Gauteng MEC for e-Government and Finance Barbara Creecy has outlined her plan to allow people to apply for liquor licences, government tenders and other services online.
She made the announcement when she delivered her R1.2 billion e-government budget in the Gauteng legislature on Friday.
According to Creecy, Gauteng is fertile ground for online services, including allowing them to influence decision-making in the government and political bosses on matters of provincial interest.
Justifying her idea of having a centrally controlled ICT plan, Creecy said the Stats SA general household survey in 2014 found almost 60 percent of Gauteng households had access to the internet.
“It therefore became necessary for the city region government to move towards online services,” she said.
To achieve her objective”without any reputational risk”, Creecy has entered into a partnership with Wits University and the Gauteng Innovation Hub to assist in developing the Design and Validation Centre.
The centre, according to Creecy, would ensure key strategy and technological initiatives were “interoperable and integrated with existing technologies in the region, and that each proposed technological solution is designed, developed and tested - including stress and load testing - in accordance with the established testing standards”.
Creecy’s announcement comes just a few weeks after Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi suffered a backlash from irate parents who were struggling to do online school registrations for their children.
While the situation appears to have calmed, Gauteng’s citizens are adopting a wait-and-see attitude.
Creecy, however, emphasised that for her to succeed, her plan would need to focus on driving co-ordinated and efficient ICT investment in the province.
“The provincial treasury, together with the Department of e-Government, will conduct an ICT investment assessment to determine the nature of the ICT investment already made and what is being planned.
“This will better enable the premier’s e-government steering committee to ensure future investments are in line with ICT policies and standards to avoid duplication of costs,” Creecy said.
Vowing to lead the project, Creecy said Gauteng became the first organ of state to have an e-government department, and now they want to play a leading role in the development of technology and innovation for three reasons:
- To deliver optimal technological security, agility and efficiency in its daily operations.
- To reduce the costs of operating large state machinery and maximise the use of limited government resources.
- To provide the necessary business intelligence to assist the administration to make evidence-based decisions to drive the Gauteng city region forward.
Creecy said high-speed connectivity was a critical foundation of infrastructure development for the success of the provincial government and its municipalities, including the metros.
She also said a number of government institutions were already on the Gauteng Broadband Network (GBN), saying her new plan was aimed at increasing accessibility.
She has allocated R325 million for the GBN data network and hopes to save a lot of money through the implementation of the “voice-over data model, and all telephone calls will be transmitted over the GBN data network”..
While Creecy made no mention of her new plan affecting the operations of major phone communication agencies and entities like Telkom, she did say her plan would result in efficiency and cost saving.
Creecy said she would incorporate online services provided by the municipalities and the government, and these would be delivered through a common platform.
“This platform is accessible through an online single gateway for citizens, non-citizens, business agents and government employees to various services. It brings information together from diverse sources in a uniform way to provide better access to information, remove barriers to applications, promote re-use of information and allow searches for information,” Creecy said.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Baldwin Ndaba
Quelle/Source: Independent Online, 30.05.2016
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