Questions/Answers

Gauteng Broadband Network (GBN) Initiative is a flagship project of the South Africa's Gauteng Provincial Government. The aim of the initiative enable Gauteng Provincial Government to modernise its service delivery and access through technology. Gauteng Provincial Government could not effectively and efficiently deliver e-services to citizens and business due to unreliable connectivity infrastructure and also due the fact that citizens do not have access to broadband connectivity. only 30% of the adult population has access to the internet at home. Excluding older mobile phone technologies such as WAP and GPRS, less than 20% of Gauteng's population has access to the internet at home. The objective of this initiative is to enable government to operate effectively and efficiently. To create environment that will promote growth of the ICT economy and other industries that require high speed connectivity. To enable knowledge creation. Last to bridge the digital divide by making sure that connectivity is available in under serviced areas

The aim of the Gauteng Broadband Network (GBN) initiative is to ensure that Gauteng citizens have access to affordable, high speed broadband infrastructure and services which they can effectively use in their day to day lives.The strategic objectives of the GBN Programme: - To improve Internal Government efficiencies by providing a reliable broadband connectivity; - To promote Knowledge creation: Use broadband as a medium to facilitate knowledge transfer, skills development and improved education outcomes. This is seen through connectivity provided to Gauteng Schools; - To stimulate and enable Economic Growth: Stimulate economic growth and job creation through gains in productivity and improved information exchange; and - To bridge the digital divide and enable Universal access to the internet

Reaching the poorest and most vulnerable through inclusive services and partnerships -.Broadband is a critical connectivity infrastructure that is required to enable service delivery also to enable citizens and business to access technology enable eservices. Within Gauteng, the telecoms market is highly competitive (both private and public sector) which results in a complex and dynamic environment with the various stakeholders. Despite strong competition and presence in the broadband market in Gauteng, only 26.2% of individuals have access to Internet at home.There are also large disparities in internet access across income groups. Within the Gauteng province virtually no households in the lowest income households (Living Standard Measures (LSMs) 1 to 4) have internet access at home, while roughly 80% of households in the highest LSM 10 category have internet access at home. The Gauteng broadband Network initiative, is totally supporting and in alignment with the requirement to enable the poorest and most vulnerable to access e-enabled services that broadband present. The rollout of this broadband initiative has enabled and provided connectivity to 24 Community Services Centres across the province. These centres are all located in South African townships and major government services are delivered in those centres.e.g Application for housing, Application for ID document.

This initiative has provided connectivity to 1 066 sites across the province. Key sites that are connected include all Gauteng Government Hospitals, Clinics, Social Development services, Libraries and school. This initiative enabled government to modernise service delivery through the usage of technology. Gauteng Department of Education is in the process of rolling out Smart Class Rooms , which include smart boards, tablets for learners as high speed connectivity and WIFI access technology are installed to enable effective teaching and learning. Libraries are provided with wifi to enable citizens to access vast amount of information beyond whats it is available in the libraries. The provision of connectivity at 24 Thusong community centres enable government to take service delivery to the people. Before rolling our these services , black citizens staying in townships had to travel hours on end to go to the nearest town to access these services. Now connectivity provided to community centres enable government to deliver these services so that they are easily accessed by citizens. The delivery of this initiative also enabled the department of Health to start rolling out ehealth initiatives like Centralised Patient records to eliminate paper files as these files used to get lost.

This initiative is currently addressing positively the life of citizens (your, women,elderly) and business. Urban and Rural dwelling for black South Africans were designed in such a way that black people will have to stay far away from cities were they can access government services. Through this initiative, citizens and business are now abled to access government services at service points that are in the townships or rural areas that government is rolling out due availability of high speed broadband connectivity provided by this initiative.

This initiative has impacted positively to the youth as there is a huge unemployment rate among the youth in South Africa due to low skills and education. This initiative has provided connectivity to schools and libraries. The province has now seen an increase in pass rate at high school level with increased university entrance as the learners can now access other tutorial and related information on the internet. The internet is also promoting entrepreneurship among the youth. This initiative has partnered with University of Witwatersrand (WITS) to train the youth in innovation, application development through the Tshimologong Precingt (Modelled on small Silicon Valley). The purpose is to training the youth in application development, entrepreneurship and all successful entrepreneurs are incubated for a period until their concept is commercialised. This is proving the youth and entrepreneurs not to rely on government for anybody for employment.

This intuitive has enabled government to start looking at providing services to citizens and business beyond bricks and mortar facilities. It has enabled Gauteng Provincial government to rethink its services delivery approach and service access for citizens and business by rolling out mobile apps. This enable wider reach and easy, convent access by citizens and business. Through this initiative Gauteng Government has now launched Government common platform with is a single window to government services in the Province.

The innovation is not original as broadband technology has been used before. What this initiative has done to learn from what the private sector has done to deliver services to its customers and what technologies and underlying infrastructure has been used to do that. This infrastructure or capability has been adapted to enable government to deliver services and citizens to access and receive these services cheaply.

Gauteng Provincial Government funded the initiative through the fiscus. Government made a strategic decision to partner with the private sector to build, operate and maintain the asset for a period of 5years. Through this intuitive, 1000 people were employed thus contributing to the reduction of unemployment rate in the province.

Yes

This initiative has inspired other provinces and Metropolitan areas to provide broadband access to its citizens and business. After this initiative, the Westrand and Sedibeng District municipalities requested to be part of this initiative. Also the Limpopo and Western Cape provincial governments followed suite.

It is envisaged that this intuitive will provide connectivity to government facilities, and citizens will be able to access e-services for a period of 10years. The material used like fibre have life span of 20years. Electronic equipment used will for 10 years and will need to be refreshed to ensure quality of service.

Government has made a commitment to support the initiative through annual funding. There has been an interest from private sector to utilise spare broadband capacity for a fee. This will offset some of the current operating costs to reduce funding burden for government.

Yes

The initiative has been evaluated. Gauteng Department of eGovernment appointed and Independent consulting firm to evaluate the initiative. The following was the scope of the evaluation process: Assessment of the initiative on improved government efficiency; economic growth, improved knowledge creation, and the impact on bridging the digital divide. The evaluation project took a sample of government administration sites to assess operational efficiency, it also took a sample of sites within the economic zones cluster to asses the impact of the initiative to promote economic growth. For improved knowledge creation , the project focused on few schools that were part of the digital schools initiative, and lastly for bridging the digital divide, the initiative looked at the impact of broadband connectivity in providing services as Thusong Community Service Centres. The evaluation team conducted site visits, use questionnaires, face to face interviews with users, and desktop research to check if the initiative is delivering on its objectives and approved mandate.

It was discovered that users appreciated the quality of the network, have indicated that it is actually faster than the previous network before Gauteng Broadband Network. Community Users appreciated the fact that they could access internet for free and data costs in south africa are high; For school sample - learner were using the internet for schools research. This was more helpful as these schools do not have well capacitated libraries For community service centres - the research and assessment found that the community were using the centre for job hunting, to access other government services that they could not access before.

The initiative was required to provide high speed broadband connectivity to identified government administration sites, Health facilities, Social Development facilities, Community Services Centres, Schools and Economic Zones.. To check the success of the initiative, the mandate of the assessment was to check how many sites are connected as per government connectivity targets. Is the infrastructure being used by schools and other spheres of government.Is the infrastructure delivering on the promised speeds? Is the infrastructure delivering on economic growth stimulation, increase pass rate for school going citizens.

This initiative touched other spheres of government, private sector and academic institution. For this initiative to be successful, Gauteng provincial government consulted with the National Department of Post and Telecommunications Services to ensure that the initiative is supporting the national strategy and delivery targets; National Treasury to guide and make sure that the initiative is procured inline with the treasury regulations. Private sector telecommunications companies to get a clear understanding of their infrastructure capacity and availability as the strategy of the initiative is to re-use existing infrastructure and not to duplicate. Government departments services delivery pipeline to determine bandwidth requirements. Municipalities were engaged as they will have to approve rights-of-way to lay fibre. Independent Communications Authority of South Africa to assist with providing spectrum licences for different radio technologies to be used.

Critical lessons learned with this intuitive, is making sure that people or entities approving rights of ways are support the initiative. Without their support, the delivery timelines are affected.. Communication and change management is also key as this will enable and inform the beneficiaries the benefits that this program will deliver. To improve initiatives of this nature, government policy to expedite rights of way needs to be enforced and National enforcement team needs to be strengthened and if not the National Targets for broadband rollout will not be achieved.