Civic technology solutions tend to be “vanity projects” that result in millions of public funds spent on tech that does not solve existing challenges.
This was one of the takeaways during a panel discussion at the 2025 Social Media Summit for Government, convened by Decode Communications and the Centre for Data and Digital Communications at the University of Johannesburg.
Now in its third year, the summit is designed to equip public sector communicators with the latest digital tools and strategies. It aims to give them access to ideas, technologies and strategies that will shape the future of public communications.
This year’s event drew a range of speakers, including City of Tshwane mayor Dr Nasiphi Moya. Key areas of discussion included technology, diversified government communication, mis- and disinformation, and citizen engagement.
Civic tech is the idea of using technology to enhance the relationship between people and government with software for communications, decision-making, service delivery and political process.
Panellists at the summit touched on the dangers of developing apps and tech solutions with the premise of providing a silver bullet for societal issues. They also unpacked activism in civic tech and tech’s “elitist” element, which often leaves the most vulnerable behind.
The panellists included Kavisha Pillay, executive director of Campaign On Digital Ethics; Pista director Nkululeko Mthembu; Dr Sandile Mbatha, founder and chief solutions officer at SM Digital; and Koketso Moeti, founding executive director at Amandla.mobi.
Responding to a question as to what stops government from adopting civic tech, Mbatha said the challenge is two-way. “One side is developing civic tech for the sake of developing tech, not for the challenges that exist.
“The biggest problem in the public service is that it has, for the longest time, become a bottom-feeder. You get people employed in government who wouldn’t be employed elsewhere – I’m talking at senior level. When you’re sitting in those spaces…it doesn’t become about resolving challenges, it’s either about going through a tender process or ticking boxes.”
Government is not designed to be agile; it is rigid and the procurement system does not allow for engagement, noted Mbatha.
“Once you engage someone and if, for example, there is a civic tech organisation that’s developing exactly what is needed for which [government] would pay a fraction, it becomes ‘no we have to go through a procurement process’ that will be 10-times that amount.
“That’s the reality of what we need to change, but the system has been abused, so the PFMA [Public Finance Management Act] responds to the abuse we’ve had in public service. I don’t think that abuse would exist if we had activists within public service and we didn’t have the bottom-feeders who would not be employed anywhere else.
“We need to get government to have softer edges to respond to civic tech and respond to those partnerships that are long-lasting, rather than relying heavily on a procurement process that has made government pay way more than it should for tech solutions.”
For Amandla.mobi’s Moeti, the COVID-19 pandemic and the contact tracing apps is a prime example of where civic tech can go awry.
By 2021, over 50 countries had invested in COVID-19 tracing apps, she told the audience. “A significant amount of money went into these apps. What was found was that there was poor uptake and they had very limited success, as most of them couldn’t contact trace.
“I mention this because often we are attempting to solve complex, systemic issues and think adding technology will yield the solution. Everywhere I look, I see organisations misdiagnosing problems and rushing to build the tech. The tech is not in the answer.”
Bringing the issue closer to home, Moeti said the idea of identifying potholes and reporting them in real-time led to the Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA) announcing Find & Fix on 14 May 2014. The pothole reporting app was hailed as a “first of its kind” by the JRA.
“Within less than three months, users of the app had complaints. It wasn’t working as intended. The idea that GPS coordinates would be sent to fix potholes assumed there was a functional JRA that would resolve the issues and that was not the case.
“The app is now defunct after so much public investment had gone into it, yet it was hailed as a success because a lot of institutions depend on vanity metrics. Their measure of success was the number of people who had downloaded the app, even though most of those people had complaints about the app.
“A second measure of success of the app was that it was a ‘first-of-its-kind’; there was no measurement whether it resolved the intended problem. This is where a lot of organisations default to and part of the reason is conflating innovation with invention.”
She pointed out that the other issue is rushing to build without centring on people. “These are complex issues in a world that is so unequal; you can’t just add tech, stir and think that our problems will be solved. We must determine to what end, who will this serve and in what way.”
According to Moeti, millions are spent and get lost in the development of some of the failed projects, and the state must be held to account. “We must reject the idea that big investments can be made in failing apps and technologies when we have an abundance of knowledge about what works.”
The end goal of innovation is that it must be in service of humanity, she emphasised.
Pillay referenced the City of Cape Town’s deployment of audio surveillance tech in the Cape Flats, in order to pick up the sound of gunshots. “We know the Cape Flats is riddled with crime, so we didn’t need that audio technology to tell us this.
“Even though we are collecting this audio about gunshots, it’s not actually helping us to deal with the problem of crime in those communities.
“The millions being spent on that audio surveillance technology…should’ve been put into socio-economic services or activities to try and deal with crime in those areas, as opposed to confirming something we already know.”
Keep it simple
Mthembu commented that officials in public service need to look at practical solutions. “I think having intimate conversations and humanising a lot of the engagement that we have has the power to unlock a lot of the opportunities in the civic tech arena.”
Moeti highlighted there are many other barriers that can’t be ignored, as they ultimately push the digital divide further. “A huge barrier is cost, but another underestimated barrier is language.
“A lot of the content and apps is primarily in English in a country in which English is a minority language. There are a lot of barriers, including the quality of [network] connection we take for granted. Digital technologies are here to stay whether connected, offline or even if the connection is low – the reality is that these technologies are impacting our lives.”
For those interested in the advancement of humanity and dignified lives, we need to determine what to use digital technologies for, rather than using vanity metrics or conflating innovation with invention, Moeti pointed put.
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