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GOVERNMENT ICT SPEND
SET TO INCREASE
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South Africa's ICT spend is healthy, despite
several external and internal economic factors stunting the
country's growth.
Addressing delegates at one of the breakout sessions at SITA's
GovTech 2009 conference, Lesley-Anne Dos Santos, enterprise
research manager at BMI-TechKnowledge, said that South Africa's
state-owned enterprises play a vital role in increasing economic
growth, which forms part of South Africa's accelerated growth
strategy.
She said capex infrastructure plans continue to go ahead, and
with it, job creation. Government spend was positively
influenced by energy costs, however the current economic
slowdown is impacting government ICT budgets.
According to BMI-T's ICT in Government Programme report for
2008, South Africa's economic drivers include increased ICT
competition, especially in view of 2010. Technology drivers,
such as broadband access, convergence, unified communications,
managed data services, virtualisation and outsourcing also
demanded organisations to up their spend.
Government in particular was also a major driver of the
country's economic growth, thanks to the introduction of the
Electronic Communications Act, industry spend on e-government
initiatives, as well as addressing the digital divide.
The major culprits inhibiting growth was the global economic
slowdown across all industry sectors, as well as the current
exchange rate. Add to that bandwidth constraints,
interconnection prices, skills shortages and market
consolidation and the picture looks rather bleak, she said. At
government level, the lack of an integrated ICT strategy, ICT
capacity constraints and delay in implementation, are severely
hampering progress.
The SA ICT market size in 2007 was estimated at R174 billion,
with IT representing R58 billion, while telecoms accounted for
R116 billion. BMI-T predicted that in 2012, the ICT market would
sit at an estimated R246 billion, with IT representing R85
billion and telecoms R161 billion.
Total government ICT expenditure, which includes hardware,
software, services and communication at national, provincial and
local government levels, has increased from R12.3 billion in
2007/8 to R12.8 billion in 2008/9.
BMI-T says the government big spenders for 2009/10 include the
Dept of Justice and Constitutional Development, the Dept of Home
Affairs, the Dept of Public Service and Administration, the Dept
of Trade and Industry, the Dept of Safety and Security, as well
as the Dept of Science and Technology.
Dos Santos said government's aim is to increase the uptake,
usage of, and access to ICT through partnerships with business
and civil society to directly and indirectly improve service
delivery to the people.
Some major projects include municipal and provincial broadband,
HANIS and IFMS, massive infrastructure and transportation
projects, FOSS, educational systems, e-gov portals, global
deployment of VOIP, service delivery and governance, as well as
the Who am I Online projects to improve service delivery.
According to BMI-T, government should lead by example and play
the biggest role in implementing regulations and providing
incentives for using less energy with Green IT initiatives.
Dos Santos said another area government should focus on is the
use of Web 2.0 initiatives as it can dramatically improve
service delivery to the country's citizens. She mentioned that
it was used very successfully in the 2009 US elections, which
incorporated social networking tools, such as Facebook and
Twitter, as well as SMS's. She suggested that government needs
to create new strategies in line with what the public wants and
the packaging of information.
Another key focus should be on electronic self-service, an
international trend to improve service delivery to citizens,
thus enabling cost-savings and improved interaction with
citizens, an area in which, she says, government is lacking.
Dos Santos recommended that government must keep abreast of IT
and telecoms trends and developments and be aware of what
citizens need, whilst focusing on skills development and
training programmes within government.
By training staff, not only in ICT, but also in best practices
concerning service delivery to citizens in South Africa,
government will drastically improve citizens’ satisfaction
levels and will also meet their needs more effectively, she
concluded.
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