From Home Affairs to Smart Affairs – Ramaphosa’s design headache

Where inside the cutlery cabinet at Tuynhuis does the President keep the bottle opener? That important tool of the kitchen trade which does not quite belong in any of the compartments. One we randomly place among the forks or spoons.

While the President is grappling with Cabinet matters of a different variety, and Home Affairs in the polity instead of the kitchen, the task of designing governance models presents similar, albeit far more bewildering, challenges. Like the bottle opener, some government functions just do not seem to belong anywhere.

For a long time one of the most awkwardly placed state entities in South Africa was the State Information Technology Agency (Sita), a technology implementation institution oddly placed under what is, essentially, the government’s HR department, the Department of Public Service and Administration.

It is a delicate undertaking, no doubt, and demands of the practitioner a nuanced appreciation of politics, governance, delivery models, technology, and organisational architecture.

Companies faced a similar conundrum during the nascent years of Information Technology. The IT function was typically located under the finance department – simply because the first business systems were designed for recording and managing financial transactions.

IT consulting was the sole purview of the accounting firms, and the vestiges are still evident to this day in the older firms. This is a far cry from today’s companies, where the free-standing IT function is ubiquitous across the organisation.

Fortunately, the government ICT function is also coming of age.

A smart nation framework supports the provision of a range of government digital services, and smart contracts enabled by distributed ledger platforms such as the block chain.

This is a solid foundation for a smart nation.

Though commendable, the department’s effort seems more like force-fitting the new into the old – taking a decisive leap forward, while doubling down on the border management function.

What the DHA needs to do is to bundle the port control function with the mooted Border Management Authority, and ship it wholesale to the security cluster. Police already have a crucial role at border posts, and they’re quite adept at processing all manner of documents.

The restructured and renamed department should be the logical home for Sita, which currently resides under the Department of Telecommunications and Postal Services. Ditto Sentech, Usaasa, Zadna and other ICT-related competencies within the DTPS portfolio.

And what about big data and analytics? Isn't it time StatsSA got a broader mandate and a new home? Is that too much, too soon?

No doubt the administration is seized with all these trade-offs and decisions, as they craft a new governance model for the Fourth Industrial Age.

Ronnie Phala works with a startup in the FinTech space. He is writing an MPhil dissertation on innovative governance models driven by digital, analytics, and block chain, at UCT’s Graduate School of Business