NELSPRUIT – Telkom is increasingly aiming to help government better deliver services to citizens. Mr Nkosinati Tolom, executive of Telkom Government Business Services (GBS) explained this past week.
His GBS team was in town last Friday to engage with the Mpumalanga Government and IT departments at La Villa Vita Guest House. GBS looks after national, provincial and local government as well as state-owned enterprises.
“We want to find out how we can assist and what their issues are,” said Tolom. He explained that the needs of the various departments were different and varied, and to provide better services, they relied on the kind of one-on-one interaction such meetings afforded them.
One common complaint they encountered was network reach, especially in rural areas. “They don’t have the kind of network they are looking for out here. There is no high-speed broadband there.”
As an example od the services Telkom GBS provides, the Department of Home Affairs is using satelite solutions to helps its mobile units to reach people in far-flung rural areas. These units must be able to access the department’s central services and servers, remotely and reliably.
Tolom added that cable theft was a bug problem. Telkom is looking at alternatives, such as satelite services, but added that these were not as robust as fibre or copper cables. He said the meeting with the provincial government went well, judging by the feedback he had received.
“However, we have not addressed everything and we plan to return at the end of February or the beginning of March to also meet with local municipalities.”
Tolom pointed out the benefits of providing networks that connects all the bluidings and off-site offices of a departement to better communicate and monitor operations centrally. “It reduces the cost of multiple IT managers without losing efficiency. It is for the people and citiznes to benefit.”
For instance, the Gautend provincial government is in the process of integrating their services to the cloud, for better security and integration that can help increase the number of services provided to citizens and increase mobility so access their sites from anywhere.
Tolom said since they faced competition from Neotel and all the cellphone networks in providing government institutions with services, they had to work at finding solutions for the challenges faced by departments.
