Johannesburg, 07 Feb 2017
There's a fundamental shift taking place in the relationship between digital citizenship and government. The citizen wants accessibility, ease of use and instant solutions. Government is constrained by budgets, legacy infrastructure and its reams of red tape. There's a need to develop solutions that are designed to make life easier for both public sector and the public - solutions that can play a transformative role in government, infrastructure and engagement.
"In South Africa, budget is always an issue, as is a level of uncertainty when it comes to any form of technology implementation, especially Internet based solutions" explains Danie de Kock, Director, Shandon Business Solutions, which is an EOH company. "In addition to this, most government departments have concerns around security, raising questions around whether solutions are hackable or protected enough. Finally, they are concerned that the end user doesn't have enough understanding of technology to take full advantage of what any solution can offer."
These are no small barriers to entry. The South African market is extraordinarily divided and government must be careful not to create solutions that only service a small percentage of the population. Can those in rural areas really experience the value of a technology solution when they want to access government departments?
De Kock says yes...
"The consumer is often underestimated in terms of their knowledge and understanding. Globally, people are moving towards self-service solutions, both in the public and private sectors. In South Africa, smartphone adoption has already seen technology nous leapfrog from nothing to savvy, even in rural areas, and many citizens are incredibly clued up."
Government must find a way of communicating to all levels of the market, developing systems that make it easy for the consumer to learn the tools, access services and empower themselves. To truly succeed in building a robust eGovernment, the public sector has to adopt technology solutions that are sustainable and reliable and which keep citizen and employee top of mind.
"It's also the responsibility of the technology service providers to develop solutions that make life easier for government," emphasises De Kock. "It's as important that government understand how a system works and why it's of value, as it is to create a system that respects the needs of the digital citizen."
"In addition, success depends on government recognising the importance of going digital and the role it plays in reducing corruption, cutting back on misuse and improving accuracy and efficiency," he adds. "Some of the technical solutions we've implemented have seen us deal with challenges around data capture, for example. There are vast numbers of employees capturing citizen data manually, which caused delays, impacted on finances and often resulted in both error and risk."
By introducing a digital service, Shandon Business Solutions eliminated the need to capture data at all. Now, information is entered by the user, which not only ensures it is accurate, but satisfies their need to remain self-sufficient and in control of their data. It also ticked one very important box - it made the lives of those in government significantly easier.
"This does raise the concern that technology is going to replace people and take away the government jobs they rely on," De Kock points out. "But we have not seen this happen at all. Technology isn't destroying jobs, it is reskilling people so they can go on to do different roles which are more aligned with the digital government, and which can lead to better service delivery by government. The minute you provide an eSolution to one department, you can redeploy people to the departments that remain under pressure."
From enhancing government employee skill sets to improving the digital citizen journey, the move to eGovernment can be incredibly powerful, if done well. It can eliminate lengthy administrative processes, cut back on fraud and risk, introduce a more efficient movement of human capital and allow for government to explore new opportunities and solutions.
"The digital citizen wants to get to the point where the engagement with government is easy and convenient. Government needs to become far more seamless in its digital interactions with citizens than it is today," concludes De Kock. "Instead of having to take the same ID, photos, proof of address and other paperwork from one department to another, the end-user should just log-in with one ID that grants them access to all government portals. This is the value of the eSolution - it can transform government by making every aspect of its administrative life easier. Ultimately government gains richer controls and data which can be harnessed to build opportunity and income, and citizens become more engaged and inclined to trust government with their information."
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