SA e-government needs streamlining

By Siyabonga Africa, ITWeb junior journalist

Johannesburg, 19 Feb 2009

The standardisation of budgets throughout all municipalities in SA is key to an effective e-government strategy, says MTN.

The mobile operator's public sector sales manager Muzi Dlamini believes citizen access to online municipal services still remains the great barrier to e-government adoption.

Dlamini says the fact e-government budgets sit at the national government level presents a perfect opportunity to correct the impasse.

“This is a perfect opportunity for the national departments in charge of the e-government budgets to develop applications that are uniform across all municipalities, and then provide a national e-government shared service, and a platform on which all municipalities would build their applications.”

The first step

Dlamini, who will speak at ITWeb's eGovernment Conference in March, says government can start developing e-government services that can be accessed via existing and affordable communications methods such as SMS.

“Daily usage and rapid adoption will follow convenient, affordable access,” says Dlamini, “Government could start with providing remote HIV/Aids treatment, monitoring and treatment via an SMS-based service.”

The public sales executive explains such a service is important because the ARVs will be wasted if doctors cannot keep track of how the treatment is administered on an ongoing basis, and also to check if the treatment is being administered at all.