The education department must have a deeper understanding of the skills which are required by the employment sector, economic development deputy minister Hlengiwe Mkhize said on Saturday.
"These will assist them to produce relevant and required skills," she told delegates at the Innovation Africa Summit in Cape Town.
The Department of Labour (DoL) is to enter a new phase of modernisation to increase its operational efficiencies and strengthen its institutional capacity following the unveiling of a new five-year information communications and technology (ICT) strategy.
This new ICT Strategy seeks to enable the implementation of the departmental policies and legislation to achieve the mandate of the department. This mandate covers the regulation of labour market, creation of decent employment, promoting labour standards and fundamental rights, sound labour relations, providing adequate social safety nets to protect vulnerable workers and labour market competitiveness.
Read more: South Africa Government: Labour unveils new ICT strategy
Speaking at the GovTech 2012 conference held in Durban on Wednesday, Sisulu said professionalising the public service is equipping public servants with technology to enhance the skills they need for their jobs.
The conference is held under the theme: ICT Collaboration - Across and Beyond Government. GovTech is a world-class platform for collaboration, capacity building and information sharing between government and the ICT sector.
Finance minister Pravin Gordhan earlier this year lashed government departments and agencies for spending just R178 billion of a planned R260 billion for the 2010/11 tax year. Technology was one of the areas where many government departments struggled to spend their allocated budgets for the year.
The result is that the IT industry has lost out on substantial revenue from a sector that is one of the largest customers for its products and services. Government accounts for around a quarter of IT spending in SA, according to market researcher IDC. Worse still, projects key to improving public service efficiency or enhancing service to citizens have faltered over the past few years.
The government's two weakest points were public administration and information technology services, both of which fell under Sisulu's department.
ICT would be a critical part of "professionalising" the public service.