The Gauteng Province is to be the pilot site of the South African government’s long-awaited electronic government portal, called the Batho Pele e-Government Gateway, in a R62-million initiative to be launched on August 3.

Speaking at a media briefing in Johannesburg yesterday, the Minister of Public Service and Administration, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, said that the portal will ensure access to much-needed government services and will demystify information and communication technology as not only being a tool of the elite, but an agent for development.

“The Department of Public Service and Administration (DPSA) is responding very directly to our President’s State of the Nation address when he said the Batho Pele Gateway would be launched within two months,” she said.

“Government is committed to making its services more accessible and the introduction of the portal will help cross the divide that has previously been there to access to information on government services.”

Multipurpose community centres are to be set up that will ensure that communities receive government information in their own languages and offer services such as payment of rental and electricity accounts, social grants, identity documents and death certificates.

MPCCs are a project of the Government Communication and Information Service. The DPSA will support the MPCCs by providing access to the Batho Pele e-Gateway portal providing streamlined government services online. The centres will house public information terminals from which the e-Gateway portal can be accessed. Connectivity at MPCCs will be provided by the Universal Services Agency.

The DPSA said sixty new MPCCs will be launched by the end of the year and a plan will be finalised to have at least one of these in each of the 284 municipal areas.

Phase one of the Batho Pele e-Gateway has recently been completed, and access to the portal will be possible at selected MPCCs and Post Office public Internet terminals. The MPCCs selected for phase one implementation are located across eight of the nine provinces, at Mbazwana in Kwazula-Natal, Sterkspruit and Tombo in the Eastern Cape, Mapela in Limpopo, Atlantis in the Western Cape, Galeshewe in the Northern Cape, Namahadi in the Free-State, Mpuluzi in Mpumalanga and Lerethlabetse in the North West.

The Information Systems, Electronic and Telecommunications Technologies Sector Education and Training Authority is in the process of training 40 community development workers (CDWs) on laptop computers that will act as intermediaries at the MPCCs that will be set up.

The CDWs are currently positioned throughout Gauteng, in informal settlements and townships predominantly.

By the end of the year the first CDWs will have completed their initial training and will be working in the jurisdiction of various local authorities while being employed by the respective local governments.

“To realise the aims of Gateway, CDWs will visit those users who are unable to go to the MPCCs or post offices,” Fraser-Moleketi said.

She said that it is hoped that there will be 2 840 CDWs throughout the country, ten at each municipality.

The government is also looking at the introduction of mobile service units which will reportedly go into most remote areas, particularly those without electricity, and provide the services to the people.

Phase one of the gateway will provide the services free of charge to the public after which, a new funding plan will be developed. The DPSA is currently involved with various parties, including the Department of Communications in order to establish such a plan.

“Government would like to carry the cost of this project and subsidise it as far as possible,” Fraser-Moleketi said.

“The idea is that we bring our fragmented government departments together and provide the public with opportunities to access government information based on a life-event, such as a birth or starting up a small business, as opposed to citizens travelling from different departments in different places,” she said.