To address the issue of minimal adoption of smart services by residents, the City of Ekurhuleni will introduce a programme that will equip community members with digital skills.
This is the word from divisional head, business relations management for the ICT department in the City of Ekurhuleni, Lydia Ntlhophi.
Ntlhophi says the city has rolled out various digital services, such as online payments for rates, as well as a solution where citizens can report problems like potholes or water leakages, which instantly issues a reference number confirming that a call has been logged.
However, the adoption of these digital services still poses a challenge, she says.
According to Ntlhophi, technology is progressing but citizens are still lagging behind in terms of the adoption of these services.
When looking at the number of people that have downloaded the eSiyakhoka app compared to the three million people that live in Ekurhuleni, it's not even 50% of the city's population. This shows there is a huge digital gap in our communities, she explains.
The city's proposed programme aims to use young people who will go out and train community members and explain how they can leverage technology, Ntlhophi continues.
"There is a programme that we are still going to launch; we are piloting it first. It is an ecosystem where we look at small ICT companies in Ekurhuleni as well as large companies like a Microsoft, and say can we form a partnership where we train the communities and give them digital skills.
"What we've done through the public access service is that when a resident logs onto the WiFi, the second page that will come up will be a portal where jobs are centralised. There is content about bursaries and education, which is accessible the entire day and residents are not limited to just 250MB."
Last year, Ekurhuleni joined the free Internet revolution seen in Tshwane, Johannesburg and Cape Town to provide free public access. Residents are allowed a daily cap of 250MB to access information about government, education, learning and health.
Ntlhophi says the city has already rolled out free WiFi access and wants to leverage technology to solve service delivery issues.
"We are more inclined to digitalise a lot of our processes and make sure our services are accessible on a mobile phone.
"The banks are doing it, they are minimising the number of people at their customer care centres, their branches - so we are also following suit," she states.
Share