Cape Town, 04 Nov 2011
The Department of Transport and Public Works PGWC (Provincial Government Western Cape) has digitised its Public Transport Service Centre (PTSC) applications in order to deliver a world-class service to the public transportation providers in the province.
The PTSC manages the processing and issuing of public transport operating licences to taxi, tourist, company, educational and bus transporters, and can now issue a licence within 60 days, as opposed to the previous 120-day waiting period.
Says Trish Dicks, strategic account manager: public sector at Datacentrix, enterprise content management (ECM) solution provider to the DOTPW: “The ECM programme at the DOTPW underpins all collaboration and information that go into the strategic planning and co-ordination of the department's resources. Through the use of OpenText's Workflow Server solution, the department is able to collate annual performance plans and quarterly reviews in a more manageable and effective way. Each manager throughout the department uses this solution to develop their annual strategies and business plans through a series of iterative approvals and escalations.”
According to Dicks, as the next step in its ECM programme roll-out, the government executive steering committee for ECM at DOTPW, along with Datacentrix, decided to capitalise on the ECM programme and its central content repository by automating the operations of an entire strategic component responsible for the issuing of Public Transport Operating Licences, using OpenText Business Process Management (BPM). This formed part of the DOTPW's endeavour to deliver an integrated, accessible, affordable and sustainable transport system and quality property infrastructure through socially just, developmental and empowering processes.
“Without the taxi and transport operators that are licensed by the PTSC, the economic workforce in the province would come to a standstill. Furthermore, the safety of the workforce is at risk without proper governance of transportation operators,” she explains.
“The extensive national regulations of the National Land Transport Act and issuing of public transport licences make for a slow and complicated process, which has been burdened with masses of paper and lost documents until now. These challenges gave rise to a slow turnaround of licence applications in the past, and sometimes the non-existent issuing of licences to applicants. The average duration of issuing a licence has been reduced from 120 days to 60 days within one year.”
Senior manager of Public Transport at the DOTPW, Darryl Jacobs, wanted to further gain sustainable efficiency and empower employees to make decisions with confidence by providing an auditable performance management system built on the existing OpenText ECM platform. Jacobs comments that: “Legislation requires PTSC to provide a service for the public to submit licence applications electronically and pay the department via electronic funds transfer (EFT). In order to manage the workflow of this process in a secure and compliant manner, we required an excellent solution. We selected Datacentrix to deliver a collaborative three phase project to address our goals.”
Says acting PTSC head, Bernie MacMahon: “The need for an improved and enhanced end-to-end process and system for the operating licence application and adjudication process was obvious. The purpose was to update the current process by incorporating new legislative requirements as expressed in the National Land Transport Act and associated regulations, the National and Provincial Archives Act and the Electronic Communication Technology Act.
“These changes entailed re-engineering the current process where necessary, with the result being an electronic, transparent, efficient and auditable business process. The existing ECM programme formed the framework upon which the end-to-end electronic process was built. It included online submissions of the applications, utilisation of the OpenText ECM system as the repository for all documentation, audit trails and reporting, using scanning technology where appropriate to minimise paper-based activities.”
The business processes within various areas of PTSC had to be modified to facilitate the new electronic process. The processing area, instead of making hundreds of photocopies of documentation, began scanning all of its own content, and this is added to the OpenText document repository, according to the predefined taxonomy, making it available to multiple users simultaneously. There is no longer a need to photocopy, courier, or deliver paper to stakeholders throughout the process. Furthermore, each individual is made aware of their work as and when it becomes relevant for them to act, and this is done in a manner which is now measured and manageable.
The finance department can now receive payments for application fees via EFT and verify payments according to predefined steps in the workflow. Prior to implementation, all fees had to be paid in cash at the walk-in centre. The workflow was designed and developed in three distinctive phases, allowing the department to run proof of concept tests at stage-gates and preview functionality according to the three distinctive business areas within the process, ensuring accuracy and relevance of the final solution. Reports enable management to make informed operational decisions and improve sub-processes even further as a result of the process being more transparent. Automation of the text messages and e-mail notifications sent to applicants ensure they are aware of the development and progress of their application in real-time.
“The implementation of this solution not only greatly enhanced and improved the PTSC licence process, but ensured a greater adoption and utilisation of ECM standards according to the approved records management policy and ECM strategy developed by the DOTPW,” Dicks explains. “The benefit of implementing BPM within this programme has effectively streamlined control and management within the organisation. This in turn has improved efficiency, contributing to the greater strategic objectives goals of provincial and national government.”
Furthermore, not only has there been a significant financial saving as a result of searching for lost documentation with information being available online, but there has also been a significant reduction in paper and copying costs as information can be shared without the need to copy it for distribution. The opportunity of savings is also becoming a reality in terms of office space utilisation.
Says Dicks: “PTSC experienced significant increases in service delivery levels due to immediate responses to client inquiries, resulting from the online availability of information. Improved collaboration amongst staff members proved to enhance productivity substantially. While knowledge transfer services were required, the OpenText BPM system in itself provides a clear and defined process to younger and less experienced staff. This strengthens their service skills and knowledge of the legislation to which they are mandated to comply. A key benefit in this respect is that management can better address production and skills challenges through live access to informative reports.”
“Improved governance and total compliance to national and provincial legislative requirements has undoubtedly proved to be the greatest benefit of choosing OpenText BPM,” states Helene Swart, head of the ECM solutions business unit at Datacentrix in Cape Town. “This organisation leads by example, having experienced unforeseen legislative challenges resulting from exponentially growing paper burden in the recent past, to becoming a leader in business process automation in the government of South Africa and possibly even globally.
“This requirement put forward by DOTPW promotes access to important information and helps government to perform better. Along with increased accessibility, it is critically important to consider access control and security levels. When dealing with individuals' private operating licence application information, we depend on native OpenText BPM's security, permissions and access control features, which are always a key deciding factor in the selection of a software solutions partner,” she concludes.
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