Gauteng finance MEC Barbara Creecy said yesterday the security of the R500 million Gauteng Broadband Network programme, which will deliver e-government services, was not yet a focus of the project.
“That stage of accessing public service online is a long way down the line. At the moment we are still building the broadband infrastructure,” she said shortly after a post state of the province address media briefing by MECs at the Gauteng Legislature.
Creecy is one of Gauteng’s MECs tasked with using the existing Gauteng broadband network to drive transformation and good governance by increasing efficiency in service delivery.
South Africans are no strangers to cybercrime. The Norton Report of 2013 found that 73% of South African adults had experienced cybercrime compared with 61% globally.
The Southern African Fraud Prevention Service recently indicated that cases of identity theft were increasing at an alarming rate and were expected to reach the 4 000 mark by the end of 2014 compared with 3 327 cases in 2012.
Creecy said the Data Validation (DAV) centre, where all e-services will first be tested before being uploaded, was being used as a laboratory to test software applications on the Gauteng broadband network and identify any dangers to the e-government initiative.
“Part of what the DAV centre has to do is that any application that you want to put on to the network, they are going to have to test it. That is the system aimed at finding mistakes and this must be done early,” Creecy said.
“We can try to give some degree of comfort to citizens around two things: that we are not going to be spending a whole lot of money experimenting in the real world, and that we are going to experiment in the DAV centre.”
Gauteng’s three metropolitan municipalities – Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane – have already launched Wi-Fi hotspots in public areas including recreational parks and bus stations.
Creecy said: “Ultimately we will be looking at how people apply for tenders online. All the information on the tender will be online and all the people bidding will be there and all the processes. This has the potential to make government transparent.
“Out there in the world they say broadband is a utility – like water and electricity.
“It’s a modern utility. And it cannot just be for the rich. Hence we are connecting Thusong (government service centre) communities and schools in the townships. This has a whole lot of other implications, like reviving the township economy.”
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Phindile Chauke
Quelle/Source: The Citizen, 07.07.2014
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