Bandile Ntombela, CIO, Free State Department of Health.

One such person is Bandile Ntombela, CIO for the Free State Department of Health, whose passion has led him from his small town beginnings to such career highlights as most recently going to Atlanta, Georgia, to share how the department has gathered its data – the only province invited to do so. In addition, along his career journey, he has accumulated numerous degrees and diplomas both in ICT and medical science, from leading institutions.

He describes his role as having changed dramatically, saying that technologists have earned the right to be at the executive table. “It’s now appreciated that we cannot render effective services without having someone to actively drive the department and be a business enabler,” he says. “We report 260 performance indicators to the National Department of Health and can only do this at scale using ICT.