The State IT Agency (SITA) has met with small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) to plan how they can work together going forward.
A workshop at SITA offices in Centurion kicked off with two major concerns voiced by SMMEs.
They include the litany of past promises made to the SMMEs by SITA, which have been broken; and the offending suspicion that SITA might be sending junior staff and consultants to meetings no mandate or authority to make decisions or answer to pertinent questions.
To help mitigate these concerns going forward, a three-a-side committee comprising SMMEs and SITA exco will be set up.
“It is very critical that SITA communicates candidly with the SMMEs,” says Muzi Makhaye, of the ICT SMME Chamber. “We want to leverage on SITA’s mandate of procuring ICT goods, software licenses and services for government – as per Section 7 (3) of the SITA Act- to steer transformation. They are obligated to propel industry transformation through procurement as SMMEs are our last hope to creating jobs even in in these tough economic times.”
A number of key SMME demands were acceded to, including the expediting certain adjudications, reviewing, withdrawing or re-advertising other specified bids.
SITA also announced of the establishment of the SITA Industry Transformation Unit which is earmarked to drive transformation outside of supply chain management to avoid recurring problems.