Govt. operating under poor ICT infrastructure
The Minister of Transport and Communications, Thulaganyo Segokgo says the status of Government ICT infrastructure and services is of great concern to his Ministry.
He said in order to get it in good state and improve its efficiency, they have upgraded the core network and established nodes countrywide.
However, the Government data centre responsible for hosting mission critical services and applications of Government is in a poor state characterised by perennial system breakdowns and failures, revealed Segokgo.
The Minister stated that this is because the equipment in it is obsolete, and the data centre constructed with no proper cooling and power. “To address this challenge, the project to relocate our data centre to the newly- constructed Digital Data Centre owned by BoFiNet has commenced with the planning and design activities ongoing. “The implementation will begin in June 2022 and we anticipate completion of migration of major services within the coming financial year. This will provide for Government cloud essential for hosting and securing Government data, and improved efficiency”, the Minister told Parliament when presenting his Ministry’s 2022/ 23 budget. Segokgo who is also MP for Tlokweng indicated that similarly, he is concerned with the status of the ICT infrastructure and services at Government offices in particular those that are customer- facing like at Department of Roads, Transport and Safety, Revenue and hospitals and others. This, he said is the contributing factor to the perennial outages of Government services that customers suffer regularly. He told Parliament that the Local Area Network in those offices is not suited for modern unified communications that must cater for video, data and voice. “Again, the Local Area Network has obsolete equipment that lacks capacity and capability to meet performance levels expected by our customers.
To address this problem, my Ministry has embarked on a project to upgrade all Government offices Local Area Network to meet the required service levels. “In the reporting period we have managed to upgrade the network at the Botswana Public Services College. This is in addition to the Auditor General and DIT offices which were already upgraded previously. The bulk of the sites will be upgraded commencing in the coming financial year,” Segokgo said.
The Ministry is also in the process of transforming the DIT into serviceoriented department and position it to be ever- ready to play a pivotal role in the modernisation of Government.
According to Segokgo they have continued to implement the current ICT policy, legal and regulatory framework. Segokgo explained that in the reporting period, initiatives on expanding connectivity at national and local access layers have continued spanning broadband infrastructure and services.
“However, there is a need to revise the current ICT policy framework to modernize it and align it with current technology trends. The digital economy as a pillar, requires new policies in particular focusing on 5G, IPv6, open data, and associated economic policies that will drive digital investments and the creation of digital enterprises and digital Government,” Segokgo added.