SAPO IT spend increases 140%

Johannesburg, 05 Sept 2007

The South African Post Office (SAPO) has allocated R326 million in capital expenditure for IT infrastructure requirements for the current year.

This investment is critical to delivering on government's desire for SAPO to deliver IT services to the people, says acting-CEO Motshoanetsi Lefoka.

Yesterday, Lefoka revealed the organisation had spent R135 million on IT infrastructure during its 2007 financial year.

"Technology has come up as a potential threat to our business; however, we have chosen to embrace it and seek revenue opportunities. The Department of Communications wants us to be the primary deliverer of IT services to South Africans - particularly in rural areas - and we have committed to investing in the infrastructure to do so," she explains.

Communications mandate

In July, deputy communications minister Roy Padayachie told delegates at a Sangonet conference that SAPO had a considerable role to play in bridging the country's digital divide.

"Cabinet has approved the role of SAPO as the core ICT public access network. By virtue of its geographic spread, the Post Office is the best option that we have to bridge the digital divide in poor and rural areas," he explained.

Padayachie also noted the organisation's "e-cadre" programme.

Instituted in May 2006, this programme saw qualified, but unemployed, IT skills from relevant communities brought in to act in a facilitation role to people accessing the Internet. These volunteers were trained and taught basic customer-service skills.

Enabling services

Lefoka says SAPO has already started rolling out public Internet terminals (PITs) and Internet business centres (IBCs) in some of its branches and surrounding multi-purpose community centres.

However, in many regions, investment in network infrastructure is still required before it can roll-out IT services.

"We cover the whole of SA and, in many cases, there just isn't the communications infrastructure available to provide Internet access. A fair amount of our IT budget will go into upgrading our fixed-line networks and, where necessary, enabling satellite communications," explains Lefoka.

Other projects budgeted for its 18-month IT investment strategy will see the creation of further PITs and IBCs; upgrade of its point-of-sale system; implementation of a SAP ERP system; and upgrades to its banking system.

"Our commitment to capital expenditure on IT infrastructure will continue to be a high priority in the years to come. Some of the projects under way have had their costs split over two or more financial periods," adds Lefoka.

Helping emergency services

In addition to IT infrastructure investments, Lefoka notes that some of SAPO's IT projects do not fit under its capital expenditure plans.

In this regard, ongoing work to geo-code all households within SA is critically important.

"This year we added 1.9 million addresses. Many of these are in hard-to-reach areas or areas that are not well sign-posted. Of course, our postal services are in the areas regularly and get around very well. However, SA's emergency services often battle to find locations when responding to an emergency," she highlights.

By geo-coding households, SAPO is able to provide emergency services with GPS positioning. This is greatly reducing response times.

"At the moment, we are looking at three provinces: Limpopo, Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. Plans are in place to extend the mapping programme throughout the country," concludes Lefoka.