Integrated billing for Gauteng?

By Leon Engelbrecht, ITWeb senior writer

Johannesburg, 18 Feb 2008

Gauteng local government MEC Qedani Mahlangu wants an "integrated billing system" for Gauteng based on residents' identity numbers rather than their physical address.

She says similar systems are in use in cities such as Las Vegas in the US and are more efficient than the fragmented approach currently in use in SA.

Speaking at the first meeting of the Local Government Business Network, on Friday, Mahlangu said a province-wide integrated billing system would tack water, lights, rates and taxes on a single bill with library and traffic fines.

She says some Gauteng municipalities currently have up to 14 mutually exclusive billing systems "that don't talk to each other". She lamented that these systems often lacked upgrade paths and scalability. Mahlangu blamed the poor state of affairs on local governments lacking the knowledge required to be informed buyers, as well as over-promise and under-delivery on the part of vendors.

"ICT is about efficiency," she said. "We pride ourselves that we are the 'smart' province," she added, saying much was achieved in terms of service delivery in the 1994-2003 time frame, but that a review in 2004 found that it had been too fragmented.

Smartening up

The result was the "Gauteng Global Competitive City Region" programme that seeks to better integrate Gauteng, its municipalities and its 10.5 million citizens. "Gauteng is one... It is also the economic hub of SA, of southern Africa and of Africa. ICT is, therefore, an important sector if indeed we are a smart province."

Mahlangu also spoke about ubiquitous broadband in the province for e-governance, to give more residents better access to the Internet and drive down the cost of business in the province. Although she did not refer to it by name, her comments implied progress towards implementing the province's Blue Umbrella (now Gauteng Link) broadband scheme. "ICT and broadband are very important. In the next few years we should have broadband [access] everywhere."

Gauteng finance MEC Paul Mashatile announced Blue Umbrella in his budget vote last July, allocating R93 million to the project for the financial year ending next month.

Mahlangu also spoke at length about municipal asset registers, which are still largely paper-based and notoriously inaccurate. Mahlangu said there was no reason why asset registers could not be dynamic and keep track of what was purchased when, what guarantees were relevant to items listed in the register, when it had last been serviced - and by whom, as well as when maintenance was due and who would be responsible for that. ""Why can't we do that in Gauteng? We're the smart province," she said.