Gitoc: toothless, broke and pointless?

The Government IT Officers Council (Gitoc) blames a decade of near non-performance on a lack of funds and authority.

However, despite the council's explanation of its financial and statutory drawbacks, industry analysts question the need for the council at all, especially as all the council has done is reflect how much government has failed to achieve in the ICT area.

Chairman Julius Segole openly admits that Gitoc struggles with the implementation of its strategies, 10 years since its inception, and concedes there is still talk of the council having no teeth.

Apart from stunted take-up of its policies and frameworks, the council does not have a budget, forcing it to rely on the support of partners to avail resources for projects.

Some objectives that the council has achieved are the establishment of the National Integrated Social Information System (NISIS), an enterprise architecture development framework, as well as an open source software policy. However, the latter has been plagued by poor uptake.

“Gitoc is 10 years old this year and we need to ask: 'What next?'” says Segole.

Gitoc's lack of performance means the body does not even have definitions of basic terms. “The challenge is that there is no single definition of information,” admits Segole.

He says that, in the case of integrating department systems, this means people enter different details. “Things like initials and first names and so on can cause confusion. The definition of demographic information can be defined differently across the system, resulting in confusion and data integration difficulties.”

For this reason, after 10 years, the council will now focus on semantic standards so that all users are on the same page and, when data is exchanged, everyone understands and the meaning is not lost.

“We will define information - like what constitutes a first name and GPS coordinates. We will define information... into standard schemas for common implementation across government systems,” adds Segole. “It's the one thing I would like to see us achieve this year.”

The council's ever-fluctuating deadlines for past and future goals present another obstacle.

One of its top prioritised, but long-term, goals is the integration of all government departments for improved service delivery. While the council plans to have a strategy in place by the end of the year, Segole says full integration will take another 10 years.

The council also previously pushed for a government ICT strategy and since this was not achieved, it will try again by the end of this year.

It also did not manage to completely tackle the reduction of IT costs, including State IT Agency (SITA) costs, which were the main focus of last year, says Segole.

“The SITA turnaround strategy dealt with this thorny issue. It must become transparent and show why it charges as much as it does.”

President of the Black IT Forum Mdu Mkhonza says a body like Gitoc is necessary for the coordination of IT systems and IT governance and management.

“Whether Gitoc is effective is another story, but a coordinating body is necessary.”

World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck agrees that its real role should be one of coordination and facilitation, but says there is little evidence of that at the delivery end.

“In terms of its mission, to 'promote and visibly advocate for a citizen-centric and service delivery focused ICT environment within the South African public service', Gitoc seems to have made very little impression.”

WWW Strategy MD Steven Ambrose says the council was created without much thought or purpose. “There's no need for this. It tends to cross over in terms of what SITA and the Department of Communications are doing. Look at their mandates.

“The truth is, I think that government has no clear and consistent e-strategy.”

Mkhonza says there have been some achievements by the council, but the injection of some energy by the minister of public service and administration, Richard Baloyi, is needed.

Goldstuck says that, as one of the council's achievements, the NISIS is “a wonderful idea, but far too ambitious during a period when most departments are utilising the budgets that are allocated to them”.

Most importantly, he adds, information systems do not fix broken processes, but only make the flaws more visible.

“Without statutory authority, it's hard to see what it [Gitoc] can achieve. If it is designed to coordinate IT projects and activities, but does not have the authority, it can be little more than a talk shop.”

However, Goldstuck adds that even if Gitoc does have that authority, it could end up hamstringing those departments that do have the capacity to move forward with their own projects.

He says Gitoc is likely to exacerbate the turf war among government departments in this case, unless strong leadership and a powerful vision are in place to drive it.

Segole agrees that statutory authority is not necessarily the answer.

“People think we have no teeth and that we need to get it through a statutory role, but we also need to make people aware of our existence, and have them take the council's advice as wisdom and to follow its word, because they see value in it and not because it is pushed on them.”