SITA stalls on R4bn project

By Dave Glazier for SITA
Johannesburg, 15 Dec 2006

The State IT Agency's (SITA's) R4 billion integrated financial management system (IFMS) project seems to have stalled.

Despite receiving Cabinet approval to move to phase two of the project in September 2005, SITA says the first tenders for this phase will only be published in January, February and June 2007.

The IFMS project is an integration and migration of government finance, human resources, asset management, logistics and other line-of-business solutions, into a single distributed transversal system, across SA's provincial and national government structures.

Initially started by the National Treasury and then handed over to SITA, the IFMS also entails the development of a strategy for managing the evolution of government's transversal IT systems, at provincial and national level.

In June, Jonas Bogoshi, chief director of strategic services at SITA, told an industry briefing: "Last September, Cabinet approved our requests to begin with phases two and three." He added that SITA would issue tenders for the systems in September 2006.

However, SITA CEO Mavuso Msimang said in a recent statement: "We have now entered the critical phase two of the project, where we have to implement the ideas that we have agreed upon."

At the June industry briefing, Bogoshi confirmed phase one of the project had already been completed, and that SITA was now moving into phase two.

Timetable

The last six months has seen little work on the project, aside from SITA deciding it will publish tenders. However, spokesman Sifiso Ndlazi says this time was used to define user requirements specifications and to start the development of the architecture.

He has no comment on why the industry must wait until at least June next year for one of the tenders (the human resource management application) to be published.

Ndlazi also refuses to indicate the likely scale and value of the three tenders to be published next year, and declines to make the timetable known.

"The steering committee has agreed on a timetable, but I will not reveal it until the next industry briefing [scheduled for February 2007]."

Ndlazi says - while it may look like the agency is stalling on the project - it has to be take into account that the steering committee is made up of members from the National Treasury, Department of Public Service and Administration, South African Police Services, Department of Defence and SITA.

Eight-year project

Msimang says in the statement that the first tender (in January) will be for the integrated development environment; the second (in February) will be for a commercial, off-the-shelf, procurement application.

Spokesman for the auditor-general's office Africa Boso was unavailable this morning to comment on the impact delays in the IFMS would have on the audits of government departments over the next five or six years. The IFMS is expected to help departments better manage their finances and avoid qualified audits.

In the Department of Labour's (DOL's) annual report of 2005 to 2006, it is noted that: "Treasury requires that the DOL make use of transversal IT systems. The systems are the Basic Accounting System, Persal and Logis. The auditor-general has reported that these systems cannot be relied upon due to inherent limitations and deficiencies. The qualification reported by the auditor-general was a direct result of these deficiencies."

SITA remains confident it will have the project wrapped up by 2012.

Msimang concedes the project is already two years old - it has been in the custody of SITA for one year - meaning the entire project is set to span about eight years.

"The IFMS project must assist in achieving some of government's key macro economic objectives - growth of the ICT industry, development of relevant skills and contribution to broad-based black economic empowerment," he adds.