Top ICT tenders: SITA looks to transversal contracts

It’s a promising week for the hardware sector, with several public sector organisations taking to National Treasury’s eTenders Portal to source infrastructure.

However, a request for information from the State Information Technology Agency (SITA) reveals government is taking a different approach to end-user computing requirements.

The advertisement sees the agency requesting information for the establishment of a transversal contract for the provision of leasing of personal computers, mobile devices and computer peripherals and related services for government departments.

“The South African government has a significant and growing demand for the leasing of personal computing devices and peripherals to support modern digital government operations,” SITA explains.

“In line with this demand, the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies has tasked SITA with initiating and managing the establishment of a transversal contract that will enable the leasing of PCs, mobile devices and related peripherals across all government departments.”

The specification document states that an operating lease is a partnership of shared rewards and mutual benefits.

“These agreements provide a flexible and financially viable solution for the public sector to access assets, structuring a relationship where both the user (lessee) and the owner (lessor) reap significant rewards. This arrangement is characterised by the lessor retaining ownership of the asset, along with the associated risks and rewards of ownership, while the lessee pays for the right to use the asset for a specified period. The ‘shared reward’ lies in the mutually advantageous outcomes for both parties,” it explains.

In a second notice, the agency is inviting service providers to submit accreditation bids for inclusion on a replacement panel of suppliers to perform migration services of its clients’ applications, databases and servers to the Government Private Cloud Eco-system (GPCE).

“Many of SITA’s clients are now hosting their applications on the cloud. This has necessitated the establishment of the GPCE, which will ultimately enable SITA to offer a managed cloud hosting service to its customers.”

However, SITA says it is still in the process of establishing the capability to successfully migrate and/or on-board such clients onto the various cloud variants within the GPCE. Accordingly, the agency intends to appoint a panel of bidders to migrate/on-board such clients, either from other public cloud infrastructures or on-premises traditional or cloud infrastructures, onto the GPCE.

Other tenders that make this week’s top 10:

• The National Research Foundation is advertising for the supply and delivery of data storage and processing servers. The foundation says the MeerKAT radio telescope built and operated by SARAO has exceeded expectations and made an invaluable contribution to the scientific community. However, the current MeerKAT extension project is expected to significantly increase the telescope’s demand for storage and processing. This is due to the increase in the number of receptors and increase in the resolution, it explains.

• The Northern Cape Department of Social Development requires supply and delivery of computer peripherals, consumables, software and hardware. This includes approximately 55 laptops, 26 desktop computers and 20 licences for Microsoft Office 2024 Pro.

• Gauteng’s Provincial Treasury wishes to procure a monitoring and reporting system, including maintenance and support. This should be a fully web-based reporting portal, include an integrated business intelligence platform and be able to integrate with SAP Business Objects, it says. The procurement of the reporting system must encompass not only the supply of the reporting system but also its ongoing upgrades and maintenance.

• The Department of Electricity and Energy wishes to appoint a panel of consultants to render forensic audit, information system audit and internal audit services. The specifications include assurance services consisting of independent reviews on the adequacy and effectiveness of various processes; performance and operational audits; compliance audits; IT audits; and consulting services, which will be of an advisory nature to add value and improve the department’s operations.

• The National Consumer Commission wishes to procure 1 500 hours of professional services for the enhancement, support and maintenance of the NCC eService portal and the Opt-Out Registry system developed in .NET, C# and MS SQL. The commission reveals the contract with the current service provider has ended and it needs to partner with a service provider that has expertise and resources in software development using the Microsoft technology stack, business analysis, software testers with regression, performance and stress testing expertise, and a database administrator to assist the in-house ICT team whenever additional capacity or assistance is needed.

• The Human Sciences Research Council requests reputable, technically competent and experienced service providers to bid for the implementation and maintenance of a comprehensive backup-as-a-service (BaaS) solution, with emphasis on security, compliance and data sovereignty. The council says it needs a managed BaaS solution that will allocate a cloud storage repository (100TB) in which the on-premises virtual workloads are backed up and replicated to a secure remote site. The proposed solution should be totally scalable and be able to cater for the variety of platforms, it adds.

• The National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) is inviting bids for the migration of its data centre to Teraco in Ekurhuleni. The NHLS explains it is facing challenges with keeping servers and applications in the current location, ranging from inadequate power and cooling systems, limited physical security and constraints in handling future growth, along with high operational and maintenance costs.

• Sentech wishes to appoint a panel of professional cloud service providers. The cloud providers should be able to create and support cloud solutions aligned to emerging technologies such as health, broadcasting, machine learning, artificial intelligence, edge computing and blockchain that will assist with different business requirements internally and externally in different domains, it says.