She called on vendors during the ICT Summit in April to lay aside their commercial interests to help Nelson Mandela Bay municipality develop and implement a strategy to bring it on par with leading cities.
“I am so enthusiastic about it,” Zitumane said at the weekend. “The approach we have taken is the first in the country. At first they (the industry) were pessimistic about it, but then they began to think about the potential opportunities to come out of these projects.”
Business Connexion‘s regional chief executive, Gert Cronje, admits to feeling pessimistic initially, but is now fully on board.
“I think it is too early to say too much about it, but I am very positive. We think it is feasible and achievable,” he said.
Dimension Data‘s regional executive for the public sector, Darryl Dennis, was equally upbeat.
“It is a breath of fresh air,” he said. “Traditionally we do business almost in a cut-throat environment. It also gives us a level of comfort that the acting municipal manager has taken the view that this is for the interest of the city.”
Five key objectives have been identified to uplift services to a level comparative with Johannesburg and Cape Town. These are: SMME development, city connectivity, e-government, investment attraction, and revenue enhancement.
SMME development will be driven primarily via the recently established ICT Hub, which was initiated and supported by the ECDC.
The Port Elizabeth hub is the second of its kind in the province and builds on the success of a pilot scheme in East London. It is envisaged that investment attraction would stem from this initiative, as well as other key industries such as call centres.
Trade, and especially tourism, facilitation using ICT is seen as another means to attract investment and revenue into the city.
City connectivity is therefore a must from an access to information point of view, but is also considered a potential cash cow for the municipality.
Zitumane said recent changes to the Telecommunications Act made it possible for the metro to on-sell its spare bandwidth capacity.
E-government focuses on providing access to information and services to residents.
The next step in the process is a needs analysis, not only of the municipality, but also of industry in general.
From here key “quick-win” projects will be developed and implemented to provide impetus to the initiative.
Autor(en)/Author(s): Johann Barnard
Quelle/Source: The Herald Eastern Cape, 24.07.2006
