Johannesburg, 11 Dec 2020
While digital transformation should always be undertaken with a specific goal in mind, rather than for its own sake, such an approach is particularly critical in the public sector, as digitisation can hold the key to significantly improved service delivery.
According to William Ngomane, channel sales manager for South Africa at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, one of the goals government entities should focus on is how digitisation can improve the level of engagements with staff, citizens, students or patients. Further, they should focus on what outcomes it can help to achieve and understand how to make it happen, the impact it will have on existing infrastructures and, once implemented, how to maintain the quality of the services.
“Public sector entities are faced with numerous and complex challenges. They are often large organisations and are interdependent by nature as it is – thus, when they are faced with multiple pressing but often competing needs, technology may be viewed as a challenge, rather than an enabler,” he says.
“Nonetheless, technology has much to offer the public sector when properly focused on the end goals. For example, if one looks at education, in those areas where there is poor or limited infrastructure, shortages of resources or teachers may be a challenge, along with learners having to travel long distances to get to school. While these challenges impact the quality of education, technology is the answer to bridging the gap in terms of time, distance and resource optimisation.”
It is the same in the healthcare space, continues Ngomane, indicating that the need to deliver quality care 24/7 is the same in remote areas as it is in the large metros. Here, balancing the expectations around quality care with the shortage of resources, poor record keeping – which leads to prolonged waiting times and delays in receiving care – and the need to secure continuity of care beyond the hospital walls, can be difficult.
“For one thing, connectivity needs to be in place as the foundation, along with infrastructure like electricity supply. Obviously, without these in place, you will not be able to leverage technology to help. On the other hand, an effective digital transformation strategy can have a major impact. Taking learning as an example: implementing the right technology solutions can deliver, for example, blended learning, which helps overcome a lack of teaching resources, by allowing teachers to reach far more students in a virtual manner than they could in a classroom.
“In addition, teachers can automatically mark registers, share screens, use interactive whiteboards, view individual student availability and create discussion groups within the environment. All of the above can easily be achieved with a learning management solution, integrated with a communication engine and a collaboration platform that allows better learner and teacher interactions.”
He suggests that digital transformation can play a similar type of role in the healthcare sector, since caregiving doesn’t end at the hospital doors. Instead, many patients need caregiving after the fact, which essentially translates into a work from home environment. In such cases, caregivers can still connect to the hospital network via mobile devices and can even collaborate with a doctor remotely, should they require assistance.
“In these cases, the public sector should look to deploy plug-and-play platforms that are easy to integrate and provide the same level of connectivity as the office, allowing them to access office tools and effectively extend the hospital network to patient homes via remote access points with integrated security.
“For government organisations to engage in a successful digital transformation, it is imperative they begin with a clearly defined strategy and, equally crucially, the ability to track and monitor their progress with regard to meeting these goals. It is better to break down the strategy into small steps and focus initially on making the user experience more friendly.
To this end, he points out, they should look to identify services that can be offered online, as well as enabling multimedia channels. Moreover, at the heart of the project they will need a reliable communication and collaboration engine – one that relays information, as required, in real-time. This, in turn, will more easily enable the use of big data, advanced analytics and information sharing.
“Of course, from the outset, digital transformation needs to be understood to be about much more than merely adding new applications or technologies. Instead, digitisation is about transforming the way they do things within the public sector, which means buy-in from the employees is vital. Cultural training and change management are critical aspects of this, because people, by their nature, generally do not like change. In order to overcome this inertia, it is necessary to make them understand that such transformation will not eliminate jobs so much as it will enable them to do their existing jobs better.”
“After all, it will enhance service delivery, improve their working environment and enable them with new skills, essentially making them even more employable. If the public sector is to succeed with its digital transformation strategies, it will need far more than just the latest applications and solutions – it will need strong connectivity, reliable electricity supply and, above all, effective change management to ensure users understand the way it will add value and improve their lives,” he concludes.
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