RESOURCE PLANNING AND SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

1

• RESOURCE PLANNING AND SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

2
Using Mobile and Wireless Technologies to Enhance
Government Service Delivery Isaac Maredi, SITA
RD

• Collaboration between SITA, CSIR Meraka and CPSI
• Future Watch Report Government Unplugged
• Home Affairs and Health as test beds
• Demonstrate the value of Mobile and Wireless
  technology to enhance service delivery access,
  efficiency, productivity, cost-saving,
  e-government, access for disabled
• Why mobile and wireless? Readily available
  technology (cellphones)

3

• Pilot Projects
• DOH Dokoza System interactive health
  administration capability (register patient,
  check prescriptions, obtain patient history,
  remind patients about treatment, etc.)
• DOH AccessHealth System facilitate and manage
  patient referral system between rural clinic and
  district hospitals (book appointments,
  registering patients, appointment reminders, etc.)

4

• Pilot Projects (cont.)
• Home Affairs SMS based Notification and Querying
  facility
• Home Affairs Support for passport application
  process

5

• IMPACT ON SERVICE DELIVERY
• Health
• Reduce administrative burden, practitioners can
  focus on core function
• Reduce duplication
• Citizen convenience
• Optimal utilisation of health practitioner
• Patients are not turned back
• Home Affairs
• Reduce number of citizen visits and phone calls
• Citizen convenience
• Fraud reduction
• Text-to-speech for visually impaired

6

• LESSONS LEARNED
• Increase public servant access to critical info
• System received favourably
• Quality
• Change management (cellphone readily embraced)
• CHALLENGES
• Abuse by bogus agents
• Physical and system security
• Top management buy-in
• Etc.

7
Presentation Enterprise resource planning
Lunga Madlala, Durban Metro

• Were looking at municipal revenue systems and
  found lack of flexibility and modularity, lack of
  integration and interoperability, outdated
  technology, not user-friendly, etc.
• Business case reliance on consultants, data not
  real-time, inability to get management
  information, difficulty in carrying out
  enhancements, etc
• Developed a project specification and went to
  market but couldn't find a company to fit their
  requirements

8

• At the same time, identified municipal ICT
  challenges ICT assets not contributing to
  service delivery, no appreciable benefit to
  citizen, huge licence fees for software, city and
  province losing IT graduates, low
  entrepreneurialism
• Socio-economic objectives BEE, developing local
  ICT skills, employment creation, grow and sustain
  ICT SMME's, reduce dependence on off-shore
  vendors, encourage investment in local economy,
  etc.
• Decided to develop own software solution, at the
  same time address ICT and socio-economic
  objectives.

9

• Envisaged Benefits flexible, personalised
  solution, component based, etc.
• Formed Sect 21 Company (SmartXchange) does
  skills development, business incubation and
  projects. Also partner with SMME's
• THEREFORE LOGOSoft
• Development of enterprise application
• Modules revenue management, billing, customer
  and property management
• Aimed at niche local govt market

10

• PROJECT OUTCOMES
• Efficient and effective credit control and debt
  management
• Customer care
• PROJECT OUTPUTS
• Comprehensive info about customer and property
• Allows customer preferences
• Accurate billing
• Management information
• Accurate income allocation
• Tight credit control

11

• HIGHLIGHTS
• Incorporate best practice and next practice
• All based on open source
• GIS enabled
• CHALLENGES
• SMME development (need significant mentoring)
• Change management
• Project management (a scarce skill!)
• Data migration and cleansing
• Integration requirements (all systems must work
  together)

12

• THE FUTURE
• Increase SMME participation,
• make solution available to other municipalities
• EThekwini owns IP and source code
• Potential for use in rest of Africa
• Durban becomes a software development hub

13
DISCUSSION

• Both presentations related to IT Solutions for
  government services therefore discussion centred
  around the procurement, development and
  implementation of IT Solutions.
• IT Solutions...
• Should be user-driven. Users are citizens and
  public servants
• Need to provide management information. This is a
  major advantage of IT over paper-based systems
  and should be utilised fully
• Require IT skills Reliance on consultants and
  foreign service providers weaken government

14

• IT Solutions should...
• Result in shared learning. GITO Council a useful
  forum at Nat/Prov spheres but Local Govt does not
  have a similar forum
• Not necessarily mean job losses Skills
  requirements will change and training, skills
  development and good change management are
  essential
• Have back-end integration for seemless front-end
  service delivery

15
DIscussion

• IT Solutions should...
• Actively seek to meet relevant socio-economic
  objectives as laid out in government policy and
  Supply Chain Management principles e.g. bridge
  the digital divide, SMME development, HRD, etc.
• Not automate inefficiency. IT is not the only
  solution we need to properly diagnose the
  problems