Effective e-Government Provincial government
Written by Rodney Wiedemann and Pamela Weaver
EFFECTIVE PRACTICE
STARK REALITY IMPEDES PROGRESS
While e-government has been a buzzword in public administration and IT circles for some time, it has really come to the fore following last year’s US presidential campaign run by Barack Obama and the Democratic Party.
This campaign was the first to demonstrate the sheer power of the Internet to organise and energise a political movement.
Since his election, President Obama’s administration has put in place an “Office of e-government”, and every detail of the new president’s vast and complex economic recovery programme is being made available for public inspection and comment online.
Having witnessed the success of Obama’s campaign, the rest of the world is now rushing to join the e-government trend, with all that it promises for greater transparency, efficiency and citizen participation. Unfortunately for the citizens of South Africa, this nation still has a long way to go to catch up with the rest of the world in terms of e-government.
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THE THREE PREREQUISITES FOR SUCCESSFUL E-GOVERNMENT IMPLEMENTATIONS • A strong, shared vision |
While e-government has the potential to transform the way in which public services are delivered and the fundamental relationship between government, the community and citizens in South Africa, this can only occur if it becomes an “integral part of how government operates”.
STARK REALITY IMPEDES PROGRESS
While e-government has been a buzzword in public administration and IT circles for some time, it has really come to the fore following last year’s US presidential campaign run by Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. This campaign was the first to demonstrate the sheer power of the Internet to organise and energise a political movement.
Since his election, President Obama’s administration has put in place an “Office of e-government”, and every detail of the new president’s vast and complex economic recovery programme is being made available for public inspection and comment online.
Having witnessed the success of Obama’s campaign, the rest of the world is now rushing to join the e-government trend, with all that it promises for greater transparency, efficiency and citizen participation. Unfortunately for the citizens of South Africa, this nation still has a long way to go to catch up with the rest of the world in terms of e-government.
According to Moses Mtimunye, chief: Strategic Services for the State IT Agency (SITA), e-government in South Africa still finds itself “perched awkwardly between its patchy performance and its persistent promise”.
While e-government has the potential to transform the way in which public services are delivered and the fundamental relationship between government, the community and citizens in South Africa, this can only occur if it becomes an “integral part of how government operates”.
STARK REALITY IMPEDES PROGRESS
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CURRENT E-GOVERNMENT SPEND • Who am I? online: Department of Home Affairs/GijimaAST (R2 billion over five years) |
Since his election, President Obama’s administration has put in place an “Office of e-government”, and every detail of the new president’s vast and complex economic recovery programme is being made available for public inspection and comment online.
Having witnessed the success of Obama’s campaign, the rest of the world is now rushing to join the e-government trend, with all that it promises for greater transparency, efficiency and citizen participation. Unfortunately for the citizens of South Africa, this nation still has a long way to go to catch up with the rest of the world in terms of e-government.
According to Moses Mtimunye, chief: Strategic Services for the State IT Agency (SITA), e-government in South Africa still finds itself “perched awkwardly between its patchy performance and its persistent promise”.
While e-government has the potential to transform the way in which public services are delivered and the fundamental relationship between government, the community and citizens in South Africa, this can only occur if it becomes an “integral part of how government operates”.
Part of the GPG’s BlueIQ regional development initiative, Blue Catalyst is guided by a fourfold mission that aims to:
• Increase the number of sustainable start-up technology- and knowledge-intensive businesses in Gauteng and South Africa;
• Assist in the transfer of technology from innovators to organisations who can commercially utilise the innovations;
• Assist smart entrepreneurs who need help in overcoming obstacles to starting businesses and commercialising innovations; and
• Showcase successful smart entrepreneurs to expose their ideas and encourage others, and promote reward and recognition for their efforts.
Blue Catalyst has created a sustainable network of start-up technology- and knowledgeintensive businesses in the region, which uses Web 2.0 tools to facilitate the drive towards the four goals mentioned above. Members can connect and share ideas based in searching and matching with others with similar interests – much like a social networking set-up.
THE EASTERN CAPE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT
As one of South Africa’s more rural provinces, it makes sense that the Eastern Cape Provincial Government has to focus on non-Internetbased ways of communicating with citizens as a priority.
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SOCIAL SERVICES SEEKS SINGLE VIEW OF THE CLIENT Gauteng’s Department of Social Services is in the process of rolling out and testing a social care solution, in conjunction with SAP and IBM, which aims to establish quality performance information, in order to have a sound platform for planning the way forward. The solution aims to offer the following benefits: - Informed decision-making According to Head of Department Bheki Sibeko, the focus of his department is on the client that is being serviced, and in this case, the clients are the most vulnerable people in the country. Therefore, by having a full record and complete information at the touch of a button, these people can be treated with a dignity that has long been missing from the public sector in general. More importantly, he says, the implementation in Gauteng is not the end – instead it is just the beginning for this solution. Sibeko says that since these same clients are also clients of departments like education, health, and their local municipality, to name just a few, the idea is to lay the groundwork whereby all of these diverse departments can have a single view of the client. |
The UNDP is the UN’s global development network, an organisation advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life.
In December of 2008, a mission to the Provincial Government was sent by UNDP with the purpose to generate an assessment of the ICT situation, needs and challenges within the Department of Housing, Local Government & Traditional Affairs and several municipalities. The Eastern Cape Provincial Government has also drafted and developed an ICT strategy until 2014, in which the provincial government states that ICT could play the dual role of enhancing social and economic development by acting as an enabler of service provision as well as an industry in its own right.
In the strategy, the role of ICT is conceived as an enabler to make significant improvements in both productivity and service delivery, which encompasses UNDP’s vision of ICT as a development enabler.
UNDP South Africa will support the Eastern Cape Province in the implementation of the e-governance project, focusing on the establishment of a provincial implementation plan for the Department of Local Government and Housing and the municipalities to achieve the Provincial ICT strategy.
THE KWAZULU-NATAL PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT
Phase one of the KZN government’s “Provincial Nerve Centre” initiative, the enterprise intelligence platform (EIP) roll-out at the Office of the Premier (OIP), done in conjunction with SAS Institute, went live earlier this year, following its roll-out and testing during the final months of 2008.
The Nerve Centre now provides an automated and integrated information management system complete with reporting and analytics, dashboards and geographic information system (GIS) mapping to monitor and evaluate government’s key performance indicators and to promote transparency and anti-corruption. A business intelligence component is also being implemented. The goal is to enable the Premier or other stakeholders to obtain a single-view of the province’s performance from local level upwards, allowing users to assess the impact and performance of a broad range of initiatives against goals and benchmarks.
The system will also help to drive enhanced citizen-customer service. In-depth, ad-hoc reporting will allow service providers to strengthen the quality of service not only through the capacity to measure outcomes accurately, but through accurate identification of citizen needs. For the same reasons, the KZN government can expect to improve relationships with business. The streamlining that comes with accurate reporting and monitoring will also allow the government to drive down costs and improve efficiency.
The key objectives of the Nerve Centre include bridging the gap between strategic provincial objectives and the execution thereof. The system will help to link objectives to tangible outcomes in terms of information on key performance indicators and programme outputs across departments and local government institutions.
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THE UNDP PROJECT WILL CONSIDER FOUR AREAS OF INTERVENTION: • The creation of an implementation plan of the ICT strategy for the municipalities |
Not much has changed since last year, and the provincial government’s Web site/portal could easily be considered a failure, as it looks and
The Office of the Premier has its own site, which is accessible via the ecprov.gov.za portal. Information on the premier and DG sit alongside links such as Annual Reports, Strategic Plans and a Document Library. There are also links where Unemployed Graduates and Matriculants can register their details if they are in search of jobs or internships.
Graduates clicking on the relevant link are brought to HRD function, where they can register and post their CVs, matching up with prospective employers or applying for internships. Matriculants are directed to the Department of Public Works database, where they can input or update their details.
Other links include an online provincial maps button, linking to the Eastern Cape GIS portal and offering users access to detailed maps linked to the province’s delivery imperatives, such as social development, census information and transport. The site also provides links to a variety of initiatives such as the Eastern Cape Socio-Economic Consultative Council (ECSECC), East London Industrial Development Zone, Eastern Cape Development Corporation and the Eastern Cape Youth Commission.
Tackling e-governance with the UN’s help
Last year, a project document between the Eastern Cape Government and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) was signed with the intention of establishing a framework for co-operation in the area of e-governance, with the goal of increasing service delivery in all sectors in both the provincial and municipal spheres of the government, and to encourage citizen participation through an efficient ICT structure at municipality level.
feels as if it was designed and put together in a handful of minutes. Clearly, there is still a lot of room for improvement, as the site has no interactive services to speak of and the majority of the links to further information either lead to pages with virtually no information on them, or take the user back to the National Government portal.
Users interested in downloading copies of the magazine Ezakwazulu Natali may be in for a bandwidth-squeezing shock: at time of writing, the most recent copy on offer weighed in at a hefty 97Mb. This is probably too much for an ADSL link, never mind someone using a Thusong or Internet cafe. Many links to recent speeches or statements were broken and, in any case, rather than taking users to another page, called for them to download a document.
Clearly the Premier’s vision, as stated on the site – “to be the professionally vibrant centre of provincial government” – remains little more than a vision. Much will need to be done if KZN is to demonstrate that it is making any reasonable progress towards genuine e-government.
THE WESTERN CAPE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT
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THE CE-I HAS FOUR MAJOR ROLES: • To provide and support the basic ICT infrastructure upon which most of the government’s activities depend |
In her favour, the province already has a strong economy, high standards of health, education and housing and generally speaking, good living conditions. Unemployment is low, while skills rates are high, and it is viewed not only as a desirable place to stay, but also to do business.
In business terms, the Western Cape’s rapidly-growing ICT and contact centre sectors are fostering strong local economic growth and government support of this sector continues unabated, as it seeks to create employment while nurturing local skills and capacity. This is done through the functions of provincial knowledge and high-technology units, state agency Wesgro and through support for the Bandwidth Barn (SA’s largest shared business development incubator) and Cape Information Technology Initiative (CITI). While CITI is currently facing up to the task of restructuring operations to ensure sustainable and streamlined operations, members and management insist that it will continue to play a key role in cluster development in the province. In terms of providing ICT access to citizens, there are currently over 100 venues – mostly public libraries – throughout the province at which free Internet access can be obtained.
Focus on e-Innovation
The Centre for e-Innovation (Ce-I) provides ICT services to the Provincial Government of the Western Cape. Its purpose is to improve the quality and efficiency of government service delivery and increase public participation in government by driving ICTs within the Provincial Government.
The Ce-I uses technology as a tool to make sure that the correct information reaches its target quickly (both internally and externally). By using a range of technologies, including Web sites (including the PGWC intranet and the Cape Gateway Portal), e-mail, cellular phones, software applications – such as geographical information systems – scenario planners and accounting systems, government employees will be able to perform their roles better. This will result in improved public service.
Improving communication with the people of the province is intended to increase public knowledge of government services. Used together, technology and other resources can help build sustainable socio-economic development. This will make government more accountable, and increases the number of people accessing government services, especially people who have previously been unaware of or unable to access government services.
Better for business, better for citizen
Through the prominent positioning of advice and information relating to tenders on the Cape Gateway portal (www.capegateway.gov.za), the province seeks not only to drive business growth and development, but also to ensure fairness and competition in the allocation of government contracts. Up-to-date procurement procedures are designed to ensure value-for-money while driving commitment to promote transparency and accountability, supported by ICTs.
Meanwhile, with the Ce-I, the province seeks to significantly reduce red tape, excessive bureaucracy and the wasting of money these can lead to by using reengineered, refined processes. According to the Cape Gateway Web site, this, on a basic level, involves ensuring day-to-day functioning on core network infrastructure (WAN and LAN) and cross-departmental services like BAS, PERSAL and LOGIS and support for departmental projects such as the Health Information System (HIS).
Gateway to the Cape
| THE CE-I’S GOALS INCLUDE:
• Creating a better business environment |
These three channels aim to make the Cape Gateway service accessible to the widest possible audience. This is also addressed by providing access to the information in English, Afrikaans and Xhosa (the official languages of the Western Cape). Up to now, to get information and services, citizens have had to know which government body provides them. With Cape Gateway, information is presented from a user’s perspective
. The portal is fresh, clean and easy to navigate, while at the same providing high quality information to users. Information can be found via different channels – users can search by ‘events’, ‘government departments’ or via a ‘directory listing’. There are numerous quick links that direct the user to key initiatives – such as the Real Enterprise Development (RED Door) initiative and the Growth and Development Strategy – as well as to important information sources such as those around licensing and permits and the High Court Roll. And, if government terminology becomes too dense to understand, there is a link to a glossary of terminology.
Finally, the ‘Your Life’ area of the portal uses a “life events” model, in which information is based around easy-to-navigate categories such as birth, marriage etc. It is very much a citizen-focused initiative, in line with international best practice. Other information includes government services, jobs, tenders, starting your own business and environmental issues.
STILL FINDING THEIR WAY
While the remaining provinces have all clearly improved on a variety of fronts, there is still much that needs to be done before they achieve the level of overall “usefulness” that characterises the efforts of the PGP and PGWC. As in previous years, reams of information, policy and policy documents, often long-out-of-date “news” section sits alongside links to information on tenders and massive files containing PowerPoint presentations.
The Premiers like to make their mark too – career histories and speeches are sometimes detailed painstakingly and documented alongside visits to everything from a church bazaar to a high-level business indaba. It all has its place, of course, but for some of the provinces, Web content resources could be put to more citizen-centric use.
Northern Cape
Belying its status as the poor cousin to its Western Cape neighbour, the Northern Cape PG’s site is a busy one that looks good and is easy to navigate. With latest news opening on the main page, and menus focusing on news and events, the ‘government’s structures’ one looks solely at the key issues in the province, not to mention a regular poll that asks questions of users, such as: “Do you think that Public Service Week has broadened access to government services?” The site has a lot going for it.
The Northern Cape also currently hosts the largest single optical telescope in the southern hemisphere, SALT (Southern African Large Telescope). Should it win the tender for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope, the additional provision of fibre-optic infrastructure and telecommunications necessary to support these projects should give the province a solid foundation on which to base other services.
Free State
The Free State Provincial Government offers a toll-free number to its helpline for citizens; individual departments each have their own Web site, linked to from the provincial site. Transactional capability is thin on the ground, however. The drop-down menus used and the FSPG Online section of the portal offer numerous options to users, but the overall feel of the portal remains rather amateurish.
North West
The North West Provincial Government’s rather sparse portal provides links to news stories and documentation, but many do not work, regardless of the operating system or browser being used. The site is rather picture heavy, as opposed to information heavy, and although it describes the North West as ‘The Platinum Province’, this is clearly not the case with the PG’s Web site.
Mpumalanga
Mpumalanga’s PG portal seems to be struggling – most links (including all under the ubiquitous heading of “Links”) fail to operate in any way, and a wonderful idea in theory, which is to have a window with photos from the latest provincial events as a highlight, fails dismally, as the window launches in the wrong place, covering the main menu and blocking one’s ability to access any information about the province, the PG or the various government departments.
This is despite the fact that the province has claimed it is focusing on ICTs as a driver of service delivery and has adopted a policy of public-private partnerships to fast-track development. Among the initiatives are a monitoring and evaluation system, the provision of broadband satellite VSAT connectivity for rural areas as well as municipalities, Thusongs, schools and clinics. Mobile technology to assist citizens in managing chronic disease is also being deployed. The PG has also commissioned the development of a custom-made Municipality Performance and Project Management system. A mobile test facility to eliminate fraud in the learner drivers licensing system was also launched late last year.
Limpopo
Limpopo’s portal is relatively clean and easy on the eye, and has a simple drop-down menu to enable users to click through to whatever sources of information they require. This includes details about the provincial government and departments, news and events, services, potential careers and additional information about both the province and the country as a whole.
With a population that is 89% rural, most citizens are unlikely to have regular or meaningful online access. This situation looks set to change with the advent of an ambitious broadband wide area network project, which will ultimately connect 6 000 sites (including schools and clinics) when it is completed in early 2010. Plans to build an International Conference Centre will no doubt dovetail with the drive to roll out quality connectivity.
Meanwhile, the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Hub project has been expanded and re-named the Limpopo Living Lab, the initial stages of which are up and running. The project is a cluster incubator established in partnership with the Department of Science and Technology and Finnish authorities. The province has also implemented a SAS Monitoring and Evaluation system.
ONE STEP AT A TIME
Many of the provincial Web sites continue to show a keenness to advertise conferences and training days, alongside information designed to educate civil servants in the principles of Batho Pele. Admirable as this is, it is debatable whether a public Web site – which should be aimed at serving citizens – is the best place to do this. Intranets should be sufficient for this role.
That this information continues to be considered useful to citizens does suggest there is still some blurring of the lines between wanting to be seen to be doing something/say the right thing/show the right way of thinking and actually delivering the services. It seems that many public servants are sometimes paralysed by a combination of lack of skills and a sense that certain things can only be achieved when absolutely everything else has been put into place.
In this regard, greater strengthening of relationships between provinces and their local government and municipalities would be extremely useful, allowing an approach to delivery that amounts to taking things one step at a time. True, getting things moving in a municipality with only a few thousand citizens might seem like peanuts to a big province, but in the sense that the longest journey starts with the first steps, such an approach could reap big rewards further down the line – provided standards are agreed and, if necessary, imposed.