Group Information Technology

Mandate

Group IT is responsible for ensuring the effective delivery of IT systems, infrastructure and processes to support Eskom’s business objectives and business processes. From the safety of its people, to the experience of its customers and to the efficiency of its power stations, Group IT plays a vital role in achieving Eskom’s aspiration of becoming a high-performance organisation, and in the running of the day-to-day operations of the business.

Operational overview

Group IT continued to implement its sourcing strategy, with all major software contracts now concluded. This will result in 85% of all Group IT spend being covered by enabling agreements, resulting in significant financial savings for Eskom.

The Agisana project, which is intended to support the National Infrastructure Development Plan, gathered pace during the year. Eskom was asked by the Department of Public Enterprises to assume the programme implementation, integration and coordination role for
SIP 01 (strategic infrastructure project). Eskom leveraged its previous fit-for-purpose study and its relationship with Oracle to configure and pilot a project management and monitoring solution using the Primavera product. The solution was successfully demonstrated to the Presidential Infrastructure Coordinating Commission (PICC) management committee. Eskom will manage the new Primavera licences on behalf of all the state-owned entities.

There was a successful go-live of the new online vending system on 22 July 2013. The system performance has been good, where Eskom has witnessed a maximum of 131 transactions per second and more than 1 200 transactions per minute. A total of 807 052 transactions in a day was also recorded.

The mobility application has been rolled out to the Eskom business enabling Eskom employees to request and approve leave, and approve travel claims via a mobile device. This innovation will change the way Eskom works. By enabling these transactions on mobile devices, Eskom employees will be able to have quick and easy access from anywhere to day-to-day self-service functions, leading to an improvement in employee agility, efficiency and a better IT experience.

The piloted power management software has been rolled out to the full complement of Windows 7 users in Eskom and includes enhanced power management rules for both desktops and laptops.

The Megawatt Park data centre remains a priority one risk with unplanned failures of components and environment likely to occur, causing unavailability of major systems and processes. The risk is addressed through Eskom’s business continuity and disaster management procedures.

The information security programme is underway and will receive continued focus until completion. This programme will assist in mitigating two of Eskom’s priority one IT risk, namely cyber security threats and information security attacks resulting in electricity supply interruptions, productivity and data loss and damage to Eskom’s reputation, and confidential data leakage or data falling into the wrong hands, leading to tarnishing of Eskom’s image and reputation. The programme includes, but is not limited to, new software for data leakage prevention, new firewalls, laptop encryption and a security operations centre.