Disparate systems hamper many municipalities

In South Africa – and globally – municipalities are increasingly faced with demands to provide their citizens with high quality, cost-efficient services.

For municipalities to remain relevant, deliver on their political mandates and meet the expectations of their citizens, one-stop service centres and easy accessibility have become key concepts.

However, many, if not most municipalities in South Africa are struggling to make this a reality due to inefficiencies in their business technology, processes and practices.

It has been found that many of the problems currently being experienced by South African municipalities can be attributed directly to their continued use of disparate legacy, or inherited, information technology applications; a lack of these different applications being integrated; many of these applications no longer being supported; the multiple databases being used resulting in municipalities having no single view of data, citizens or households; a lack of standard financial practices and non-standard payrolls and human resources applications; and inconsistent and inaccurate utility billing services.

An expert in this field, Hannes Venter, who is the industry principle for Public Services at SAP South Africa, says the only remedy is for municipalities to continuously review and update their business processes and practices to that of customer-centred models.

This is particularly relevant in the case of municipalities where they are – as is the case in South Africa – tasked with delivering the bulk of a broad spectrum of high-quality, cost-effective yet affordable and reliable services.

Problems

The problems encountered in managing and delivering these services can be addressed in a cost-effective, streamlined manner through the implementation of a single enterprise-wide solution that addresses a municipality’s core needs in the operational areas of core financials, human resource management and other municipal operational areas.

According to Venter, one of the major challenges facing local government resulted from the restructuring and demarcation of municipalities after 1994, which frequently led to several former local authorities being amalgamated into one single municipality or metro.

In the process, the newly formed municipalities would often retain different, disparate legacy IT systems for different functions from the different municipalities.

These systems were aligned by function and department, each operating separately.

As a result, these municipalities lack integrated end-to-end systems.

And while the face of local government changed, after some 14 years the signature of the technology has not, says Venter.

With many municipalities still operating these disparate and outdated systems, it is currently often still very difficult for a citizen seeking a service to establish which department provides which service without being sent from department to department.

The first challenge facing municipalities, therefore, is to create a clear understanding of which services are available and where to find them in a local government setup.

Costs are a major factor, as many municipalities also face increased demands for efficiency and cost control without a corresponding increase in funding.

Skills availability and retention is another problem faced by local governments.

“You need to put in place a business process that can basically manage the entire value chain. This must involve the integration of front- and back-office solutions via customer relationship management,” says Venter.

Transformation

His colleagues in Europe have told him that their local government sector – and indeed in the rest of the world – have been going through similar transformations.

“All municipalities around the world are at different stages of the transformation evolution, moving from consolidation and standardisation into inter-agency integration,” says Venter.

In order for all the required functions of a municipality to be addressed effectively, it is critical that all components need to be fully integrated and based upon a common single application platform – working across traditional barriers and aligning organisations around core business processes.

“In this way, municipalities can now have what we call ‘collaborative outcomes’.

This entails the whole value chain, from when a citizen applies for a service, up to the point where the service is not just delivered but where you can have reports and benchmarking on how well the service was performed and so on.”

Venter points out that some municipalities have tried to address this by installing only a front-office system, what he calls “empty web pages with nothing behind them”.

The correct route, he says, is for a local government to first implement back-office functionality, improving the internal business processes, and then only moving towards front-office functionality.

A third critical element is required, namely customer relationship management (CRM) that links the back- and front-office systems, and acts as a kind of traffic controller in the interface between citizens and the internal workings of the municipality.

In South Africa, where the majority of people do not have access to the Internet, the service interface with the public would depend on manual services, online services and other technology such as Adobe interactive forms.

A good example of the latter technology already being used in South Africa is the online or e-filing of tax returns with the South African Revenue Service.

Single-form transactions

Venter envisages that after a citizen has registered with the municipal system, complete transactions will increasingly be performed from a single form, such as the Adobe interactive form.

Issues such as incorrect information or forms being completed incorrectly will easily and instantly be resolved through system validations or a business rules engine, cutting out a manual function that could otherwise take weeks.

A good analytical tool is also required to ensure, for example, that different service requests are being sent to the correct people or departments and are not lying somewhere for longer than a certain period of time.

The system further requires a customer care element to direct enquiries, with such interaction being recorded and the communication being of a multi-channel type.

Venter says that in South Africa, it has been found that the use of SMS text messages in this regard has become very popular.

According to Venter, some of the larger metros in South Africa have already gone quite far down this technological road, with the City of Cape Town being recognised internationally as a leader in this regard.

The cities of Tshwane and Johannesburg later followed suit.

However, getting the technology to smaller municipalities poses a challenge, says Venter. He says there are specific solutions available for smaller municipalities which can be installed within 100 days.

But some smaller municipalities have tried to implement the technology on their own and have failed, as they lack the specialised skills to implement and maintain the system. Maintenance, and not implementation, is the major problem, according to Venter.

Shared services

The solution, says Venter, may lie in a shared services approach where a number of municipalities can share such services at district level or even at the level of grouping a number of districts together.

Each municipality will still have its ‘own system’ within such a shared services approach, meaning each will have its own configuration, its own company code, and its own secure information.

But so far, says Venter, this has not been seized upon by smaller municipalities.

Another approach, he says, would be for a large metro that has its system in place to set itself up as a shared service centre for the municipalities surrounding that metro. Not only will the smaller municipalities be saving money in respect of having to acquire hardware, but a large metro like Johannesburg will also bring economy of scale into the picture.

Training and support is of key importance, and users will be able to revert to several sources of assistance should they experience problems, from online help to a trained individual to the supplying vendor.

The cost of maintaining, supporting or upgrading a number of older disparate systems, for example, is big because many different vendors are involved, each one supporting a different system.

An integrated system operating off a single platform will therefore mean vast cost savings.

Venter points out that in the case of one major municipality that installed such new technology, the municipality realised a return on its investment within two years and improved its cash position by millions of rands within one year.

But the benefits are not only financial, as such integrated systems also vastly improve the daily running of an organisation in many different ways.

While local government can benefit tremendously from the strides that have been made in service-orientated IT architecture over the past five years, Venter says there is no need for municipalities that have spent money on a variety of solutions to throw everything away.

“The nice thing is that today, with service-orientated architecture, we are able to provide a business process platform where you can compose business processes from different solutions and provide it as one end-to-end process.”

Service excellence may be only a push of a button away.

Stef Terblanche

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Comments (3)

• |2011-02-23 13:43:19 rejoyce  - challenges facing local goverment
  i want to know what are the challenges facing municipalities in the department of disaster manamegent.
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• |2011-06-23 17:09:53 Daphne Ngoma  - Evaluating the effectiveness of an online customer
  Afternoon,
  
  I'm doing the reseach about the systme (CRM) deployed by City of Tshwane. I've went through their system and found out that it is not user friendly, customers dnt have access with regards to downloading their electricity bill accounts. The objectives - possibility of automating the system, where customers cannot access thier accounts, have online feedback forum rather than faxing, email, or call customer care.
  
  your assistance in this regard is highly appreciated. your article really helped me.
  
  regards.
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• |2011-10-18 01:47:40 RG REDDY  - Executive Manager - Governance
  Currently researching shared services in local government - topic: Financial accountability in local government in SA from a shared services perspective.
  
  Any assistance or current case study or a Shared Services model being implemented.
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