The SA National Roads Agency (Sanral) says its e-toll operations are up and running again, following yesterday's disruption caused by the evacuation and power-off of its central operations centre (COC), in Midrand, due to an anthrax scare.
The state-owned road agency's self-professed "world-class automated" IT system operating Gauteng's e-roads promptly came under fire yesterday as widespread reports suggested a blackout of the e-toll system.
Sanral has since clarified the issue, saying the evacuation did not compromise the toll collection process and toll gantries remained operational. "The call centre was, however, affected due to the evacuation of staff, but is currently operating at full capacity."
The white powder - allegedly planted at the COC by an as yet unknown person or persons - turned out to be harmless, Sanral has confirmed. "Tshwane Emergency Services and the South African Police Services responded to the incident and took charge of the situation.
"Upon investigation, the white substance was found to be harmless. The building was treated as a crime scene and staff members who were exposed to the substance in the envelope were taken to hospital, as a pre-cautionary measure, for medical examinations."
Disaster recovery doubt
Both the Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance (Outa) and Justice Project SA (JPSA) condemned the attack - which they labelled as an act of "stupidity" and "cowardice" - but said they were taken aback that an organisation of Sanral's magnitude did not have a contingency plan in place.
JPSA chairperson Howard Dembovsky expressed surprise "that this incident managed to bring Sanral's much boasted, 'technological masterpiece' of e-tolling to a grinding halt, due to the power supply at their nerve centre having been shut down".
Wayne Duvenage, chairperson of Outa, criticised Sanral's disaster recovery, saying: "In today's highly technical and connected industries, it is common practice to plan and develop off-site continuity processes and disaster recovery centres to cater for unfortunate incidents of fire, damage or contamination scares of the nature experienced at their Midrand centre."
Reports of a system fail apparently stemmed from Sanral spokesperson Vusi Mona's apology for the disruption, which he said would "affect the Gauteng highway e-tolling system" - without further clarification.
Toll tech
While questions have emerged around redundancy in the event of emergency situations or technical malfunctions, Sanral had not responded to ITWeb's query by the time of publication.
Toll consortium Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) was set up about four years ago to run and manage the e-toll system. Sanral said last week it had full confidence in the service provider, despite recent glitches in its online systems.
Sanral's COC houses all systems and operations for the Gauteng Freeway Management System - including the controversial e-toll system, which went live just over six weeks ago. The large government building has been described by transport department spokesperson Tiyani Rikhotso as "the heartbeat of the e-toll project".
In November 2012 - ahead of one of the false alarm e-toll go-live dates - Sanral and ETC hosted media at the COC, where the entities showed off their tech behind the tolls.
Then CEO of ETC Salahdin Yacoubi said the entire e-toll project was heavily reliant on technology - from IT and telecommunications, to video and security.
Yacoubi positioned the system as a sophisticated IT network comprising three main parts: communication with vehicles (e-tags), video cameras for 3D rendering of vehicles for the purpose of classification, and standard cameras for photographic logging of front and rear number plates.
The 45 operational gantries currently spread across Gauteng's e-roads connect to the COC via fibre technology. All transaction clearance, vehicle checking and IT systems monitoring is carried out from the COC.
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