Small firm grabs IFMS tender

Johannesburg, 09 Nov 2007

A small, black-empowered ICT consultancy has been named preferred bidder for the procurement section of government's Integrated Financial Management System (IFMS).

The value of this contract is speculated to be around R700 million. SITA has confirmed that ICT Works has emerged as the preferred bidder for the model.

The IFMS 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.

The project is being run by the State IT Agency (SITA), on behalf of National Treasury, and is expected to cost R4 billion.

Last month, SITA's then acting CEO Peter Pedlar confirmed that the integrated development environment (IDE) tender had been awarded to IBM. This tender was for an open standards platform on which the system will operate.

He also noted that the submission period for the procurement model tender had closed and was being evaluated.

Girl power

ICT Works, a seven-year-old company, is wholly-owned and managed by black women. Although few of the industry players that ITWeb spoke to knew the company, ICT Works' company profile reveals it has several high-profile clients within government and the private sector.

However, those industry commentators who are aware of ICT Works question whether the company will be able to deliver on a contract of this size.

One person, who asked not to be named, explained: "ICT Works has done some very interesting work, especially with government. Nevertheless, the scale of the IFMS contract is probably going to be beyond its capacity to deliver. After all, they only have a staff complement of around 100 people."

In response, SITA's chief of strategic services, Moses Mtimunye, says the agency will make sure the company is able to deliver on the project before concluding the deal.

"The final awarding of the procurement contract is subject to a due diligence exercise being undertaken on the consortium," he explains.

Mtimunye declined to confirm the value of the deal as "negotiations are still under way to establish a final contract price".

ICT Works declined to comment.