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'SA must be China of Africa'

Farzana Rasool
By Farzana Rasool, ITWeb IT in Government Editor.
Johannesburg, 15 Jun 2012

Localised sectors of production and economic development in SA must be strengthened to ensure increased competitiveness and productivity.

Speaking about the role of ICT in the Gauteng Provincial Government's (GPG's) growth path, at the Gauteng ICT summit yesterday, Gauteng CIO Lemmy Chappie said the country must ensure the set-top boxes required for digital TV are manufactured locally.

“It's about time we became the China of Africa. Also, as a country we need to be able to build our own Microsoft-type of applications and this is possible through open source.”

Release the spectrum

He added that additional roles include removing obstacles and bottlenecks that impede the efficient operations of a networked and connected economy.

For this reason he said migrating to digital TV is important, because it will free up frequencies that can be used for cheaper technologies, including 4G, and this will help the Gauteng-Link broadband project and broadband penetration. “The spectrum must be released.”

SA is moving to digital television using the European DVB-T2 standard and switch-on is expected to take place this October. SA's move to digital TV is expected to create thousands of jobs and free up spectrum for more broadband to be rolled out. Operators have been waiting for a significantly long time for the Independent Communications Authority of SA to allocate high-demand spectrum in the 800MHz and 2.6GHz bands.

Government must also encourage innovations, research, development and the knowledge economy. “We must look at gaps in the province and increase skills in these areas. We must increase capacity and capabilities, which in turn increase opportunities for job creation.”

Specialised resources

The strategic themes within the GPG ICT strategy are service delivery, connected government and ICT skills capacity building.

The strategic objectives are bridging the digital divide; strategic partnerships; optimised utilisation of ICT applications; innovative, integrated and interoperable systems; modern, reliable infrastructure.

GPG ICT investments in terms of people resulted in the recruitment and reskilling of specialised resources to support transversal services; collaborating with the ICT SETA to build reserve support resources; and continuous training in line with cutting-edge technologies deployed.

Technology investments included implementing an ERP application for automation of GPG processes; implementing the Gauteng Online schools programme; centralising e-mail domain services management; creating a single VPNS network with a single gateway to the outside; implementing a Cyber Security Operational Centre; implementing a network operations and a document management system.

Finding solutions

Chappie said lessons learned in terms of infrastructure were that only 20% of the capacity of the GPG's servers was being utilised; power consumption was high; resources required to support infrastructure were costly; government must reduce costs by leveraging the latest technologies such as virtualisation; it must optimise network efficiencies and management; and increase e-services for GPG citizens and all visitors.

He added that to respond to current challenges, the provincial government must improve on ICT service offerings, maximise investment in ICT and address the high cost of ownership.

Solutions are to use infrastructure as a service for the provision of ICT requirements; to use common or shared infrastructure; implement an open source strategy; expand e-services; implement a human capital strategy that meets the GPG ICT requirements; improve citizens' access to government services by introducing broadband services; implement unified communications across the province; and introduce proactive system and business application performance monitoring.

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