The State IT Agency (Sita) has appointed a chief digital officer and a head of strategy, completing a rebuild of its executive team after years of leadership churn that a government investigation blamed for many of its failures.
Portia Matsena joins as chief digital officer and Itumeleng Draaijer as executive for strategy and corporate services, both from November, Sita said in a statement on Monday.
Matsena was previously CIO at payments clearing house BankservAfrica, chief digital officer at Gijima and acting group CIO at the South African Post Office, and MD for cash at Absa. She has also held senior roles in provincial treasuries and national treasury. Draaijer has held leadership roles at the Development Bank of Southern Africa, the South African Bureau of Standards, the National Prosecuting Authority and Accenture.
The two are the latest of six executive appointments made this financial year by MD Magatho Mello. The others are CFO Yolande van Biljon, Phumzile Njoko as executive for supply chain management, Gabaiphiwe Tabane for client engagement, and Bongumusa Kumalo for networks, cloud and platforms.
The work of stabilising Sita is inseparable from preparing it to serve government in a rapidly changing digital era.
Sita MD Magatho Mello
“The work of stabilising Sita is inseparable from preparing it to serve government in a rapidly changing digital era,” Mello said.
Stability has been in short supply. Mello, appointed in December 2025, was Sita’s first permanent MD in more than two years, following a string of acting leaders and a protracted legal fight over the previous board.
In July, a Public Service Commission investigation requested by communications minister Solly Malatsi described Sita as “functioning, but limping”. It found that leadership churn had at one point left 86% of MD-level roles filled in an acting capacity. It also flagged more than R2-billion in irregular expenditure across four audited years and found that one in four tenders it analysed never resulted in an award, with the oldest procurement matters stuck in adjudication and contracting for an average of more than 400 days.
The minister and the commission gave Sita deadlines to produce a stabilisation and recovery plan, a verified baseline of its procurement backlog and a governance reform plan. A Special Investigating Unit probe into Sita’s procurement, authorised by President Cyril Ramaphosa in May 2025, is running in parallel. — (c) 2026 NewsCentral Media
