Heute 2244

Gestern 32872

Insgesamt 64937890

Samstag, 4.04.2026
Transforming Government since 2001

ZA: Südafrika / South Africa

  • South Africa: Rural town gets WiMax

    The University of Fort Hare and Rhodes University have partnered with the Siyakhula community, in the Eastern Cape, to develop the first rural WiMax network to deliver wireless broadband services.

    The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) says the network has been vital in providing a platform for goods, music and produce to be sold online via an e-commerce Web site, while an e-government site provides the community members with access to services.

  • South Africa: SA is Making Progress On the Road to E-Government

    Last year's BMI-TechKnowledge report on IT in government shows that the South African government is spending between R8 billion and R10 billion a year on IT, despite negative trends in the global IT industry. The report also notes that an apparent lack of understanding is impeding the transition to e-government. But a local expert with ICT integrator Comparex Africa finds that SA is making progress, considering the huge challenges involved.

    "While SA faces the same challenges as most developing nations in implementing e-government, it has the added challenge of having to extend and improve services to previously neglected communities," says Thabiso Tenyane, general manager for the public sector in Comparex Africa.

  • South Africa: SAPO to provide schools with e-mail

    The South African Post Office (SAPO) plans to provide e-mail access to more than 100 Dinaledi schools across the country from next year.

    The post office says it was mandated by the Department of Communications and the initiative forms part of its plans to implement ICT in rural areas.

    “We were tasked by government to provide e-mail access to all South Africans,” says SAPO CEO Motshoanetsi Lefoka. “We see providing e-mail access to students in Dinaledi schools as an entry point into those communities that cannot be reached, because the children are the representatives of the community.”

  • South Africa: Shilowa promises broadband

    Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa has vowed his government will provide “affordable broadband access” to 95% of the province's residents in the next five years.

    Addressing the provincial legislature during his annual State of the Province address, Shilowa said: “This initiative will not only enhance economic growth and investment, but will also contribute to social development and improve the delivery of social services.”

  • South Africa: Shortage of IT skills ‘hampers councils’

    The lack of information and communication technology (ICT) skills at municipal level is reaching crisis proportions, says Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition chairman Gwede Mantashe.

    “Municipalities must systematically build management competencies if they are to deliver quality service,” Mantashe told a two-day conference on municipal technology in Johannesburg yesterday.

  • South Africa: Shuttleworth Foundation Lauds Govt's IT Standards

    The Mark Shuttleworth Foundation congratulated government for its world-class set of Information Technology (IT) standards, in a statement sent to the Minister for the Public Service and Administration Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi.

    The statement recognised the standards related to the Minimum Interoperability Standards for Information Systems (MIOS) in government.

    According to the MIOS document, the standards set out government's technical principles and standards for achieving inter-operability and information systems coherence across the public sector.

  • South Africa: Single Public Service Bill to Be Finalised

    The draft Single Public Service Bill, which will see an integration of government's services and uniformity in all its spheres, will be finalised for submission to Cabinet in July.

    "The draft has been prepared and will be released for public comment after approval by Cabinet. The Internal consultation on the draft Bill is underway," said Department of Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi.

  • South Africa: Sita conducts telemedicine pilot study

    The State Information Technology Agency (Sita), the state-owned technology firm, is conducting a telemedicine technology pilot study in Mpumalanga focusing on radiology as part of an e-government strategy.

    The technology enables a doctor who is kilometres away to conduct an X-ray on a patient using wireless technology provided by the state commercial signal distributor, Sentech.

  • South Africa: Sita tender winners named

    The winners of the State IT Agency's (Sita) open source tender have been decided.
    Business Connexion, Gijima, Choice Technologies, IBM, ImpiLinux, Novell, Obsidian Systems and Sourcecom have been selected to be the suppliers of open source software and support services to the government and Sita over the next three years.

    Project manager for open source at Sita, Wynand Swart, told Tectonic today that he has a signed formal letter from the Supplier Selection Authority awarding the tender to the eight companies.

  • South Africa: SITA unveils R55m network centre

    The State IT Agency (SITA) yesterday demonstrated its new R55 million hi-tech Network Operating Centre (NOC), at its Centurion, Pretoria headquarters.

    The NOC is an integrated system that proactively monitors activities and malicious data coming into the national network and leaving the network, explains SITA acting CEO Femke Pienaar.

  • South Africa: Skills, budget constraints threaten ICT growth

    Government needs to attract and retain Information and Communication Technology (ICT) skills in the public sector, by recruiting directly from university and through other initiatives.

    This is according to ICT research House Forge Ahead, which recently released a report on the top-five ICT trends to have emerged in the public sector.

    Head of Research at Forge Ahead Adrian Schofield said the top-five list is a rough guide to the trends public sector Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are encountering.

  • South Africa: State IT Agency lacks capacity

    South Africa cannot move past the initial stages of maturity in e-government because the State IT Agency (SITA) does not have the capacity to carry out its e-government mandate.

    These are the words of government chief information officer (GCIO) Michelle Williams, in the Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA).

    Williams says SITA, created 10 years ago with a mandate to provide IT services to various government departments, is not fully delivering as most of its functions are duplicated across the departments.

  • South Africa: State IT agency will use OSS to cut costs

    The State IT Agency (Sita), which provides IT services to the South African government, will use open source software as one of the strategies to reduce costs in providing IT services.

    Sita chief executive officer, Llewellyn Jones, opened the GovTech 2008 conference in Durban today saying reducing costs was a key objective for the agency.

  • South Africa: State Slow Off the Mark With E-Government

    EFFORTS by government to make its services more accessible over the internet have made little progress in the past year, with SA static at position 22 in a global scale of egovernment maturity.

    Government has not improved much in any of the categories used to rank the countries its best progress being a 9% improvement in the area of customer relationship management.

  • South Africa: Strategies for E-Government: Lessons Learned

    As the focus of government increasingly turns to harnessing technology in order to deliver better services to more citizens, it is becoming apparent that leaping headlong into 'solutions' must be tempered with an awareness of the environment and the ultimate goals of e-government. That's according to Dumisani Mtoba, senior systems engineer at Sun Microsystems SA.

  • South Africa: Technology’s role in delivery

    The State Information Technology Agency (Sita) is hosting a conference this month to meet private sector companies and thrash out how technology can improve government services to the public.

    Sita procures technology equipment for government departments and runs the state’s payroll system and national voice and data networks.

  • South Africa: Telecoms Could Become a Basic Municipal Service

    Frusration at the high cost of phone calls and a lack of affordable internet access is driving potentially profound changes in the way local authorities serve their citizens. Councils that provide electricity, water and waste disposal are seriously assessing whether they should also provide cheap telephone calls and high-speed internet access as part of their core services.

    The concept is being tested in about 600 cities worldwide, including in the US and Taiwan, where cheap internet access and phone calls are already a normal part of life. Just how seriously the idea is being taken in SA was seen in the large turnout last week for a Digital Cities conference held by BMI-TechKnowledge.

  • South Africa: Telemedicine - the next level of service

    Providing on-demand patient access to healthcare is a business and humanitarian challenge. Healthcare organisations cannot grow fast enough to meet their patients’ needs, and specialists are unable to reach patients in emergency situations or undeveloped regions in time.

    With the constant pressure to increase the quality of patient care and the desire to provide new services, while at the same time controlling costs, healthcare providers are beginning to leverage the power of video and voice networks, and, more recently, Telemedicine, to link patients, specialists and medical professionals, thus extending the reach of healthcare.

  • South Africa: Telemedicine wonderful, in theory

    Telemedicine has great potential to improve the efficiency of healthcare in South Africa, particularly in the case of patients who live in remote areas and struggle to gain access to specialists.

    It could ensure that healthcare is available, affordable and accessible to all. It can be anything from a simple webcam or a sports wristwatch to a high-definition video conferencing unit that monitors vital signs and blood pressure and hooks up to electrocardiograms and endoscopes. Put simply, telemedicine is the use of any technology that can provide medical diagnoses or patient care over a vast distance.

  • South Africa: The smart solution to security concerns

    Next year SA will join the growing list of smart countries in Asia, the Middle East and Europe that are turning towards smart-card solutions for their identification and travel documents.

    The growing global demand for security, technological advancements and e-government is driving smart-card solutions. The guiding principles seek to ensure that citizens have easier access to government and private-sector services.

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