Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber has moved to sever ties with the government’s lead IT agency, the State Information Technology Agency (Sita), reports BusinessLIVE.

Schreiber is hoping to achieve what his predecessors fell short in doing. This as calls grow for departments to be allowed to change regulations to empower state entities to appoint their own IT service providers rather than being forced to use Sita – a proposal put on the table by Communications & Digital Technologies Minister Solly Malatsi. 

The Department of Home Affairs in its 2025/26 annual performance plan said it had applied for separation from Sita, arguing this would allow the department flexibility to source IT services from more ‘reliable and cost-effective external providers’ and enhance national security.

The department listed several reasons for the exemption it is seeking to look beyond Sita for its key IT capabilities.

At the top of the list is the system downtime that often leaves citizens frustrated. The department said it was confronted with frequent outages due to unreliable Sita-managed infrastructure, particularly at key data centres.

The department also flagged delayed procurement for essential hardware, licences and connectivity, resulting in ‘audit findings of irregular expenditure’.

Other concerns put forward by the department included higher costs ‘imposed’ by Sita compared to market rates and ‘poor third-party performance’, from Sita, which slowed operations and prevented the department from realising its modernisation goals. 

Business Leadership SA (BLSA) this month came out in support of calls to allow departments to procure their own IT systems outside the umbrella of Sita.

The BLSA made an example of the IT success of SARS, which is exempt from the Sita Act because it is classed as a state-owned enterprise and therefore is not forced to procure through the agency.

Full BusinessLIVE report