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DPSA MINISTER URGES FOR
CITIZEN-CENTRED SERVICE DELIVERY
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South African citizens should become active
participants in discussions with government.
 In
his keynote address at GovTech 2009, minister of Public Service
and Administration, Mr Masenyani Richard Baloyi, on Monday said
that South African citizens should become active participants in
discussions with government.
The voice of citizens must somehow be channeled so that it is
heard and taken into consideration when government services are
designed, thus preparing the way for information communication
technologies (ICTs) to proactively respond to their needs, he
said.
Addressing the more than 2 000 delegates at GovTech 2009, Mr
Baloyi said that SITA had notched numerous successes in its
first decade of existence, with a desire to have it as the
indisputable ICT agency of choice in public sector service
delivery.
This year sees SITA celebrating 10 years of existence having
successfully merged three organisations into one. Over and above
the integration effort, SITA in 2001 managed, in conjunction
with the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA),
to establish walk-in training centres in rural areas to provide
access to technology to historically disadvantaged citizens.
In 2002, in anticipation of the required needs of mobile
computing and the transformation of government communications
infrastructure, SITA completed the implementation of the virtual
private network-enabled government common core network.
In 2003, SITA successfully completed the master system plan at
Ekurhuleni and Tshwane municipalities, and hosted the enterprise
resource programme (ERP) applications, including a financial
management system (FMS).
The Persal project launched phase 1 MIS for all social workers
and social security applications, and piloted the Telemedicine
project in partnership with the Medical Research Council and the
Department of Health.
Some of these projects subsequently won international acclaim
for innovation. SITA continues to execute on its cabinet
approved role of assisting government in migrating to open
source systems.
Through SITA's infrastructure, the organisation supported the
Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) in the 2009 elections and
pre-election voter registration process, by setting up and
managing the IEC call centre which, for example, recorded over
32 000 calls on election day.
SITA has again come to the fore by taking up the challenge to
provide technical backing for the presidential hotline, with
attendant call centre capability.
However, Baloyi cautioned that there is still room for
improvement in areas such as pricing for services, quality of
service and responding proactively to government's requirements.
He said that the showcasing of the telepresence/holographic
beaming in of David McClure from the Office of Citizen Services,
United States government, on Sunday suggests a new era for SITA,
by way of doing and not just talking.
Baloyi said the theme of this year's GovTech conference puts the
citizen first with its mantra, "Doing ICT for the citizens" and
captures the thinking of government, where the citizen is at the
heart of all its initiatives.
He said this resonated well with governments' ethos of providing
services impartially, fairly, equitably and without bias, whilst
adhering to the principles of accountability and transparency.
Key among those, Baloyi stated, must be the participation and
collaboration with the Government Information Technology
Officers Council (GITOC).
GITOC brings together chief information officers of government
departments to discuss areas of common concern and advise the
MPSA of possible policy shortfalls or constraints. This body, he
said, would enable the adoption of specific positions that are
in the national interest, and that are functional in delivering
on its founding constitutional prescripts.
In closing, Baloyi said that while the tools are available
within the ICT industry, it must be appropriated to be local,
specific, achievable, marketable and relevant to the country's
developmental agenda.
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