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SITA’s e-Government Centre of Excellence is leveraging ICT to improve public access to information and services.

 The SITA e-Government Centre of Excellence (e-Gov COE), established in August 2008 within SITA Strategic Services, serves as a body of knowledge on South African e-government to position SITA as the e-government advisory service to government.

The e-Gov COE aims to create and maintain a body of knowledge and expertise on e-government initiatives and processes, and to bring together key resources and examples of best practices to help e-government practitioners within South Africa move as swiftly and efficiently as possible in delivering e-government programmes and projects.

SITA is the implementation partner of e-government in SA and aims to provide facilitated access to government services, and to ensure that those services are citizen-focused and beneficial to business, government departments and foreigners.

Sonette Meerman, head of SITA New Business Development, says the centre’s role is to address the knowledge base and e-government skills in SA. This unit is responsible for strategic business development as well as working with various government departments in South Africa to help address key challenges, via the e-Enablement of Government Services. This includes creating partnerships with businesses, governmental entities, and others to advance knowledge and generate innovative solutions to address critical e-government needs.

REACHING THE MASSES SITA wants to turn South Africa into a world leader in m-government – using mobile technologies to promote egovernment. It already has projects under way to converge wireless technologies with e-government systems. Earlier this year, SITA registered itself as a first-tier wireless application service provider, with the aim of assisting government meet its service delivery objectives by providing it with citizen-centric wireless applications and network solutions. Meerman says: “SITA can play a role as being a service intermediary between a government department and the citizen to provide facilitated access to government services. We are currently developing an m-government strategy for SITA that will complement and align with e-government, with a focus on the use of mobile technologies.” Meerman says mobile technology is a powerful tool to reach South African citizens. The government, SITA and the public can build an interactive relationship with one another using mobile technology: “The citizens can assess government services and information via a mobile phone, especially given that more people in the RSA have access to a mobile phone than to a PC.” South Africa’s mobile market continues to enjoy robust growth, with market penetration at around 103% at the end of 2008. Mobility is changing people’s personal and business lives by allowing them to stay in touch with information, applications and other people wherever they are. SITA should therefore leverage on the convergence of wireless technologies in the development of ICT services to government.

Meerman founded the e-Gov COE and is managed within SITA New Business Development. In addition, SITA is driving the e-Gov COE to support and facilitate its goal to make SA a world leader in m-government, which is the convergence of wireless technologies and e-government.

On behalf of the government, SITA is also looking to become a networked virtual organisation (NVO), which is a network or collaboration of private sector contractors, non-profit organisations, and other government agencies to work together to deliver services and fulfil policy goals.

SITA emphasises the benefits of exchanging knowledge around e-government and aims to create partnerships with government departments, the private sector, academic institutions and research companies to advance e-government knowledge and skills.

Body of knowledge

An important objective for SITA is to bring together best practices from the Southern African Development Community, the rest of Africa and from around the world. The e-Gov COE will help e-government practitioners move as efficiently as possible in delivering e-government programmes and projects with a citizen-centric focus. It will also foster the sharing of lessons learned, the exchange of insights and ideas and the transfer of expertise.

“SITA is providing strategic guidance on e-government and creating a network of e-government champions,” says Meerman. “This is to drive collaboration between e-government practitioners to build relationships with other departments, the centre and delivery partners in the public and private sectors.”

Thought leadership

According to SITA, there are a number of challenges that need to be overcome in order to reap the full benefits of transformation of next-generation e-government.

Some of these challenges involve counteracting the declining rate of e-government readiness within SA, lengthy and duplicated processes and the rapid evolution of technology and infrastructure.

The e-readiness is the state of a country’s ICT infrastructure and the ability of its citizens, businesses and governments to use ICT to their benefit. During 2006, South Africa was ranked 35 by the Economist Intelligence Unit in a global e-readiness assessment, but declined to 39 in 2008.

Meerman says: “SITA wants to provide thought leadership, but we need to align our e-government initiatives to the national e-government vision of government. We have started with internal e-government forums. It’s part of the change management that needs to happen within SITA to work towards the service delivery to the citizen and to have a bigger view of what needs to be accomplished.”

In line with SITA’s mandate as spelt out in the SITA’s Act, SITA is expected to provide direction, technology and infrastructure support for all e-government initiatives in collaboration with the private sector.

In order to focus on the needs and expectations of citizens, SITA is rethinking its front line interactions with citizens and business, as well as service delivery through all its networks. It is combining services that are linked and maximising the use of existing solutions, secondary business systems and common infrastructure services – in line with its thinking methodology, centered on building once and re-using often to save costs.

The e-COE has the following roles within the South African e-government environment:

- Leadership: provide direction on e-government frameworks, methodologies, and initiatives in realising the South African e-government strategic vision.

- Strategy: develop supporting methodologies, policies, and guidelines for the overarching e-government implementation strategy within SITA, aligned to the national e-government vision, to be used across government departments for the successful implementation of e-government programmes and projects.

- Collaboration: identify collaboration opportunities for e-government practitioners and stakeholders across government departments to leverage on existing e-government solutions and technology investments.

- Association: identify association opportunities between government departments, academics, researchers, students, interns, and the private sector, to leverage on e-government research papers for developing innovative e-government solutions and technologies. This includes the development of an e-government skills blueprint, to build capacity within SITA on which government can leverage.

- Promotion: provide direction to academics in the moderation of e-government research papers, and to identify the best research paper in order to encourage students to pursue careers in the e-government environment.

- Monitoring: This includes the monitoring of the South African e-readiness assessment that is currently declining.

C O N T A C T

Sonette Meerman
SITA New Business Development
Tel: +27 12 470 1449
E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Website: www.sita.co.za