South Africa planning big overhaul of public sector IT

The department of communications & digital technologies has formalised a three-year plan to redesign the State IT Agency – an institutional reform effort that has been repeatedly promised over the past seven years but never concluded.

The commitment appears in the department’s annual performance plan (APP) for 2026/2027, signed off by the minister, Solly Malatsi. Malatsi, a DA MP, is the first non-ANC politician to occupy the role since the first democratic elections in 1994.

The APP sets quarterly milestones for the current financial year: a project initiation report in the first quarter, a diagnostic and concept framework in the second, stakeholder consultation and governance processes in the third, and a finalised draft Sita business model by the end of March 2027. A redesigned business model is scheduled to be developed in 2027/2028, with implementation and monitoring from 2028/2029.

The APP describes the exercise as a “critical institutional reform aimed at improving the efficiency, effectiveness and responsiveness of government ICT service delivery”, and says the finalised model is intended to transform Sita “into a more agile and performance-driven entity” that addresses “existing inefficiencies” and aligns with the “evolving digital needs of government departments”.

The timelines come amid a damning backdrop. The auditor-general consolidated general report for 2024/2025, published earlier this year, declared Sita a systemic risk to government IT delivery. The AG found Sita had operated without a permanent CIO for more than three years, had no permanent board and no permanent MD, and had a 54% executive vacancy rate during the audit period. Across the 72 ICT implementation projects the AG assessed at 44 departments, 41 projects with a combined value of R12.1-billion failed to meet objectives on timelines, budgets, quality or business outcomes.

Institutional reform

“Sita did not effectively deliver on its intended mandate,” the AG said in that report, adding that procurement processes were “inefficient and misaligned with current ICT requirements, resulting in delays and negatively impacting departmental effectiveness and service delivery”.

The department of communications’ own accounting officer statement in the APP acknowledges that “repurposing recommendations” for Sita were among the institutional reform priorities for 2024/2025. It says these recommendations are “central to revitalising key public entities and enhancing their contribution to the digital economy”. The APP does not, however, specify what the proposed repurposing entails or whether the draft business model will build on those recommendations.

Read: Promise of stability at Sita as agency gets full-time MD

One further complication the APP openly concedes is that Sita’s placement within government is itself unresolved. Under the legislative mandate section of the APP, the department of communications states that “the placement of Sita is yet to be confirmed” via a presidential proclamation. The agency currently reports to the communications ministry but has previously fallen under the department of public service & administration.

The communications department has set itself a hugely ambitious legislative and governance agenda for the 2026/2027 financial year, including the progression of the national AI policy in cabinet, the finalisation of electronic communications amendment legislation, and the development of a road map to rationalise Broadband Infraco and Sentech.

Whether Sita’s redesign can be delivered in parallel, against a backdrop of well-documented capacity constraints – the department of communications itself reports a 25% staff vacancy rate, with 86 of 346 posts unfilled – will be a key test of the performance plan’s credibility.  – (c) 2026 NewsCentral Media