Government procurement officers are once again considering technology requirements; however, focus is turning to smaller, lower-cost needs.
Unfortunately, National Treasury’s eTenders Portal experienced some problems this week, with sluggish response when browsing available opportunities, and tender documents unavailable when doing a search.
The South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) again provides the high point for the week, with a request for call centre services.
In its tender documentation, the agency notes the introduction of the COVID-19 Social Relief of Distress grant in 2020 increased the pressure on its in-house call centre.
“Apart for the increased workload as a result of this grant, the in-house contact centre has been struggling to cope with even normal volumes of calls and thus requires additional capacity to manage the volumes. The failure by the contact centre to respond effectively to all incoming calls, mails, walk-ins, and a failure to provide more preferred self-service and digital channels like WhatsApp, creates serious reputational risk for the agency,” it says.
As current human capacity and available in-house technology solutions are insufficient to manage the increasing demands for SASSA to be responsive to the clients served, SASSA says it is considering outsourcing the services of the call centre to manage the peak and latent demand, as these demands are determined by the kind of project implemented by government at the time.
The agency says it is looking for a service provider that has a deep understanding of social media communication, bots, artificial intelligence and natural language understanding that will assist in driving a digital-first citizen service strategy. At this time, SASSA is not offering these capabilities and does not have digitised platforms.
Eskom, meanwhile, closes the issue with two tender cancellations. The first is for security information management systems, for which no responses where received. The second is for the provision of hybrid information security awareness sessions, which during tender technical evaluation, it was discovered that the scope of work is a duplicate of another current contract in place.
Other tenders that make this week’s top 10 include:
- Gauteng’s Department of Economic Development is looking for a service provider for records scanning, indexing and online archiving of departmental records which are currently stored off-site. The department notes it currently has a total of 23 267 hardcopy files consisting of six million pages combined.
- The South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) is advertising for the design, implementation, maintenance and support of an electronic document management system. The institute notes it has created and inherited a large number of paper and electronic documents since its inception, which are stored in various offices across the country. This has resulted in electronic documents not being easily accessible and potentially lost.
- In a second tender, SANBI is looking for a service provider to design, implement, maintain and support a membership management system for all national botanical and zoological gardens. SANBI intends to implement the system for visitors to the gardens, to increase income generated from gardens, as well as broaden garden access to groups that had previously not enjoyed access.
- The State Information Technology Agency (SITA) is calling for the supply, installation, maintenance and support of VMware software for the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development. The agency notes the security servers in the Agrinet platform use VMware licences as an alternative software to the Microsoft HyperV licences. The security environment is not compatible with the Microsoft HyperV. VMware is the only alternative to use to enable a secure ICT environment and is supported by the skilled specialist within the department.
- SITA also invites bids for the supply and installation of two cut sheet high-speed monochrome printers, including maintenance and support. The agency’s Beta data centre is responsible for the printing of about 166 government department pay slips and several municipality accounts, it says. However, the capacities are limited to cut sheet five monochrome printers and the current two printers are end of life.
- The Department of Public Service and Administration wishes to appoint a service provider to automate business processes and build business apps in SharePoint, PowerApps and Power Automate. The department notes it has limited resources with the necessary skills and experience and needs an experienced business applications Gold Microsoft partner to assist with the optimisation of its Microsoft Power Platform environment, determine standards for design and development, review existing and develop new business applications.
- The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa is looking for a suitable service provider to procure the supply, installation and commissioning of quality-of-service benchmarking equipment with support and maintenance. This will be used to test the network’s performance and monitor quality of service of mobile network operators’ voice, data, video and messaging services.
- The Companies and Intellectual Property Commission requires supply, installation and configuration of a backup and restore solution that caters for on-premises and cloud backups. Its current backup solution is backing up virtual hosts, physical and virtual servers, databases, windows system files and exchange with a total estimated data capacity of 300TB. The commission says it has identified a need to make additional copies of the on-premises data to cloud.
- The Department of Labour is looking for a service provider to supply a biometric identity management solution within the SAP ERP system and HANA platform to the Compensation Fund. This will include the installation and configuration of compatible fingerprint scanners integrated with the Department of Home Affairs at the customer care walk-in centre, service delivery improvement sites, as well as provinces where the fund has a presence.
New tenders
South African Social Security Agency
SASSA invites proposals for the provision of call centre services for a period of three years.
Tender no: SASSA:41-23-GA-HO
Information: Mogafe Mphahlele, Tel: 012 400 3412, E-mail: callcentrebid@sassa.gov.za.
Closing date: 3 October 2023
Tags: Services, call centre, contact centre
Department of Economic Development, Gauteng
The provincial department is looking for a service provider for records scanning, indexing and online archiving.
Non-compulsory briefing: 25 September
Tender no: GT/GDED/086/2023
Information: Avuyile Goniwe, Tel: 011 355 8137, E-mail: Avuyile.Goniwe@gauteng.gov.za.
Closing date: 13 October 2023
Tags: Software, services, hardware, imaging, scanning, indexing, cloud computing, archiving
South African National Biodiversity Institute
A service provider is sought to design, implement, maintain and support an electronic document management system for a period of 18 months.
Compulsory briefing: 22 September – Virtual.
Tender no: SANBI: IT482/2023
Information: Vicent Moerane, Tel: 012 843 5000, E-mail: v.moerane@sanbi.org.za.
Closing date: 9 October 2023
Tags: Software, electronic document management system, document management, services, support and maintenance
SANBI is also looking for a service provider to design, implement, maintain and support a membership management system for three years for all national botanical and zoological gardens.
Compulsory briefing: 22 September – Microsoft Teams, Link.
Tender no: SANBI G477/2023
Information: Nontsikelelo Mpulo, Tel: 012 843 5000, E-mail: n.mpulo@sanbi.org.za.
Closing date: 6 October 2023
Tags: Software, electronic document management system, document management, services, support and maintenance
State Information Technology Agency
Supply, installation, maintenance and support of VMware software is required for the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development for 60 months.
Non-compulsory briefing: 20 September – Microsoft Teams.
Tender no: RFB 2802/2023
Information: Lungile Sibiya, Tel: 012 482 2006, E-mail: Lungile.Sibiya@sita.co.za.
Closing date: 9 October 2023
Tags: Software, services, support and maintenance
SITA invites bids for the supply and installation of two cut sheet high-speed monochrome printers, including maintenance and support for six years.
Non-compulsory briefing: 21 September – Microsoft Teams.
Tender no: RFB 2803-2023
Information: Lungile Sibiya, Tel: 012 482 2006, E-mail: Lungile.Sibiya@sita.co.za.
Closing date: 9 October 2023
Tags: Hardware, printing, services, support and maintenance
Department of Public Service and Administration
The DPSA wishes to appoint a service provider to automate business processes and build business apps in Sharepoint, Powerapps and Power Automate.
Tender no: DPSA005/2023
Information: Lorraine Masenya, Tel: 012 336 1126, E-mail: lorraine@dpsa.gov.za.
Closing date: 4 October 2023
Tags: Software, software development, business process automation, apps
Independent Communications Authority of South Africa
ICASA is looking for a suitable service provider to procure the supply, installation and commissioning of the quality-of-service benchmarking equipment to test the network’s performance and monitor quality-of-service of the mobile network operators’ voice, data, video and messaging services, with support and maintenance for three years on 80/20 PPPFA 2000: Preferential Procurement Regulations, 2022.
Non-compulsory briefing: 25 September – Microsoft Teams, Link.
Tender no: ICASA 22/2023
Information: Samuel Jabulane Siziba, Tel: 012 568 3629, E-mail: ssiziba@icasa.org.za.
Closing date: 3 October 2023
Tags: Telecommunications, quality-of-service, network, voice, data, messaging, services, support and maintenance
Companies and Intellectual Property Commission
Bids are invited for the supply, installation and configuration of a backup and restore solution that caters for on-premises and cloud backups.
Tender no: CIPC BID NUMBER: 18/2023/2024
Information: Ntombi Maqhula, Tel: 012 394 5344, E-mail: Nmaqhula@cipc.co.za.
Closing date: 12 October 2023
Tags: Software, backup, cloud computing
Department of Labour
A service provider is sought to provide a biometric identity management solution within its SAP ERP system and HANA platform for a period of three years.
Non-compulsory briefing: 20 September
Tender no: TCF04:2023/24
Information: Tlhoriso Matloa, Tel: 012 406 5718; E-mail: SCM.Enquiries@LABOUR.gov.za.
Closing date: 3 October 2023
Tags: Software, security, biometrics
Cancellations
Eskom
Cancellation of tender for the security information management systems.
Tender no: MWP1996CX/Cancellation of tender
Information: Tlou Mashalane, Tel: 011 800 4954, E-mail: mashalst@eskom.co.za.
Closing date: 22 September 2023
Tags: Software, security, security information management systems
Cancellation of tender for the provision of hybrid information security awareness session.
Tender no: MWP1806CX/Cancellation of Tender
Information: Tlou Mashalane, Tel: 011 800 4954, E-mail: mashalst@eskom.co.za.
Closing date: 22 September 2023
Tags: Services, security, training and e-learning
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