However, unlike even the biggest of companies, governments have literally millions - sometimes hundreds of millions - of customers, since every citizen is, in effect, a customer to whom government is obliged to deliver services.
These services are in themselves also highly complex, with interrelations between various government departments necessary for the execution of, for example, justice, or trade and industry, or home affairs (citizen management).
As a forward-thinking administration, the ANC-led government of South Africa has long accepted the essential role of ICT in enabling the efficient delivery and management of the services it provides. The central institution which helps all government departments and some parastatals to identify and then execute upon their technology needs, is the State Information Technology Agency (SITA).
Tasked with accurately meeting the ICT needs of government and parastatals, SITA was established in 1999 and focuses on the effective and efficient provision of ICT products and services to government. At its annual GovTech conference, inaugurated in 2006, SITA and government departments come together to face up to their challenges, share successes achieved in South Africa, and also to network and learn from government and technology vendor representatives from around the world.
According to South Africa's Minister of Public Services and Administration, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, the government is driven by its Single Public Service vision, in terms of which, "There should be no wrong door when a citizen needs to access a service, regardless of what the service is and through which government department it is offered."
Fraser-Moleketi confirms that ICT plays an essential role in allowing the government to achieve this vision. "ICT is at the heart of this strategy. It provides the means by which government officials are able to access data which underpins the provision of any service," she says.
SITA, in turn, plays the essential role of ensuring that the technology solutions which are put to use in government are compatible, integrated and capable of facilitating service delivery.
Since each government department has some autonomy in terms of what it does and therefore in terms of what technology systems it needs, SITA serves as something of a 'regulator' of the systems and technologies which are procured. This, in turn, provides for the integration of government systems.
Making government better
In his keynote at the conference, SITA CEO Llewellyn Jones noted that it is the organisation's intention to leverage ICT to make government better. "The guiding principles of delivering systems which offer security, interoperability, exploit economies of scale, create digital inclusion and reduce duplication are the pillars on which we will build on the roof of delivery and citizen convenience," he said.
With its commitment to modernising public service operations, Jones added that SITA is simultaneously seeking to achieve more with limited resources. "We have to work really hard to reduce costs for our customer [government is SITA's customer]. As a result, we are introducing shared services models so that we don't have myriads of duplication across departments, we are achieving economies of scale with broad licensing agreements and better procurement initiatives, we are implementing open source solutions where possible and we are implementing an IT asset management strategy," he said.
Pointing to the fact that South Africa has considerable ability through its thriving domestic ICT industry, Jones added that SITA will use its influence to support and develop the strong indigenous capability. "We will obviously purchase the best technology, but will help to develop an industry that can create innovative designs and take these into the global market. We have many small and medium organisations which are very export focused. Our role is to use our buying power and collaborative focus to build up these organisations by giving them the opportunity to tender and compete with the bigger global players."
Jones shared that SITA's turnover for 2008 is estimated at some R4 billion, making it a substantial organisation on the world scale.
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Quelle/Source: ITWeb, 12.08.2008
