Plan to fix South African IT agency disaster

South Africa plans to amend the legislation governing the responsibilities of the State Information Technology Agency (Sita) after numerous inefficiencies were identified within the government body.

This follows Communications Minister Solly Malatsi’s request that the Public Service Commission (PSC) investigate various governance issues at Sita at the end of 2024.

The Department of Communications and Digital Technologies’ director general Nonkqubela Jordan-Dyani told Parliament’s Committee for the department that Malatsi proposed amendments to Sita’s regulations in 2024.

Jordan-Dyani referred to complaints received by the department about Sita’s inability to meet its mandate of IT service delivery to other state bodies.

“We’ve received some feedback from a number of government departments, and there have been extensive complaints regarding delays in service delivery,” she said.

“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.”

She says that this frustration is due to the Sita Act mandating that all government departments at the national and provincial levels source IT services and equipment through the agency or from it.

Therefore, the proposed regulations will be reviewed to determine whether a threshold should be introduced to allow departments to procure IT services and equipment independently rather than through Sita.

“Former Minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni looked at this, and we were looking at a threshold of R10 million,” Jordan-Dyani said.

However, she noted that these regulations can’t be adopted as is because they conflict with the Sita Act. Therefore, the department must review the Act to ensure harmony with the proposed regulations.

Malatsi called for the investigation into Sita after joining the Parliamentary Committee on Communications and Digital Technologies for an oversight visit to SITA’s offices in Pretoria on Tuesday, 11 December 2024.

“This visit aimed to address pressing issues impacting Sita’s ability to deliver on its critical mandate,” Malatsi said.

He added that Sita faces mounting challenges, including governance issues, irregular procurement practices, operational inefficiencies, and a concerning deterioration in service delivery.

The Home Affairs problem

Sita and the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) have locked horns over system downtime at Home Affairs offices and branches on several occasions.

After DHA minister Leon Schreiber recently criticised the agency for hindering the government’s digital transformation progress and modernisation, Sita spokesperson Tlali Tlali revealed that the DHA is still on a Bronze service-level agreement (SLA).

The Bronze product has a 16-business-hour turnaround time for resolving issues and only supports up to 2Mbps speeds on a copper-based connection.

This is despite the agency recommending a Gold or Platinum-level product. Tlali added that Sita had proposed migrating 133 DHA sites from copper to fibre Internet with 10Mbps speeds.

However, the DHA said it couldn’t afford the upgrades.

This came after Schreiber described the agency as an “artificial construct that stands squarely in the way of technological progress”. He also criticised Sita’s monopoly over IT services in the public sector.

“The model of imposing a state monopoly over digital technologies is simply not fit for purpose in the digital age,” he added.

Schreiber also said criticising and blaming Home Affairs for IT failures was unfair.

“Even as we move with urgency to reform technological aspects under our control, our efforts will fall short for as long as we cannot maintain, procure and properly manage our own IT infrastructure,” he said.

Schreiber’s predecessor, Aaron Motsoaledi, had a similar run-in with Sita over issues at Home Affairs sites in 2022.

Sita hit back with a similar explanation it gave in response to Schreiber’s criticism, saying Home Affairs was experiencing downtime because it chose the cheapest packages with the lowest SLA.