An "ICT Blueprint", to improve connectivity at Thusong Centres, has been developed by the Office of Government CIOs, while Sentech will have a collaborative role, says public service and administration minister Geraldine Fraser-Moloketi.
Thusong Centres, formerly multi-purpose community centres, are locations, mainly in rural areas, designed to allow people to have access to government information and services. Some 1 227 centres have been established nationally and Fraser-Moloketi says connectivity will be extended to 50 centres in the coming year.
She made this statement when addressing a media briefing in Parliament yesterday on behalf of the governance and administration cluster of ministries, which includes her department and the Department of Home Affairs (DHA).
As far as the latter department is concerned, Fraser-Moloketi says the online fingerprint verification project had been rolled out to 40 DHA officers. This allows temporary identity documents to be issued immediately, rather than the usual seven-day waiting period.
She said preparations were on track to begin a pilot smart ID card by year-end.
Fraser-Moloketi said phase one of the DHA's turnaround strategy had been completed and the second phase, a large-scale change programme to improve citizens' experience at Home Affairs offices, is now under way.
Indicative of the headway being made at the DHA, which has been labelled as the most dysfunctional of all government departments, is that the turnaround time for an ID application has been reduced from 186 to 103 days. The track and trace system, also known as "Who am I?", to assist people with tracking their ID applications process by SMS, has been fully rolled out.
"While Cabinet has been pleased with the progress, it is still seized with the importance of ensuring these times are reduced further," Fraser-Moloketi said.
GCIS to refresh ICT
Separately, Themba Maseko, head of the Government Communications and Information Service (GCIS), told the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communications yesterday that his organisation expects to see its spending on ICT equipment and services to increase from R15.198 million in the current year, to around R16.653 million in 2010/11.
This expenditure will be mainly for the continued support and maintenance of the GCIS wide-area network. Remote connectivity will be enhanced through the use of newer technologies, such as 3G cellular connectivity to a virtual private network.
A voice over IP network will also be set up between the GCIS head office in Pretoria and its parliamentary offices.
Increased security measures for government Web sites and disaster recovery measures will be included in the GCIS expenditure. The refreshment of file, data and application services will also be included in this budget.
Maseko says GCIS's content management system will be reviewed and replaced with the State IT Agency, in line with the Department of Public Service and Administration's e-government strategy. There is also an initiative to migrate the site to an open source environment, he adds.
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