Life goes on for government's IT strategy, with the sudden departure of State IT Agency (SITA) CEO Llewellyn Jones hardly registering as a minor bump, says a Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) official.
Late last month, Jones, who had taken up his position less than a year ago, suddenly resigned amid allegations of a rift between him and government CIO Michelle Williams.
At the weekend, Femke Pienaar was appointed as temporary CEO of the agency that is at the hub of several major government projects.
"Many of the projects that SITA is involved in are already far in advance and so we don't foresee any problem with their implementation," a DPSA official, who asked not to be named, said yesterday after a media briefing. The official made it clear that he does not have authority to speak to the media.
The official went on to say that Jones's predecessor, Mavuso Msimang, who is now director-general of the Department of Home Affairs (DHA), had already started many of these projects.
Intimate jurisdictions
The departments of public service and administration and home affairs fall within the governance cluster of ministries for which public service and administration minister Geraldine Fraser-Moloketi gave a media briefing yesterday.
SITA falls under the jurisdiction of the DPSA, but is intimately involved with a number of DHA projects.
According to the briefing, the DHA has implemented several projects aimed at improving the delivery of civic services. The identity book turnaround time currently stands at an average of 68 days, down from an initial baseline of 163 days and the February 2008 average of 103 days.
Fraser-Moloketi said ID distribution had been harmonised, as a single service provider now collects documentation from home affairs offices and delivers documentation from the central ID processing centre back to local offices, reducing the average "postage" time to three days.
To combat ID book fraud, the DHA is now going ahead with a project to replace the green ID book with a smart card. A tender was issued in June and Fraser-Moloketi said the pilot project was on track for December.
Fingerprints done
Fraser-Moloketi stated that, since 2006, existing fingerprint records of citizens were converted on to the automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS). More than 30 million fingerprint records are stored on the AFIS database and remote verification of citizens' fingerprints that are registered on the AFIS database is now possible. Online fingerprint verification has been successfully implemented at 93 home affairs offices and training in revised procedures has been provided to 236 staff.
As part of the department's efforts to improve the overall turnaround times for the issuing of identity documents, an ID track and trace system was developed and implemented during 2007. ID track and trace technology was implemented at 260 home affairs offices. It is now possible to check the status of an application throughout the ID issuance process.
SMS and Internet query functionality is also available to assist clients with enquiries. Management information statistics are also available and assist the department in identifying blockages in the ID issuing process.
"The project was completed according to the project plan," Fraser-Moloketi said.
The plan, according to the minister, is the DHA's customer contact centre has been expanded to 102 contact centre agents and 22 case resolution officers, and now deals with approximately 80 000 calls per month. Eighty percent of calls are answered within 20 seconds, she noted.
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