Huge ICT projects in pipeline for 2008

By Leon Engelbrecht, ITWeb senior writer

Johannesburg, 18 Jan 2008

It could be a bumper year for IT projects, with tenders worth billions in the pipeline over the next few months.

GijimaAst is expected to sign a R2 billion business process management contract with the Department of Home Affairs next month. The National Treasury should be set to issue a series of contracts worth roughly the same as part of its government-wide integrated financial management system (IFMS) project.

Home Affairs is expected to issue several more big-budget tenders this year, including one for a smart card solution to replace the current green identity document as part of the Home Affairs National Identification System.

The Department of Public Service and Administration is also expected to call for an "e-government" system, worth more than the IFMS. Also nearing daylight is the national Department of Health's e-health patient record system and a number of open source tenders, as well as funding for Sentech's wireless network. The latter is expected to emerge this quarter.

2008 is also a big "2010" year. Many of the projects that must be completed prior to next June's FIFA Confederations Cup must still be awarded. This includes the bulk of the IT contracts associated with Gautrain and the City of Johannesburg's Rea Vaya bus network. The State IT Agency, the Development Bank of SA and the commercial banks also have some World Cup plans that will emerge from the dark this year. But time is running short.

Also anticipated this quarter is Neotel's consumer offering and the prospect of competition in the fixed-line marketplace. T-Systems is also expected to sign an outsourcing deal with Old Mutual in late January and iBurst plans to roll-out WiMax later this year.

Work should also begin on a number of undersea cables to and from SA, and the state's newest public enterprise, Infraco, should start work. Other than the undersea cables, Infraco is also tasked with providing broadband for the MeerKAT telescope and for firming up plans for the 1.3 billion-euro Square Kilometre Array radio telescope.

Staying with broadband, more should be seen of municipal initiatives in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, Pretoria and elsewhere to provide cheap broadband to residents. These cities also need to complete their hardware, software and services blueprints and turn e-government talk into action.