GSSC spends millions on IT

By Christelle du Toit, ITWeb senior journalist

Johannesburg, 04 Jul 2008

The Gauteng Shared Services Centre (GSSC) has received a cash injection of one and a half billion rand from the provincial MEC for finance and economic affairs for the 2008/2009 financial year.

Of this amount, a significant chunk will be spent on IT services, a driver of the unit`s services, according to the unit`s political head.

Delivering his annual budget vote speech this week, MEC Paul Mashatile allocated the unit the increased budget of about R400 million.

The GSSC serves as back-office hub for the province`s HR, audit, procurement, finance, IT, and corporate services, and is the location for the call centre that handles, among other things, all the provincial learners and drivers licence bookings.

MEC Mashatile said that over the past two years the department had seen an increase in the use of the services provided by the GSSC.

He described IT as "the main core of the department`s service delivery initiatives".

GSSC spokesman Khusela Sangoni says R640m has been allocated to Technology Support Services.

The Technology Support unit is made up of programme management, planning and architecture, operations management, service management, information security, e-government, and CIO sub-divisions.

"All of these have a key role to play in ensuring that we have in place a solid technological infrastructure for the province," says Sangoni.

"This unit is tasked with ensuring that firstly, at an administrative level, we have competent systems in place to deliver; but secondly that we broaden access to information and technology to the people of the province."

Historical problem

The GSSC has often made headlines due to the province`s backlog in dealing with drivers and learners licence bookings. However, both Sangoni and Mashatile say this is not its fault.

According to Mashatile, "We have now increased the number of productive seats in the contact centre [which deals with this issue], and further outsourced the management of it," says Mashatile. "The failure to secure license booking is not as a result of the contact centre`s inability," he said.

Sangoni says the waiting list currently stands at 32 000, with 20 000 of this relating to drivers licences, and 12 000 to learners licences. There are only 1 100 driver slots available per day in Gauteng, and 1 500 learner slots per day.

She says, "We are of the view that criticism levelled at the GSSC is unfair. The challenge is that the demand for the service far outstrips the supply. Planning on the part of the previous regime had not taken into consideration the developments that would come as a result of growth in the economy."