17 Feb 2016

The Ministry of Transport and Communications (MTC) has commenced construction of a blue print service oriented enterprise architecture (SOEA) system aimed at modernising information communication technology in the public service.

The SOEA solution will take three years to develop and is based on the principles of developing a service orientated e-government system. The system, which will cost P89 million, will replace the fragmented information systems developed by different ministries within government.

A joint venture between Korea IT Consulting and Gajog Investment has been awarded the tender to develop the project while a local company, Rosedale Technology has been sub-contracted for the project.  

Speaking during the launch of the project in Gaborone on Monday, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Transport and Communications, Mr Neil Fitt said the system would transform the public sector into a high performing sector and eliminate wastage of resources. 

Mr Fitt said the government has made strides in creating awareness on the value and benefits of e-government.

 “The fundamental objective of the programme (e-government) is to improve public service delivery through the use of ICT. In 2011, we developed the e-government strategy and identified a number of programmes and initiatives to drive the strategy,” Mr Fitt stated. 

He explained that with the advent of ICT, citizens could spend less time seeking and waiting for government services and more time applying themselves on activities that foster development. 

“The e-government project is also a platform that government wants to use to cultivate innovation within the public sector and to empower citizens. 

Through e-government, we have a number of initiatives such as acceleration of e-services, skills transfer in support of e-government, governance methods and procedures, rationalisation and integration of government systems, national integrated data centre and expansion of government data network,” he said. 

The e-government coordinator, Dr Omponye Kereteletswe said one of the biggest challenges government was facing was lack of coordination in the development of the government information system. 

Dr Kereteletswe noted that there has been a mushrooming of islands of information systems that were not talking to each other since government departments and ministries started to computerise their products.

“After struggling and experiencing these pains while trying to improve service delivery through the use of ICT, we have finally arrived at an exciting juncture; The possibility to develop our ICT systems guided by a holistic view of a government wide blue print. 

The current project presents to us this very possibility. We have adopted and seek to deliver an enterprise architecture solution that is based on the principles of service orientation – and hence a Service Oriented Enterprise Architecture (SOEA),” Dr Kereteletswe explained. 

He stated that the Service Oriented Enterprise Architecture implementation would allow the government to break services into granular units that were self-contained and capable of communicating with each other. Ends