State staffers score big with Golaganang

By Alastair Otter for HP

Johannesburg, 24 May 2002

During the Department of Public Service and Administration budget vote speech in Parliament yesterday, minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi announced the Golaganang initiative that aims to connect more than 50 000 government employees to the Internet in the next six months.

The initiative, spearheaded by HP`s head of global government business Jos Nickmans, includes partners Telkom, CS Holdings, Standard Bank and Microsoft.

The deal, open to all 1.1 million government staffers, will allow employees to purchase a complete computer hardware and software package for between R99 and R430 a month over a 36-month period. Sliding scale subsidies of the full R430 repayment will be available to lower income earners, reducing the monthly purchase price to just R99 for employees earning less than R12 500 a month. The deal includes members of the police services but does not include teachers.

Fraser-Moleketi said the Golaganang initiative is an attempt to address inequalities in access to technology by "providing the chance to those public servants that hitherto could not afford to buy their own home computers, to do so now. In the process we believe that digital literacy among public servants will improve significantly and that this in turn will result in better utilisation of ICT in the execution of their work, and consequently better service delivery to the public."

Nickmans says that as part of the Presidential ICT Forum, business had been tasked with coming up with new initiatives to bridge the digital divide in the country and Golaganang is a move in this direction. "Everyone is talking about doing something about the digital divide and here we took the lead to do something practical about it."

The project is a substantively South African one, according to Nickmans, who says HP has made a commitment to build all the PCs involved in the project locally. The company has also pledged to donate one PC setup to a school for every 20 computer packages purchased through Golaganang. With a target of 50 000 bundles in the next six months, Nickmans is confident that as many as 2 500 computers will be donated to schools.

Each "bundle" includes an HP 1.3GHz PC with monitor, HP desk jet printer, modem and speakers. Microsoft will provide copies of XP Home and Office XP on each computer as well as Windows training materials. Telkom will provide Internet connectivity through its dial-up network infrastructure.

Nickmans says the consortium has been mindful of the pitfalls of providing infrastructure without support and training, and each bundle will include three hours of training for the buyer and one member of their family, which will be provided by CS Holdings. Installation and a three-year service warranty will also be included in the package.

Nickmans is confident of reaching the 50 000 target within six months, although he says the success of the project is largely dependent on user interest.

Golaganang is a Tswana word meaning "come together".