Posta contracts Technology Associates Kenya for countrywide automation pilot project.

The Postal Corporation of Kenya offers a wide range of services covering post, parcel, courier, money transfers and philatelic services to the citizens of Kenya. They do this across a network of post offices countrywide.

At the beginning of 2003, Posta revived an ambitious automation programme in collaboration with the Canadian Post with their ROSS (Retail Over-the-Counter Support) system to upgrade the performance of their (eventual) 1030 post offices nationwide as well as the efficiency of the controls at the head office. The integrated postal counter automation project is a radical change for all the citizens of Kenya, since counter services in the past were primarily operated manually.
The ROSS application system is a Microsoft based software that runs off the Windows2003 server platform over a TCP/IP network. Each post office server will be connected via a dial-up line to the headquarters' central system, which collects operational and financial information from the servers on a daily basis. The implementation will eventually enable Posta achieve its objectives of providing Faster, more flexible over-the-counter postal services to customers, Better operational and financial control over postal counter operation, Improved long-term planning capabilities by centralizing transaction information and Positioned Posta for growth from both a technical and business infrastructure perspective.

For their pilot project Posta undertook an elaborate competitive bidding process to award Technology Associates Kenya, the contract to supply and implement the hardware infrastructure for three General Post Offices. The project involved the implementation of redundant Servers configured with RAID at each PO, teller workstations configured with weighing scales, cashdrawers, customer displays, barcode scanners and label, barcode, receipt & forms printers. In collaboration with the ROSS software team from Canadian Post as well as other contractors – civil works, networking, power.etc, we executed the project with skill and competence and established a compelling relationship with the corporation paving way for a long and healthy partnership as they roll the project out across their country-wide network Server 2003 for internet security. Technology Associates Kenya’s Microsoft consultants re-deployed the latest Microsoft office client applications under a major migration project.

KPA also awarded Technology Associates Kenya the largest public sector outsourced services SLA for their comprehensive IT infrastructure across all locations, which is being manned by a 7 man on-site helpdesk. We look forward to a long and healthy relationship with Kenya’s largest public sector company and certainly the first to have made strides towards e-governance.