Government drives to boost IT skills in Northwest Province

In a concerted move to enhance service levels to all stakeholders in the Northwest Province, the government has partnered with Comparex Africa in a R11.5 million agreement designed to transfer IT skills to government staff.

The two-year contract will see the government placing a range of skilled IT staff in the Northwest Province`s Department of Finance to drive its vision of improving service delivery to the taxpayer and centralising and streamlining departmental storage and communication.

According to Josias Molele, regional executive: provincial government for Comparex Africa: "We are strategically advising government and assisting in placing and training staff in the areas of network management, data storage, business intelligence, system software and customer relations management. This is part of a larger government process to enable e-government solutions to better service the public, internal government departments and other departments across the province."

He said the e-government phenomenon was a global trend revolutionising the nature of the relationship between government and the public by increasing service levels, enabling online billing and offering 24-hour convenience to taxpayers through multimedia channels.

"Centralising and collaborating data for example allows a customer profile to be compiled and constantly updated, further enhancing service levels by avoiding repetition and routing queries through to the correct government resource in real-time," says Molele.

Molele said: "We are delighted to work with the government to assist them in realising their strategic goals and objectives through the power of IT. This process will forever change the way the government interacts with and serves the public. Globally we are seeing this trend around the world as governments harness the power of IT and use all mediums of communications to seamlessly service their taxpayers and customers."

"Having been chosen by government as a preferential IT services and skills provider, Comparex Africa believes they will realise their return on investment within a very short period of time."