Johannesburg, 31 Jul 2006
Government is under enormous pressure to provide efficient, cost-effective service delivery to its customers - the taxpaying public. The South African public, perhaps tiring of years of over-zealous tax bills and under-achievement in terms of seeing a practical improvement to their everyday lives, are especially demanding of local government departments.
These are often at the frontline of the man-in-the-street`s interaction with government, be it in applying for a dog licence, marriage licence, passport or visiting a government healthcare facility.
This is where the insightful provision of IT solutions and services should be the key that unlocks real value - not only for the government department concerned - but ultimately, the South African taxpayer.
This is according to Nick Dahya, Operations Manager at Aptronics, a local customer-focused IT solutions and service provider to the public and private sector.
"With the current pressure and focus on service delivery in local government, we consider that IT infrastructure optimisation should be one of the key methods for attaining - and maintaining - optimal performance of all systems and processes. This will smoothen and speed up the roll-out and delivery time of services to the tax revenue-paying public," Dahya explains.
"Most importantly, IT has a pivotal role to play at a holistic, enterprise systems management level," points out Navin Indurjeeth, Public Sector Solution Specialist at Aptronics.
"In other words, if the IT infrastructure and architecture management is sound, and mission-critical aspects such as storage, disaster recovery and the operating system are stable, resilient and robust, then IT is fulfilling its function as a key enabler of service delivery," Indurjeeth maintains.
"At Aptronics, we recognise the needs of government - particularly of local government, which interacts directly with the man-in-the-street on a daily basis - to improve their performance and turnaround-time when it comes to the provision of delivery to the public.
"Therefore, utilising industry-leading server and storage products and solutions, we assist the public sector to assess and manage their infrastructure needs and changes; and to select best-of-breed technologies - all with the aim of successfully meeting their business drivers and IT compliance requirements," Dahya advises.
"Aptronics furthermore believes that, as an organisation, we can only provide our customers with the optimal customer experience, if the company itself represents, practices and promotes a culture of service delivery. We therefore empower our staff with the skills and expertise to provide customer service and delivery excellence, through the provision of business-oriented IT services and solutions," Dahya adds.
"With this entrenched skills empowerment culture at Aptronics, we appreciate that another critical aspect of the success of governmental IT implementations, is properly and responsibly managing the skills transfer element.
"As an IT solutions and services provider, we believe that it is crucial to play a proactive, partnering role with the government department concerned; with our long-term, shared goal being that of utilising technology in order to improve service delivery, and the perception of the taxpaying public that local government is effective," Dahya concludes.
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