One of the biggest weaknesses in public sector business process automation is that of following a silo mentality.
So said Phaphedi Moabelo, CIO at Railway Safety Regulator, yesterday during the Software AG Innovation Day in Johannesburg.
"If frustrates me that every time a citizen walks into a government department, they have to fill in a form" denoting their personal details, when this information is all on record and should be available for fast access, but is not because it is held by a different state department, Moabelo said.
Whereas the private sector has taken advantage of certain state departments' services, for example banks drawing on the Department of Home Affairs (DOH)'s biometric database, there is insufficient collaboration and sharing of information between state departments, Moabelo continued.
"The bane of productivity in the public sector" is paper, said Patrick Shields, CTO at Software AG Africa. Aside from paperwork swiftly becoming antiquated, the administration systems accompanying it are inefficient and unreliable, especially when compared to their digitised counterparts, he explained.
Very importantly, "every department that provides any kind of services should have a digital channel in order to interact with citizens," Shields put forward.
Moabelo noted although some departments have citizen communication processes in place, such as the DOH enabling citizens to track their document applications via SMS, many citizens do not know these processes exist or how to use them.
In addition, few citizens are aware of the features offered by smart ID cards, she said. Departments need to better communicate with citizens about what services are available, she resolved.
The public sector should work towards "service delivery agility: the ability to deliver public services and optimise and change them at a moment's notice," said Shields.
A strong digital strategy is rendered useless without KPIs, which in turn cannot be monitored without sufficient data collection and analytics, he continued. Without sufficient analytics, digital strategies "are just words in a document," said Shields.
Another oversight to be wary of is lack of institutional knowledge and training, Shields noted. Many public sector institutions have a sound digital strategy and the technology required to put it into action, but employees lack the institutional know-how to do so, he said. It is vital for employees to know how to implement a digital strategy, and why it is important, said Shields.
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