With just 5.2 million individual tax payers out of a total population of 45 million people, government can ill afford to waste money on internal communication resources, says Vox Orion’s Jacques Du Toit.
The Department of Communications (DOC) budget for 2009 is R2.2billion of which R450million has already been handed out to Telkom for the 2010 World Cup.
Du Toit says if the department hopes to reach its primary goal of creating affordable, reliable, robust and secure ICT infrastructure they will need to manage their Telco costs more effectively.
In 2008 Vox Orion saved a select grouping of government departments an estimated R106, 172, 000 on telecoms costs. This figure stretched across 629 areas within national, provincial and local government as well as universities, colleges, the SAPS and SANDF.
“The R106, 172, 000 is based on cellular related call savings, if those same departments integrated our local, national and international call services, they would be looking at further savings of around R50 million rand. You then include the inbound revenue shared offered by us and the saving increase by another R50m,” says Du Toit.
“To ensure further improvements and cost savings we challenge government to make use of the Telco Toolbox, a web based analytical tool which will give a complete picture of the overall telecoms infrastructure – from internal extensions to external vendor services,” says Du Toit.
“One of the biggest challenges facing ICT managers is managing multiple vendors, while trying to understand the complex nature of telecommunications billing. By using an audit service, government will be able to manage its services and suppliers more effectively, helping prevent abuse and wastage of resources. The reports generated exposes fraudulent behaviour, underutilised infrastructure, incorrect billing by vendors and unaccounted expenses that tend to creep into large organisations over time.”
Du Toit believes that by making use of cheaper alternatives and improving telecoms transparency, government will see huge savings as well as a streamlining of services.
“In order to become a competitive global player, South Africa needs to improve its ICT facilities, but with a limited budget, the only way we can hope to achieve this is through intelligent and responsible spending,” says Vox Telecom CEO Tony van Marken.
