The South African Revenue Service (SARS) has completed a R98 million project to upgrade, standardise and secure all desktop hardware and software at every SARS office throughout SA.
The upgrade is part of a multibillion-rand upgrade of the SARS IT infrastructure.
Thabang Legae, senior manager of infrastructure management in the technology and process division at SARS, says this project forms a key part of the organisation's massive "roadmap to 2010" strategy to position the revenue service as an innovative revenue and customs agency that enhances economic growth and social development.
Legae notes that SARS offices are now equipped with Pentium 4 computers, running Microsoft Windows XP and Office 2003, and the company's desktop environment complies with all necessary security requirements.
"In 2003, our hardware was becoming too old to remain under warranty, with most users using Pentium 1s or Pentium 2s with less than 32MB RAM," he says.
"Times taken to process claims were becoming too long and customer service was being impacted. To make matters worse, software was not standard across the business, resulting in longer and more costly support needs. There was really no alternative but to undertake the upgrade and standardisation project."
Network convergence
The upgrade specifically formed an integral part of the SARS network convergence project, which is currently out on tender. To implement the network convergence component, says Legae, the SARS IT platform has to be at the right level.
The lack of desktop standardisation throughout SARS resulted in poor stability and auditability and an ill-configured directory environment that compromised security and created high volumes of unnecessary network traffic, he adds.
"Operationally the implementation of XP has delivered improved application building and deployment processes that allow us to secure workstations and maintain organisational standards," Legae says.
"Among other things, XP has also provided us with out-of-the-box security enhancements that have enabled us to better protect sensitive and confidential information. Support for the latest security standards also allows us to use the Windows XP platform as a foundation for any subsequent technology implementations."
Server environment
Over the past two years, 9 000 new desktops have been installed and 1 100 new notebooks allocated. During this time, 1 800 desktops and 650 notebooks that were already at the correct hardware configuration were also upgraded to Windows XP.
As a second phase of this project, SARS has replaced the NT 4.0 server environment and is conducting the domain migration from the existing Microsoft Windows Active Directory to the Microsoft Windows 2003 Active Directory. This will include e-mail migration from Microsoft Exchange 5.5 to 2003. This project is due for completion at the end of June.
Legae says the upgrade is already delivering tangible results. "Open incidents" (hardware/software failure), which totalled between 4 800 and 5 200 a month, have dropped to below 1 000, he adds.
"Also, the upgraded platform allows us to act proactively, as we get alerts about outages and problems. Troubleshooting has become easier as we now understand our system and environment better."
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