Johannesburg, 09 Jul 2007
The South African government's use of IT in service delivery is gaining momentum, according to a new international study into the use of IT in government.
The study, Shared Services in Government 2: Building a Platform for Better Public Services at Lower Cost, was commissioned by Cisco and conducted by AT Kearney.
The report looked at nine countries: Austria, Australia, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, UK, US, Canada and SA. Canada came out tops as the best practice leader in the use of IT to save money and improve service delivery to its citizens. Cost factors remain the main motivating forces for most governments to switch over to a shared services system.
A recent study by ForgeAhead concluded the South African government is still fragmented in its approach to ICT usage. The study indicated most CIOs are still making decisions in isolation, which means departmental systems are generally incompatible with each other.
According to Cisco, this is at least improving.
"We are now beginning to see a shift in terms of collaboration in technology utilisation from different spheres of government," says Cisco public relations and executive communications manager Zweli Mnisi.
"There has been an increased focus on moving services online," says Mnisi, quoting the Gauteng Shared Services Centre as an example.
According to Mnisi, the downside of this is that there is now an increased demand for bandwidth. He says government needs to look at moving from previously leased lines to ADSL and WiMax as the services become available.
"Some of the key drivers for this change include the continued increased competition in broadband access, improved pricing and bandwidth speeds, and bandwidth requirements for upcoming events such as the 2010 World Cup."
Cutting costs
Internationally, the Cisco report found "governments are using advanced technology to consolidate back-office functions".
The report indicated "major service improvements and reductions that are a result of shared services". It says as much as $3.3 trillion could be saved worldwide over the course of 10 years if governments switched over to shared services.
Cisco's research was based on in-depth interviews with chief executives, CIOs and programme directors. These individuals indicated that using IT was their second most significant way of reducing costs, the primary still being headcount reductions.
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