Johannesburg, 16 Sep 2003
In a drive to address a number of local government shortage of IT skills while also combating the lack of funds available for sustained service delivery, local government, in partnership with Comparex Africa, has taken the outsourcing model to a new level on the evolutionary scale.
The new conceptual model, christened a Shared Services Centre, will meet the needs of ratepayers, government and its service providers by offering the same benefits as outsourcing while also enabling government to maintain control of its hardware, software and human resources and assets.
Its focus will be IT-based, yet business-driven, allowing local authorities to intensify their drive to cut costs, reduce duplication of services and enhance service delivery through centralisation of both business and IT resources in a consistent service roll-out to South African ratepayers.
According to Herman Venter, divisional manager of the local government division at leading ICT integrator Comparex Africa, this redefinition of outsourced services into shared services is a halfway point between contracting and outsourcing.
"It permits more leverage than contracting and gives the same benefits as outsourcing, without losing control over assets and/or personnel. Through shared services centres, it is our goal to leverage local government staff by transferring our skills to them, leaving local government in a position to carry on when our involvement ends."
Venter says the shared services model is already being used in Mafikeng, southern district municipality, OR Tambo district municipality in Umtata and most recently the Klerksdorp local municipality where over 250 000 households are currently enjoying enhanced municipal services.
"This solution is markedly superior to traditional IT outsourcing models because it is business-driven and focuses on the municipalities` core function of servicing the ratepayer. It achieves this goal by centralising both business and IT resources to consistently control costs and deliver sustainable service levels to ratepayers while also retaining skills within local government.
"Realising millions of rands of cost savings and boosted service levels has encouraged local government to consider the shared services centre model as the best vehicle to address the challenges of local government institutions across the rest of SA and Africa," concludes Venter.
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