Imagine a country in which citizens could not only utilise their nearest automatic teller machine (ATM) to draw money, or top up their cellphone cards, but also to pay their car licence renewals, their electricity bills or possibly even a traffic fine or two.
Sounds too Utopian, right? Especially the bit about interacting with government departments via one`s ATM, as anyone who has ever stood sweating and fuming in a queue at their local licensing department for hours on end, only to be told they are closing for lunch when finally reaching the counter, will verify.
In fact, coupled with the frustrations and inefficiencies experienced by the public when dealing with government departments, the historically high reliance on reams and reams of paperwork has meant an equally high margin for human error in the back office; resulting in processing bottlenecks, delays, duplications, inaccuracies and errors.
However, this sad state of inefficiency does not always have to be the case, according to Mark Ehmke, managing director of Staffware SA, who is of the opinion that what he refers to as 'joined-up government` can become a reality in SA in the foreseeable future.
According to Ehmke, the concept of so-called 'joined-up government` originates in the UK, when the British government adopted the slogan to communicate its stated intention of "...getting different parts of government to work more closely together and across (more) boundaries than they have in the past...reflected in local authorities, government agencies, voluntary and private organisations working together," he quotes.
A set of recommendations, published at the same time as the 'joined-up` government campaign by the British government, stipulated that it should seek to "...enable the delivery of services electronically in a secure, citizen-focused manner that maintains accountability and allows for audit, complaint and redress".
As well as serving its citizens and managing the national economy, governments are considerable users of goods and services in their own right.
"This typically means that all their processes need controlling and accounting for. It is no wonder that governments everywhere are looking at the potential that electronic working can offer, in making their processes more efficient and manageable," Ehmke comments.
He says there is a consistent set of objectives running though all governments, which can be summarised as: A focus on the citizen, value for money, speed and timeliness, quality of service and performance against standards.
According to Ehmke, the means of meeting those objectives include:
* Better inter-organisational and intra-organisational collaboration;
* Greater use of electronic communication; and
* Business process improvements, allied to a process rather than departmental orientation.
"These three principles are at the heart of e-government or 'joined-up` government. However, it is crucial to realise that real responsiveness to joined-up government is not possible without effective process management and streamlining of business activities," he maintains.
"This, in turn, must be linked to efficient supply chain and back office systems to ensure activities such as commerce, information supply, inter-organisational collaboration, and assessment can be conducted efficiently and effectively. These are all reliant on well-designed and efficiently managed processes," he explains.
"Some form of process management or workflow automation software is essential for this, speeding up handling of information and work, eliminating errors and double-checking, and reducing costs, while providing full management control and reporting," Ehmke remarks.
"The principle behind workflow automation is simple. By modelling and then automating organisational processes on a computer, it allows those processes to be conducted speedily, accurately and consistently. Nothing gets omitted, nothing gets skimped and nothing gets done twice. And, because the management of those processes is built into their execution, everything is measurable and everything is auditable," he explains.
According to Ehmke, workflow automation is not new.
"Large commercial organisations such as banks and insurance companies have been using it for many years. They need it to manage what would otherwise be prohibitively expensive and labour-intensive operations like mortgage processing and claims handling. Often, these workflow installations are associated with document scanning and document management systems, which automate correspondence handling," he adds.
Workflow systems like these are evidently optimised to handle large volumes of short-cycle tasks, usually involving relatively simple processes.
"In fact, we have already seen the first moves towards the implementation of business process and workflow automation in certain of the South African governmental departments, such as the Department of Home Affairs and the Department of Justice," Ehmke points out.
To illustrate the point, he explains that, for example, the Department of Justice instituted an electronic content management system in courtrooms around the country, in order to combat the problem of lost court dockets and even fraudulent misuse or theft thereof.
"Furthermore, in the case of the Department of Home Affairs, an online document management system has been implemented. This Document Management System (DMS) will be utilised as a transversal Home Affairs Record and Document online repository. It will also cater for all the planned current and future document management, business process automation (BPA) and management information (MI) requirements of the department," Ehmke explains.
He adds that the online Document Management System, together with the document imaging and electronic workflow components, will greatly improve internal efficiencies at the department, as well as service levels to its most important client, the South African public.
"The ultimate aim of the government is to develop a communications layer that can be publicly regarded as a single point of contact and remain effective throughout change," he remarks.
"In other words, an `invisible` infrastructure, which will be built upon flexible technologies such as workflow and which, is capable of underpinning the structures and procedures of tomorrow`s government," he concludes.
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