Cape Town, 27 May 2008
The SA Police Service (SAPS) has pointed an accusing finger at Telkom for the information bottlenecks it is experiencing, because the fixed-line operator has not supplied enough bandwidth.
This came to light during the State IT Agency's (SITA's) presentation last week to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee's hearing on the organisation's budget and how it was delivering services to the SAPS.
SAPS assistant commissioner Marelene Meyer said SITA was reliant on external suppliers such as Telkom and Eskom, and that the former had to increase the bandwidth in order to reduce the information bottlenecks.
This was in reply to a question from committee member Velaphi Ndlovu (IFP) on whether SITA could ensure e-dockets (the electronic version of the hard copy dockets) could be kept safe.
She added that, in case the dockets were stolen, there was always a copy of each docket.
Annalize van Wyk (ANC) asked if SITA was satisfied with regard to its accomplishments, whether it faced any problems and what those problems were. She also wanted to know about the relationship between SITA and the SAPS.
Meyer responded that, over the last few years, SITA had numerous chief executive officers, and at least five general managers, and so it did have problems.
"Two years ago, the relationship between the two organisations was bad, but it had improved in recent times, although it still was not that good," she said.
During SITA's presentation to the committee, chief of business operations Femke Pienaar said revenue from the Department of Safety and Security was projected at R1.01 billion. Of this, 11% would be paid to external suppliers for labour, 44% paid to external suppliers for hardware, and 45% retained by SITA for services rendered.
Key projects SITA was undertaking on behalf of SAPS included an infrastructure upgrade project; the STRlab project, for the management of DNA analysis at forensic science laboratories; and the computerisation of a national criminal photographic database. Furthermore, it was also doing the e-docket project for automating the crime administration system, and consultation, operational and implementation support on the automated firearm control system, mobile tracking systems, mobile control devices and others.
On the issue of upgrading the infrastructure at rural police stations and what countries SA modelled itself on, Meyer said there were no such comparable countries, as SA had unique characteristics.
"Other countries did not face the challenge of, for example, infrastructure that SA faced and what SITA often did was to take the best practices from various countries and try to implement them in SA," she said.
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