SITA outlines action plans

By Dave Glazier for SITA
Johannesburg, 06 Nov 2006

The State IT Agency (SITA) has committed to a host of "action plans" in order to better manage its relationship with the private sector.

COO Noedine Isaacs-Mpulo promised firm timelines on a variety of commitments last week, at the closing of SITA's GovTech conference at Sun City - an event featuring local and international speakers and about 1 000 delegates.

Isaacs-Mpulo said a partnership engagement model would be rolled out by June, as well as a draft ICT procurement strategy "for regional and local economic development" by April.

SITA and the Department of Public Service and Administration will arrange an ICT governance and best practice workshop, to define implementation plans within government, before July, she promised.

A review of the e-government strategy and the creation of an inventory, listing all available e-government solutions, will be completed before February.

Safety and security

SITA and the Integrated Justice System (IJS) cluster will organise an industry day on the IJS by February, she added.

Isaacs-Mpulo also said that, between now and August, the organisation, along with partners, would "identify objectives associated with service delivery across the boarders of SA and identify opportunities for integration".

An integrated disaster management strategy for 2010 and beyond is also on the cards, she noted.

Key technologies

SITA and the Government IT Officers Council "...will identify and launch five projects within five departments that can stimulate open source software implementation in government by May 2007", she announced.

Added to this, SITA plans to compile an inventory of government network capabilities across all spheres in order to exploit synergy, something it will have ready by June.

The final key technological commitment is further modernisation of legacy systems - an ongoing project that has no due date.

ICT skills

As a central theme of the conference, Isaacs-Mpulo and her panel of SITA representatives devoted attention to the issue of promoting ICT skills in the country.

A skills indaba is promised by June, to help combat the dearth of certain critical technical skills in IT and telecoms.

Closing remarks included the undertaking to define alternative funding models for capital-intensive projects within government (by July), determining the position of proprietary and open source software vendors (March), and defining alternative licensing models for proprietary software (March).