remarks during his National Council of Provinces (NCOP) executive statement on the digital transformation of Home Affairs to ensure the effective and efficient delivery of services to the public.

“SITA is an artificial construct that stands squarely in the way of technological progress, not only at Home Affairs but across government,” Schreiber said during the address.

“SITA currently exercises a monopoly over key aspects of IT services in the public sector. The model of imposing a state monopoly over digital technologies is not fit for purpose in the digital age.”

Schreiber said that his department’s attempts to bring about technological reform will always fall short if it cannot procure, maintain, and manage its own infrastructure.

Therefore, he has called on the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies to rectify the regulatory environment surrounding IT in South Africa.

While Schreiber does point out that an agency like SITA will always be needed to ensure interoperability and set IT standards within government, he believes its monopoly over IT infrastructure in South Africa is dead in the water.

“The SITA monopoly is a proven failure,” says Schreiber.

“This is demonstrated every time that its infrastructure takes the Home Affairs system offline, leaves data unprotected, or even fails to keep government’s website and email system up and running.”

Several government websites, including gov.za were offline earlier this week.

The Minister believes that his department will be able to successfully deliver on its vision of Home Affairs @home if the government can free it from SITA’s monopoly on IT infrastructure.

“With the support of this House and of every South African who wants a working Home Affairs, we can remove regulatory hurdles and build a digital-first Home Affairs that delivers dignity to all the people of South Africa,” he added.

Schreiber is not the first Home Affairs minister to voice their frustration with SITA.

Aaron Motsoaledi also highlighted his concerns with the state agency before President Cyril Ramaphosa appointed him Minister of Health.

Responding to questions from DA MP Ricardo Mackenzie during an NCOP budget vote debate in 2021, Motsoaledi said that the IT services provided by SITA were the “original sin” of Home Affairs.

By comparing SITA’s services to the Christian doctrine of original sin, Motsoaledi implied that all of the department’s problems can be traced back to SITA.

Motsoaledi said that while other government departments may be somewhat affected by problems at SITA, it has a crippling impact on Home Affairs.

“We have done away with manual systems and introduced a live capture system about eight years ago,” the Minister stated.

He also highlighted the importance of these systems to Home Affairs and, in turn, to the functioning of the entire country.

“This department is the most important department in the country. There’s nothing you can do without Home Affairs. If Home Affairs is fixed, South Africa will work,” Mackenzie stated.

Motsoaledi said that they visited SITA’s headquarters in Centurion and met with all the IT companies in South Africa that are capable of providing the necessary services.

“IBM, EOH later replaced by Gijima, BBD and D, Shannon, you name them. We even called their CEOs to sit there and help us resolve this IT system — the original sin of Home Affairs.

Former SITA boss Luvuyo Keyise quickly hit back at the Motsoaledi.

Keyise said Home Affairs’ problems were not SITA’s fault but due to the department’s own ineptitude and unwillingness to pay for the quality of service it actually needs.

Keyise also explained that SITA does not even directly supply many of the services Home Affairs uses.

“Home Affairs has procured companies through SITA that run and manage its systems,” he said.

The main problem, Keyise said, was that Home Affairs decided to buy the cheapest possible IT services that come with the lowest service level agreements.

“They buy a bronze service, which offers a 16 business hours turnaround time on issues,” explained Keyise.

SITA then asked Home Affairs to consider upgrading to a platinum-tier service, which would give them all the redundancy they needed and a far more stringent service level agreement.

Keyise said that with a platinum service, problems must be resolved within an hour. However, due to the redundancies the service comes with any outage is usually mitigated within minutes.

Earlier this year, Schreiber revealed that some Home Affairs offices still use 2Mbps DLS for connectivity, over two years after SITA first highlighted the issue.