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Gauteng readies for e-services

Tyson Ngubeni
By Tyson Ngubeni
Johannesburg, 25 Jul 2014
The Gauteng government is gearing up to enable e-governance services.
The Gauteng government is gearing up to enable e-governance services.

The Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG) will focus on modernising its internal operations as it readies itself to enable e-governance services over the next few years.

This is according to Barbara Creecy, MEC for finance, who outlined how technology would impact the province as she delivered her budget vote speech today.

According to Creecy, public sector modernisation includes digitising government's back-office services - a move that has changed the way it recruits new staff members. "Over the last three years, the e-recruitment system has handled 666 056 applications for 5 959 jobs online," she said.

"The benefits to GPG departments of this service include the reduction of recruitment advertising costs from R13.7 million to R2.23 million, and improved turnaround times for processing of applications from 10 working days to two working days."

Broadband focus

Creecy said the planned Gauteng Broadband Network will connect all provincial government buildings, including regional satellite offices, all Thusong centres (multi-purpose community centres), hospitals and schools.

The MEC has also vowed to have six core sites connected by the end of this financial year. These include the Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital, 75 Fox Street (Gauteng Department of Finance), 82 Grayston Drive (Gauteng Funding Agency), the West Rand District offices in Randfontein, Teraco in Kempton Park, and Telkom (for the government data centre).

The sites are distribution nodes from which it will be possible to start connecting other government buildings.

"In the modern age, broadband is a utility of the same order as water and electricity. Continued failure by government to invest in this utility, will see increasing marginalisation of our people across the digital divide," she added.

Voice and data services will be the first applications available to 130 000 GPG employees, with data expected by the end of this financial year, and voice in the next financial year, Creecy said.

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