Theresa Uys, City of Cape Town.

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Modern cities need to do more with less. For Alderman Theresa Uys, mayoral committee member for corporate services at the City of Cape Town, technology plays a critical role in delivering the efficiencies needed to achieve this. Technology enables a city’s administration to use resources more efficiently, thus making it possible to do more on a tighter budget.

For Uys, this can be seen in areas such as facility maintenance, where proactive and predictive maintenance technologies make it possible to get to the root cause of a potential problem or appropriately schedule routine fixes to equipment to prolong the life of major infrastructure assets. But it’s not just about using tech more efficiently, it’s also about using the information generated by this tech to be more efficient.

For cities, all the data generated by emerging technologies enables better decision-making, which, in turn, equips the City to deliver more effective service delivery to citizens, notes Uys. “Digital connectivity is an integral part of any well functioning and well-run city, as it connects the city with information that wasn’t available previously.”

Change management should never be underestimated ahead of a major digital transformation because the human element is critical to the success of any digital initiative.

Theresa Uys, City of Cape Town

With this information, innovation can be spread across different sectors of the economy, enabling growth across industries, aiding economic development and improving the quality of life for citizens. Having greater data visibility and transparency and real-time data accessibility enables the city to become more data-driven and move towards becoming a smart city.

“But we can’t only look at what’s happening now. Thinking about the future is incredibly important,” says Uys. “The world of digital today differs dramatically from 10 years ago and it will look very different in the future. Ensuring that we can help the city make these changes and build the digital progress we need going forward is an exciting and much-eeded task.”

It’s also a big responsibility.

According to Uys, digital transformation at the city includes incremental, short strategies, as well as longer-term innovation. Some of the more short-term innovation strategies being delivered by the city include bringing digital to communities through the SmartCape initiative, which provides internet connectivity and WiFi access to community centres and other City buildings so that students without home internet access can use them for schoolwork, she continues. These centres also offer adults the ability to search for jobs, update their CVs or do the necessary market research to start their own businesses, as well as provide citizens with a digital platform to engage with the city regarding any queries they might have.

Beyond this initiative, the city is continuing to invest in new operational technology solutions, like camera surveillance systems and drones, which are currently being used to improve the City’s ability to respond to crime and increase overall safety for the citizens of Cape Town, Uys says.

Looking at longer-term innovation, Cape Town’s Broadband Programme is focused on laying physical fibre-optic cables to ensure that all City buildings and facilities are connected.

The City’s Core Application Refresh (CAR) programme is another longer-term initiative. Uys says the plan is to replace outdated IT assets to provide the foundation to future-proof Cape Town for the next 20 years. To do this, in 2018, the Vity conducted a feasibility study on its ageing IT assets, and as part of this, it also ran an assessment to determine its maturity against market leaders across different industries. The 10-year CAR programme was the outcome of these assessments, laying out the digital modernisation journey for the City. As part of the programme, three core systems were earmarked for a refresh: ERP, productivity and GIS.

Some of these new systems will be complemented by emerging tech solutions like AI, Internet of Things, virtual and augmented reality, blockchain and robotics, among others, she says. “Through the implementation of these new digital technologies, we will shift the dial for the city from being an on-premise environment to a hybrid IT landscape,” Uys adds, noting that with these cloud-based solutions in place, the hope is to attract new and young talent into the city, encouraging the next generation of smart and savvy techies to become part of the city’s digital team.

For Uys, ensuring that the strategy was the right fit was essential, which is why time was taken in determining where energy would be focused. Lengthy assessments and reviews were undertaken because these assets touch every part of the business so it was vital to get it right, she notes.

The city wanted to ensure that there was effective stakeholder engagement, guaranteeing that everyone felt heard and listened to. “Change management should never be underestimated ahead of a major digital transformation because the human element is critical to the success of any digital initiative. It comes down to putting citizens and employees’ experiences at the centre of the change we’re trying to make.” In fact, some of the greatest challenges they have faced, many of which are common across digital transformation projects of this scale and complexity, relate to stakeholder engagement, buy-in, communication and change management.

“We had to make sure that everyone across the entire City-wide organisation was on the same page in terms of what this 10-year digital roadmap will and won’t deliver. Understanding what is out-of-scope is almost as important as knowing what is in-scope.”

Ensuring that all directorates are part of the digital journey from the start will continue to be a critical success factor for the CAR Programme, admits Uys. This is being addressed by holding regular project and programme steering committee meetings to facilitate engagement at all levels of the organisation, not just the top. “We believe that we’re doing this at the right time and for the right reasons and so we’re all looking forward to seeing the City mature in this space.”

With initiatives like CAR, the aim is for the City is to pioneer the way forward in terms of what the public sector IT landscape of the future could look like. These efforts seek to deliver on the City’s future plans, notes Uys, which will see Cape Town embracing the digital age and creating a city that is truly digital by default.

“Every digital change is different. So you have to know what is important to your organisation and prioritise that. You have to create a digital default that makes sense for the DNA of your organisation. And always take people along with you on the journey.”

* This feature was first published in the November edition of ITWeb's Brainstorm magazine.