By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The Department of Home Affairs is reviewing its IT architecture to improve customer service and reduce overall dependence on the State Information Technology Agency (SITA), says minister Aaron Motsoaledi.
Responding in a written parliamentary Q&A, Motsoaledi said the department is in the process of evaluating its internal skills with a view to ‘creating the necessary capacity for its work’.
“A review of its enterprise architecture is also underway. This will allow it to better plan its systems in line with the government-wide enterprise architecture framework while pointing out areas where the dependency on SITA can be managed,” he said.
Motsoaledi said that SITA had submitted a R700 million plan to the department to improve its IT infrastructure.
While the full plan will not be implemented, Motsoaledi said that several critical parts from the plan will be adopted, including:
- The upgrading and maintenance of the dilapidated network equipment – routers and switches – at Department of Home Affairs offices.
- SITA will also expand its core network to reduce regional network outages.
- A proof of concept will also test an upgraded ‘gold’ and platinum network package, with the Department of Home Affairs currently only paying for ‘bronze’ features.
Motsoaledi has previously pinned the blame for the state of Home Affairs’ systems on SITA – pointing to other government services such as the South African Revenue Service (SARS), which rarely experienced downtime because it procured its services from private companies, which government departments were not allowed to do.
In response, SITA boss Luvuyo Keyise hit back, pointing out that Home Affairs had bought the cheapest possible IT services with the lowest service level agreements, which led to prolonged downtime.
The bronze service used by many of Home Affairs offices provides only a single 2Mbps copper-based ADSL connection with no backup in place, Keyise said.
SITA wants Home Affairs to consider upgrading to a platinum-tier service to give the department the redundancy it requires and a far more stringent service-level agreement.