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THE CRITICAL ELEMENTS   

LOOK, LISTEN, LEARN

Travel the world and you’ll find that citizen frustration with government processes is up there with death and taxes in the inevitability stakes.
Indeed, for many citizens, the phrase “workings of government” is a contradiction in terms, not least in South Africa where citizen perceptions of State performance where it counts is most generously described as “low”. At time of writing, research by Municipal IQ suggested that 2009 looked set to be the year of the service delivery protest in SA. By July of this year, 24 “major” protests had been recorded – close to the entire total of 27 for 2008, 31 for 2007 and “likely to exceed the peak of 35 in 2005.”

With both the public and private sectors facing increasing unrest and threats of strike action emanating from all sectors, including municipal workers, it’s not entirely outlandish to suggest that our current government is staring down the barrel of a citizen satisfaction gun.

Striking municipal workers affecting sectors including refuse and public transport generate further citizen dissatisfaction and inconvenience in a climate where satisfaction levels are already at rock bottom. According to research undertaken by the Institute of Race Relations, 70% of South African children live in poverty; the number of households where a child is in charge is almost 148 000. With “strict” unemployment measured by Statistics SA at over 4.1 million by Q3 2008, recent news of imported goods being used in the refurbishment of Kings House in Durban has raised public ire. Adding to the dissatisfaction: high-end vehicle purchases and rental of houses at taxpayers’ expense by various government ministers and officials – despite ministerial regulations allowing for such purchases. It is telling that, during many of the protests, government vehicles and buildings were vandalised indicating that, even if government feels it is doing its best, citizens are planting responsibility for delivery squarely on its shoulders.

Hands up, heads down

That such high levels of unrest and expectations of delivery should come at a time of global economic crisis means government will have to get creative and, indeed, honest with itself if South African citizens are to have their faith restored. Even where money is available to implement solutions, the challenges posed by the skills shortage – particularly at local government level – will continue to dog delivery. Strong leadership is required – recent comments by various high-profile members of the government blaming past leadership of the governing party for current ills will do little to solve the problems we face, regardless of their accuracy.

To be fair, as the South African Institute for Race Relations points out, “significant gains” have been made in the number of households with access to services, even in the face of corruption and skills shortages. The problem lies in a general belief that governments are all-but oblivious to citizens’ most pressing needs and concerns. As Deloitte points out, citizens increasingly expect governments to deliver services as rapidly and efficiently as the business world does – as their research puts it: if a bank can provide someone with a credit card in 48 hours, why should a citizen have to wait weeks or even months for a birth certificate? It’s time for government to put its collective hands up and take the responsibility – and then get the heads down and work on solutions.

Technology, fortunately, can lighten the load – or at least help to drive efficiency. While there are still some public officials out there labouring under the delusion that e-government means them posting their picture, life story and achievements online, the overwhelming majority have, mercifully, moved with the times and are entering a more service-oriented frame of mind. In a digital world of social networking applications and interactive Web 2.0 technologies, it is increasingly difficult for public servants and representatives to claim ignorance of their constituents’ aspirations and desires. And for those citizens still without access to the tools of e-government, heightened awareness of the possibilities afforded by it is making them increasingly impatient on issues of infrastructure rollout. Even in communities where digital access is low down on the priorities pecking order, citizen expectations of service delivery on everything from ID books to social welfare grants depend on efficient systems driven by technology. As Dr Ntsika Msimang of the Meraka Institute has put it, “e-government will not happen if the people are not connected.” As will be seen, the key to excellence in governmentto- citizen (G2C) delivery is as much about human behaviour as it is about technology.

Citizen at the centre

Research by Accenture has identified four critical elements that are in place in organisations that achieve high performance through customer service:

– They are citizen-centric; i.e. they organise their services and information around their citizens’ needs and circumstances.

– They use a variety of channels to provide information and service to people and strive for seamless co-ordination between these channels.

– They work together at the local, regional and national levels to provide integrated services.

– They actively reach out to their customers, working to ensure that people are well informed about the services they offer so that customers can use their services easily and understand what is expected from them in return.

According to Accenture, governments that embrace these elements “would be well on the way to providing greater value for their stakeholders.” By taking this approach, governments can move to the next stage of building implicit trust between them and their citizens, based on the perception that government is providing better value/quality public services to them.

Accenture says the resulting trust “helps build a more connected populace, whose true needs inform government policy”, creating a self-feeding loop of good policy and citizen trust and engagement.

Professor Fanie Cloete of the Department of Public Governance at the University of Johannesburg has said that citizen trust is not a natural by-product of good government knowledge management systems, it comes as “a result of changes in the collective perceptions and opinions of the populace about the role of government in society.” Such changes are facilitated by the provision of high-quality information about government problems and strategies to citizens. Cloete has found that, before improved knowledge management can lead to better trust in government, certain conditions must be in place, among them:

– Both processes and content of governmental interventions must be appropriate to the fulfilment of government’s responsibility to protect, regulate, develop and care for its society in such a way that citizens are satisfied.

– If a democratic government cannot fully satisfy the procedural or substantive demands or needs of its society (which is often the case in the face of resource constraints), it should be able to explain to citizens why this is the case and suggest changed/alternate processes by which policy goals can be achieved over time. This implies a rational process of education and negotiation, leading to agreement on the way forward.

– Such an agreement will facilitate a knowledge-based relationship of trust between government and citizen – if citizens perceive such agreements to be in their collective interest and abide by government’s decisions and actions.

– Knowledge-based interactions between government and citizen in our knowledge society are best achieved through electronic means. Consequently, the creation of electronic capacity, knowledge repositories, interaction and transactional channels are prerequisites for trust-building in contemporary society.

Cloete reports that, even in countries with low-literacy rates, the information society has made it possible to reach citizens and improve levels of trust through information provision. The key to this, however, rests in empowering citizens by “creating a critical degree of electronic literacy [and to] establish reliable network channels to the community for the purposes of knowledge dissemination and interaction, as well as within its own back offices in order to manage these processes effectively.”

Such citizen-empowerment “implies the creation of appropriate electronic communications systems accessible to all at the various levels required” as well as instructing government officials in their use – a tall order, according to Cloete, “because it necessitates a paradigm shift in government thinking and practice about public services delivery and government spending priorities.”

Essentially, trusted e-government delivery needs to operate closely on the time-honoured ideals of a working democracy: the knowledge that it’s always about representing the citizens to the very best of your ability. Technology offers governments a classic win-win situation: it allows them to streamline processes, access critical information online and improve on service delivery. As fully-fledged democracies now recognise, an informed citizenry and transparent information are the very life-blood of what makes them tick.

Walking the hard miles

Technology has made the automation of once cumbersome processes possible, all the while making it increasingly possible for citizens and businesses to interact electronically with their government. As a young democracy, South Africa stands to learn much about e-government by emulating international best practice and learning from the mistakes of others, using these lessons to overcome the developmental obstacles that stand between us and continued growth and maturation.

As former Minister for Public Service and Administration Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi told delegates to the 2008 GovTech conference, “The South African government has greatly improved the distribution of infrastructure to the most rural areas...Despite all this, ICT has not taken advantage of this infrastructure to deliver services to the people. The chief reason provided for this failure is that there is not enough bandwidth or it is expensive to do so. It can also be argued that there are no integrated government systems that deliver real value to the citizens.” The former minister added that “we have a good network backbone but we need to automate and integrate government services as a key to service delivery. Citizens should be assisted at many service points irrespective of which government department owns the service. ICT should look at providing common ways of capturing citizen service requests and tracking that the requests are completed as per citizen request.”

Although access to online services is increasing all the time in South Africa – the recent landing of new undersea cabling will hopefully help drive access, uptake and affordability for citizens – it’s fair to say that the telephone, and cellphone in particular, is the medium through which most citizens can access e-government information and services. As the World Bank indicates, cell phones can act as a “leapfrogging” tool in developing countries where citizens do not have access to high-end telecommunications infrastructure. In South Africa, where many citizens do not have access to, or cannot afford, landline telephones, call centres have not always offered adequate solutions to citizen requirements; lengthy periods waiting on hold are too costly for many and the office hours operated by centres are often not appropriate to citizen needs.

Upwardly mobile

According to the GSM Association, the bulk of new mobile customers in coming years will be in developing countries. This offers government a unique opportunity to extend its reach into rural and disadvantaged areas with services that would ordinarily be restricted to those with access to full-on IT infrastructure. The World Bank cites the example of South Africa’s SIMpill initiative, a locally-developed project that utilises cell phone technology to make sure that patients take their correct medication on time and alerting health professionals if they appear not to be taking medication as prescribed. The project was developed in conjunction with local cellular company Tellumat and involves the attachment of a SIM card to a pill bottle. Although it has received awards internationally (including the American “World’s Best Technology” award), the project has not yet been fully rolled out in the local market.

A similar local initiative is the Dokoza health project, a joint pilot initiative of SITA, the Centre for Public Service Innovation (CPSI) and the CSIR, which allows health workers to check on prescriptions, access blood test results from the National Health Laboratory service, remind patients to take medication/of their next appointment and access patient histories. This real-time solution allowed the Department of Health a cost-effective and freely-accessible national platform on which to interact with citizens. The Department of Home Affairs has also been making use of mobile technology to counter the negative effects of lengthy queues experienced at its information desks by citizens, many of whom had travelled long distances to get there. Citizens can now access data on the progress of their applications for ID books, birth certificates, passports and other documents via SMS – a 24/7 solution that doesn’t involve queuing and frees up Home Affairs staff to better deal with face-to-face queries.

 

Mobile e-government services can be used to offer citizens a broad spectrum of transactional and information-based interactions with government. Taking a page from the mobile banking services book, governments can (and many do) offer citizens the opportunity to pay bills or fines, renew licenses or pay rates over secure, government-operated platforms. Citizen-friendly information on everything from public transport timetabling, to safety alerts and location-based services could also be employed. Ultimately, cell phone technology could be utilised in much the same way as a smart card system to enable authentication for e-government services. Because mobile technology affords two-way interaction, they represent another opportunity for governments to engage with citizens in terms of meaningful feedback via a complaints or suggestions system.

According to the Government of Western Australia’s Mobile Government Best Practice Guide, there are management issues to be considered prior to developing a successful mobile service delivery strategy, among them:

• Privacy and security: The privacy and security of applications must be assessed, especially when the application involves a two-way interaction or reveals some personal information on the mobile screen that may be visible to others. Offering the alert capacity as an “opt in” option for services such as health appointments may overcome some privacy concerns.

• Mobile authentication over different devices: Authentication of information and individuals must be capable of being established if applications involve financial transactions, confidential or sensitive information.

• Content presentation and management: In a small screen environment, applications must be capable of being utilised on different types of mobile devices in a similar manner.

• Records management: Short message services and other information sent and received are public records. Applications must have a secure, trusted and reliable method of capturing records for storage in line with legislative and commercial obligations.

Enhanced interaction with citizens and their data can allow governments and their agencies to develop improved and sophisticated customer/citizen relationship management (CRM) systems – which in turn allows government to build on this to offer better citizen services.

Trust through customer service

When it comes to e-government delivery, no principle carries heavier weight than CRM. All research indicates that governments that embrace the principles of cross-government, multi-channelled, proactive, citizen-centricity are the ones also delivering greater value for stakeholders more cost-effectively, all while being prepared for new challenges.

Leadership in customer service is hallmarked by the kind of service that builds an innate and implicit sense of trust between citizens and the government that services them. Research undertaken by Accenture in 2008 suggests that South Africa’s government is lagging behind in achieving this – out of 21 countries assessed, we came second-last in terms of citizen perception of how well government was doing at “building a better quality of life for you and your family.” More than half of respondents thought performance “bad/very bad”. Given our performance in Accenture’s 2007 customer service maturity survey, this is hardly surprising. In that report, South Africa scored a lowly 6%, placing us last out of 22 countries for “customer service maturity.” First-placed Singapore scored 89% while Brazil – regularly viewed as our developmental peers – managed 20%, having come last in the 2005 survey. Brazil’s 20% may not be the stuff of excellence, but at least it represents improvement. South Africa came second last in 2005, meaning that we’re moving backwards.

That we seem to be slipping behind, even as the countries we share common ground with are moving ahead, clearly hasn’t been lost on the South African in the street, where perception of government delivery has taken a distinct turn for the worse and threatens to escalate to crisis point. When you consider that, in the citizen-satisfaction stakes we’re in the same boat as some of the leading countries, you get an idea of the lengths we have to go to when people in those countries are complaining about the kind of service we can still only dream of.

It’s what you put in

The lack of real understanding of what CRM is all about has been the failing point of many a well-intentioned project in both the public and private sectors. Part of the problem is that people look at CRM and only see the technologies that support it, a bit like trying to drive a car without petrol. Automating a process or applying a high-tech solution to something that’s already a mess only speeds up the rate at which small problems are worsened. In essence: if you put garbage in, that is all you will get out.

CRM brings together information from across all data sources, inside and outside government, to offer a single, holistic view of each citizen in real time, facilitating speedyyet- informed decisions from those operating at the citizen-facing coalface. In both business and government, CRM has become a customer/citizen-centric philosophy, the key to the success of which are people, processes and technology. CRM might not have been developed with government in mind, but they make a perfect match. Implemented in government, CRM optimises the following:

• Increased citizen participation and interaction

• Development of satisfactory government-citizen relationships

• Delivery of high-quality, consistent citizen experience

• Continuous learning about citizen needs and communicating those throughout government

• Driving the delivery of products and services tailored to citizen needs

• Improved cost management

Most of the positive discussions of CRM coming from the business world focus heavily on its capacity for reducing costs, one consequence of which is a heavy orientation towards selfservice. Self-service has its place in e-government provision too, but only if it is the best option for the citizen. If the sole motivation for it is to make things easier for government, it is best avoided.

The Office of the Public Protector (OPP) is one SA government agency that has made use of a CRM implementation to streamline and automate processes. The OPP’s mandate is to investigate allegations of improper conduct within the organs of state and to resolve disputes. CRM allows the agency speedy access to all relevant information while automating processes that were previously conducted manually, allowing cases to be resolved faster and more efficiently.

Batho Pele – it’s a culture thing

According to Accenture, there are four key enabling practices that create opportunities for true customer service transformation that will close the gap between expectations and reality. These are:

• Differentiate service offerings based on customer insight and segmentation, to meet people’s specific needs and improve equality of outcomes. Better service starts with better understanding.

• Actively engage citizens, service users and other stakeholders in defining outcomes and designing services. Engage. Listen. Respond.

• Use the experience and resources available across government, non-profits, community groups, private business and individual citizens to achieve complex, cross-cutting outcomes. Harness all available resources.

• Focus on improving transparency, accessibility of information and the means for people to address government directly, so that customers can hold governments accountable for the quality of services delivered. Be transparent. Be accountable. Ask for and act on feedback.

The principles are broadly similar to the DPSA’s Batho Pele (“People First”) initiative, which is aimed at instigating a government-wide performance culture and ethos. Bathe Pele requires national and provincial governments to develop performance management systems that include the setting of service delivery indicators and performance measurements. Like CRM, good customer/citizen service lies at the heart of this and all public servants are required as a condition of their service to practice the principles of Batho Pele, which are:

• Consultation: Citizens should be consulted about the level and quality of the public services they receive and, wherever possible, should be given a choice about the services that are offered.

• Service standards: Citizens should be told what level and quality of public service they will receive so they are aware of what to expect.

• Access: All citizens should have equal access to the services to which they are entitled. • Courtesy: Citizens should be treated with courtesy and consideration.

• Information: Citizens should be given full, accurate information about the public service they are entitled to receive.

• Openness and transparency: Citizens should be told how national and provincial departments are run, how much they cost and who is in charge.

• Redress: If the promised standard is not delivered, citizens should be offered an apology, a full explanation and a speedy and effective remedy: when complaints are made, citizens should receive a sympathetic, positive response.

• Value for money: Public services should be provided economically and efficiently in order to give citizens the best value for money.

Are we winning yet?

E-government isn’t about eliminating or replacing human interaction, but it’s easy to see how technology could facilitate the implementation of a “People First” ethos, providing citizens, business and employees with cleaner, more efficient public administration in locations that are more convenient for them.

Again, when it comes to public perceptions, Accenture research indicates that South Africans are yet to feel the full extent of the Batho Pele ethos. When surveyed on a variety of issues, from equality of access to the tailoring of services to meet individual needs and on to engaging and consulting with citizens, Accenture found that more than 50% of respondents consistently rated our government as “bad” or “very bad.”

From a Batho Pele perspective, it’s all well and good to advise citizens of the service standards they can expect from government, but it is also vital that government not only learns to listen to citizens but actively seeks their opinions on the services they want, as well as how they want those services to be delivered. According to Accenture, this can only be achieved by “actively engaging citizens early on in the decision-making process and seeking their opinions on an ongoing basis.” For Accenture, this has to be the starting point: “a service may be delivering excellent customer experience but this counts for little if that service is not contributing to the outcomes that are important to its customers.”

On some levels, government initiatives such as former Finance Minister Trevor Manuel’s “Tips for Trevor” (in which members of the public were invited to offer input to the annual Budget – with the Minister acknowledging many of the suggestions) or the Imbizo programme, represent a worthy attempt at achieving the above. Established in 2001, Imbizos offer an opportunity for citizens to interact in an unmediated fashion directly with senior government executives and offer input on challenges and policy issues. According to the government’s Web site, Imbizos give “The President and others direct access to what people say and feel about government and service delivery, to listen to their concerns, their grievances and advice about the pace and direction of government’s work.”

As recurring social unrest and protests indicate, however, even if the government is listening, there is a perception in some quarters that it is not. According to the Public Sector Commission’s (PSCs) 2009 State of the Public Service report, a key aspect of the challenge is “the apparent tendency to see the promotion of public participation as the domain of the executive and not public service officials. As a result, not enough attention is paid to building departmental capacity in this area, including the training to public servants.” As the PSC notes, the “chasms in participatory governance” suggested by service delivery protests compromises “consensus with communities and the smooth implementation of state policies”. According to the Commission, the need for improved citizen engagement remains strong. While some government departments have established Public Participation Units, the PSC states that, without the necessary funding, human resources and guidelines, they will not function effectively. A sample of five national and eleven provincial departments examined by the PSC found that 38% had no budget allocated for public participation and that where there was funding, it ranged wildly from R1.1 to R12 million, indicating an unevenness in resource allocation.

Forging real, strong links

Achieving customer-centric agility involves governments understanding that, while self-service is desirable in many cases, e-government strategies must be built around the recognition that there are times when human intervention is not only required, but desirable.

Programmes should be designed around the central precept of e-democracy – that it is a direct link to government for citizens, offering them the opportunity to participate in the workings of their country, beyond just turning up every few years to vote in elections.

Government-to-citizen e-government drives access to relevant information, making government more accountable to its citizens, providing genuinely useful information rather than data based around what is available in the silos of state departmental bureaucracy. South Africa’s government has attempted to counter the silo effect by organising citizen information according to individual and business “life episodes” (or “BMDs” – birth, marriages and deaths) rather than according to civil service departments. This helps to eliminate the “that’s not my department, try the next counter” mentality.

With all of the above in mind, the collaborative and inclusive nature of Web 2.0 applications can, as will be seen in a later chapter, drive accountability and citizen participation in new ways while strengthening back-office collaboration and communication. Best practice examples from around the world indicate clearly that e-government delivers value and significantly improves service and the ease with which citizens can interact and access information and entitlements. There’s only so much information that can be put online; eventually, people will expect to be able to do something with it. It’s fine to post a map online offering directions to your offices, but when the person visiting your site is a busy working mother looking to download an application form or lives in a remote rural area and uses the local Thusong to get online...

Stages of e-government evolution

Many observers have commented on the gap that continues to exist between dealing with government in the real world and functioning as an ordinary citizen online. Think about it: anyone can buy a car online, but if you want to renew your licence, you still have to stand in a queue. This is an area in which the concept of self-service comes into its own.

As things stand, South Africa continues to hover in e-government limbo as some high-profile and ambitious projects such as Home Affairs’ “Who Am I Online?” continue to attract controversy even as the Department has received awards from the UN for its fingerprint verification system and Track and Trace initiative – which allows citizens to check the status of ID or passport applications by SMS, Internet or telephone. Such awards may be heartening for those working on the initiatives, but were met with cynicism by South Africans who now find themselves having to pay extra money for visas to travel to the United Kingdom – thanks to the department’s tardiness in rectifying concerns raised by the UK government regarding the security of our passport-issuing processes.

It is generally accepted that there are five stages of e-government. That South Africa appears to have a footprint on a variety of steps simultaneously is indicative of the challenges we face on the coherence front:

Stage I – Emerging: A government’s online presence is mainly comprised of a Web page and/or an official website; links to ministries or departments of education, health, social welfare, labour and finance may/may not exist. Much of the information is static and there is little interaction with citizens.

Stage II – Enhanced: Governments provide more information on public policy and governance. They have created links to archived information that is easily accessible to citizens, as for instance, documents, forms, reports, laws and regulations, and newsletters.

Stage III – Interactive: Governments deliver online services such as downloadable forms for tax payments and applications for licence renewals. In addition, the beginnings of an interactive portal or website with services to enhance the convenience of citizens are evident.

Stage IV – Transactional: Governments begin to transform themselves by introducing two-way interactions between ‘citizen and government’. It includes options for paying taxes, applying for ID cards, birth certificates, passports and licence renewals, as well as other similar G to C interactions, and allows the citizen to access these services online 24/7. All transactions are conducted online.

Stage V – Connected: Governments transform themselves into a connected entity that responds to the needs of its citizens by developing an integrated back office infrastructure. This is the most sophisticated level of online e-government initiatives and is characterised by:

• Horizontal connections (among government agencies)

• Vertical connections (central and local government agencies)

• Infrastructure connections (interoperability issues)

• Connections between governments and citizens

• Connections among stakeholders (government, private sector, academic institutions, NGOs and civil society). In addition, e-participation and citizen engagement are supported and encouraged by governments in the decision-making process.

Above all, be useful

The intentions-based government portal is, for many, the foundation stone of quality online e-government service provision. Portals are “joined up” (i.e. G2G) government in action, requiring as they do the sharing of information across a variety of sources and departments. It has been proven repeatedly that a plethora of disparate websites, each directing users from one to the other, merely serves to replicate traditional structures, failing to take into account customer needs. Merely publishing information, while not entirely useless, does not satisfy a citizen’s need to transact and enquire – the primary reason most people deal with government in the first place.

E-government leaders are the ones who fully exploit the potential of portals. The vision to strive for is one where a national portal draws on information from the municipalities, provincial legislatures and all the way to the very top of national government. Sweden, a world leader in e-government and widely-regarded for its cross-government co-operation, has as part of its central vision the aim of genuine one-stop service for citizens, i.e. regardless of the issue, citizens should only ever have to make one point of contact with government.

The government’s re-launched and rejuvenated Batho Pele National Gateway portal (www.services.gov.za) aims to offer citizens access to round-the-clock services on a range of life-relevant issues via an integrated, one-stop service centre. It has certainly achieved its target of providing information in all eleven of South Africa’s official languages, but continues to lack the fully-interactive transactional capabilities offered by e-government leaders such as Singapore or Malaysia. Nonetheless, the information is clearly arranged based on the day-to-day things citizens or businesses may wish to do, with a helpful section clearly identifying the most popular items such as tax returns, vehicle licensing, passport/ID applications.

Provincial portals

As is often the case when it comes to e-government, the national sphere stands to learn a lot from what’s happening in the provinces. Local and Provincial governments are often in a better position to listen to citizens and access grassroots needs, opinions and ideas. Sites such as KZN’s, with its heavy focus on its Premier and his achievements (details of which are front-and-centre on the site http://www.kwazulunatal.gov.za/) with other information more likely to be of interest to citizens (say, the “provincial nerve centre” for service delivery) relegated towards the back of the portal bus, continue to leave ample room for improvement.

KZN citizens interested in accessing a copy of Ezakwazulu Natali Magazine will have to stomach a 98Mb download – the kind of activity that could get a citizen into trouble for hogging the bandwidth at their local Thusong. North West’s site is similarly loaded towards its Premier.

Leading the pack in the portal stakes are the Cape Gateway and Gauteng online initiatives. It’s difficult to discuss e-government without citing case studies and initiatives from the Western Cape, which has shown leadership in many aspects of e-government and bridging the digital divide. Its www.capegateway.co.za portal, launched in 2003 has set the tone for other provinces, with over 30 000 pages of information on government services, projects, facilities, contracts, jobs and tenders. Using the ‘life events model’ to base information around easy-to-navigate categories such as birth, marriage, etc., the portal is very much a citizen-focused initiative, which is in line with international best practice. Indeed, the initiative has been the recipient of several accolades, both domestically and internationally. A unified appearance and theme add to the best practice model of keeping users abreast of where they are and what they might expect. Initiatives such as the Ulwazi Resource Centre keep province social development employees in the loop on the latest information as well.

Gauteng’s www.gautengonline.gov.za portal has enjoyed a much-needed makeover and, like the Cape Gateway, offers citizen information arranged clearly on a life events model with unified appearance and theme throughout. Citizens are invited to email the Provincial Government – a feature often included on sites of this nature that is more often honoured in theory than in practice. In this case, full marks to Gauteng for knowing where to find the “reply” button.

E-services for everyone

For all the progress, words of encouragement, hard work and innovative thinking from citizens with a vision and a drive to make a difference, one simple fact remains: lack of infrastructure, education and capacity continue to be serious barriers to the success and expansion of Government-to-Citizen e-government in South Africa.

The electronic delivery of services to citizens is nigh impossible in communities that have little or no electricity or landline telephone access, let alone the hardware that goes with it (or the means to purchase it). Previously disadvantaged and marginalised communities with high levels of unemployment and unsatisfactory access to education and health care perhaps stand to gain the most from what technology has to offer, even at the simplest level of the state effectively delivering financial and other aid to those most in need of it.

South Africa’s historically low Internet penetration (and the high telecoms costs that, despite constant agitation and seemingly endless efforts to address them, continue to contribute to the continuation of this situation) and poor infrastructure outside of the main urban areas have forced those in power to consider more innovative and non-traditional ways of providing online access to services to all the people, equally. Given the high penetration rates of cellular technology, it’s worth considering this route as a means of accessing greater numbers of people; that said, there are only so many kinds of information that people can wish to access using a tiny cell phone screen – it’s hardly the best method for, say, filling out an online form, although it might be a useful way of ordering one. Batho Pele can only become a reality when everyone has the chance to avail of it.

Public private partnerships

In recognition of this fact, government is collaborating with the private sector to roll out and support its vision for e-government. A case in point is the Centre for Public Services Innovation (CPSI), a government agency tasked with developing multichannel access. The CPSI has developed the e-government Knowledge Exchange, designed to nurture knowledge sharing and support across government departments and agencies and between the public and private sectors.

In support of initiatives such as those at the CPSI, the government has thrown its weight behind efforts such as the Multi-Purpose Community Centres (MPCCs) – now called Thusong Centres (after the Sesotho word for a place to get help) – in order to make Internet-based information and services accessible to those living in rural and poor communities. The Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) is behind the development of the Thusongs, which offer community access to information, training, resources, services and facilities in a single location, all in partnership with community-based organisations, NGOs and local businesses offering access to computers, fax and Internet.

The ultimate aim is for each municipality having its own Thusong. The centre managers are employed by the municipalities but work in close partnership with the GCIS. The website is at www.thusong.gov.za.

From Post Office to Digital Doorway

The Public Internet Terminals (PIT) initiative was launched in 1998 as a joint initiative by the Department of Communications and the South African Post Office (SAPO). The project aimed to provide multimedia kiosks in post offices and MPCCs around the country, offering access to information, e-mail facilities, job searching, educational content and business information. The concept was designed to offer accessible information and technology to all, but it has had its critics, mostly based around the fact that many of the kiosks have failed to stand up to the rigours of heavy use. Nonetheless, with a large number of these already rolled out, it indicates that there is at least a commitment to making what could be a very valuable e-government tool work.

DIRECT TO THE PM The Malaysian government has launched a “Direct to the PM” Web site allowing citizens to send comments and suggestions directly to the prime minister – and receive a response. In its first month of operation, the site received more than 13 000 submissions.

A more successful initiative between the government and post office has been the ‘Paymaster to the Nation’ project. The scheme, geared towards making life a lot easier for rural citizens entitled to state pensions and welfare grants, uses smart card technology to link funds paid into a Postbank account to their rightful recipient. The smart card bears the beneficiary’s fingerprint details and photo, therein eliminating the possibility of fraud while extending the benefits of banking to communities that do not meet the requirements to open an account at a commercial bank. Those participating earn interest on their money and can access it from ATMs or any post office branch, ending the long trek to the nearest large town for many rural dwellers.

On the transactional front, the Post Office also allows citizens to pay traffic fines or renew their private bag/post office box online by registering a profile with the ePostal Online service.

No frontiers

There is a lot of work being done, and plenty of vision, but South Africa still has a long way to go in terms of fully-fledged G2C service provision. The most significant roadblocks to effective e-government continue to be infrastructure, education and workplace culture within the public service, but progress is being made and the government continues to state its commitment to this. Much work remains to be done, however, not least in the area of changing public perception.

With undersea cabling now a reality rather than a distant prospect, second national operator Neotel laying down fibre at a rapid rate, Telkom’s WiMAX and other initiatives and the main cell providers adding 3G data services to the mix, access to infrastructure should at least begin to shrink as an issue for most people. Whether or not the high costs of going online can be diluted by increased infrastructure remains to be seen. The affordability issue may in some way be addressed by local governments, with municipalities such as Knysna, eThekwini, Tshwane and the cities of Cape Town and Johannesburg all adopting a “little red hen” approach to connectivity and rolling infrastructure out themselves. These initiatives could go a long way towards not only driving e-government services but also affordable, broad-based access for citizens.