USAASA to monitor access

By Candice Jones for USAASA
Johannesburg, 04 Dec 2007

The Universal Service and Access Agency of SA (USAASA) has issued a tender for the implementation of an information management and electronic billing system.

The tender calls for the establishment of a system to monitor USAASA`s access points in under-serviced areas, from both a user and administrative level. The agency declined to disclose its value.

According to Leon Lourens, electronic communications network services manager at USAASA, the information management system will need to monitor access footprints in a real-time environment.

The tender falls under USAASA`s new strategic plan, to directly manage the universal service fund and work with partners to drive ICT adoption and usage in under-serviced areas, he says.

In an earlier interview, USAASA said multipurpose centres, telecentres and digital hubs that the agency built across the country are under-utilised because communities do not fully understand the benefits of ICT.

The information management system will help the agency discover why, says Lourens. "We would like to provide our stakeholders with up to the minute information on the extent to which universal service and access is achieved."

The system will help the agency and its affiliates to understand where gaps in ICT access exist, and provide the starting point of correcting them, says Lourens.

The tender specifies that a LAN-based information management system must allow remote administration of all available access points. It must include desktop and user management, and a user billing system.

The agency is calling for a business intelligence suite that will provide detailed analytics of an access point, at municipal, provincial and national level. According to the tender request, the reporting front-end must be Web-based.

"We also want to incorporate this into a relational database, which will help us evaluate whether the access points are doing what they were intended to do," says Lourens.

Tender documents for the information management system must be submitted by 14 December.