Top ICT tenders: ICASA to streamline spectrum management

It’s a busy week on National Treasury’s eTenders Portal; however, the ICT industry is not favoured. This means the industry will largely need to look to lower-value municipal advertisements for opportunities.

Amid this quiet backdrop, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) takes the top spot with a request for information on the development and implementation of an automated spectrum management system.

In its tender documentation, the regulator explains the procurement of such a system is designed to enhance its capability to efficiently manage the radio frequency spectrum in a manner that serves the public interest.

“This advanced system is envisioned to integrate a variety of technical and administrative tools essential for comprehensive spectrum management. Specifically, the automated spectrum management system will streamline the licensing process for the radio frequency spectrum, ensuring it operates smoothly and transparently. Furthermore, it will facilitate thorough spectrum planning, enabling the assessment and allocation of frequencies based on demand and usage patterns,” ICASA says.

In addition to licensing and planning, the system will be expected to incorporate robust monitoring capabilities to track spectrum usage, ensuring compliance with regulatory standards.

ICASA adds it will enable efficient spectrum authorisation processes, including type approval for new devices and technologies that utilise the spectrum.

“Overall, this system aims to create a seamless and practical framework for the management of radio frequencies, ultimately benefiting all stakeholders involved.”

Other tenders that make this week’s top 10:

• South African Tourism is advertising for digital assets management services and systems. The organisation notes it owns a large repository of existing content, which has been steadily built over several years and includes all the raw footage that has been developed during the various SA Tourism marketing campaigns. These assets must be tagged, categorised, sorted, stored, retrieved and used, and the appropriate usage rights and limitations must be attached to every asset.

• The Land and Agricultural Development Bank of South Africa is looking for a service provider to supply a geographic information systems (GIS) solution. As agriculture is inherently dependent on natural resources, such as soil, water and climate, the bank says there is a critical need for accurate, real-time geospatial intelligence to support decision-making.

• The Airports Company of South Africa (ACSA) wishes to acquire ICT consulting services to develop a market-aligned pricing model and conduct a network infrastructure assessment. In its tender documentation, the company says the objective of this project is to appoint a qualified service provider to deliver an end-to-end commercial turnaround strategy for ACSA’s ICT service portfolio.

• The State Information Technology Agency (SITA) wishes to source an Office 365 external data backup solution with unlimited storage for 1 110 Office 365 user accounts for the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Public Works, including maintenance and support. SITA says the department seeks to have a high quality of IT services by ensuring its customers have uninterrupted access to IT systems and infrastructure. The department is current using Veeam Availability Suite Enterprise Plus as a backup and replication solution.

• Stellenbosch Municipality is inviting bids for the setup and configuration of ICT security services. These must include best efforts detection, investigation, monitoring and remediation of misuse and abuse of network resources occurring behind the corporate firewall based upon agreement and implementation of a set of best practices security policies and procedures.

• The Electoral Commission is seeking to procure highly-available corporate internet connectivity services from qualified internet service providers. These are required for its national office and disaster recovery sites.

• Sentech wishes to appoint an accredited Software AG or IBM partner to integrate and support enterprise systems, including billing, operation support systems and installer management application. The company currently employs webMethods ESB as its primary integration middleware across all enterprise systems. The platform enables the integration of various internal and external systems, services, devices, processes, business partners and data, providing substantial business value and operational efficiency.

• The South African Local Government Association (SALGA) requires a service provider to supply licences, technical support and maintenance of its cloud-based Ornecy human capital management system. It is centrally managed and licences are managed by the human capital business unit at the national office. All SALGA employees have access to the system. User access management is carefully managed and controlled through an approved user access management policy and procedure.

• SITA is inviting information for provision of indicative pricing and price structure for advance endpoint security solutions. This follows its May 2024 request for information on advanced endpoint security solutions. The agency is now looking at indicative pricing to provide “a better service with the lowest possible price” to its customers.