Complying with various pieces of legislation frustrates government's efforts to deliver services to the masses, and technology can assist in addressing this issue.
This was the message at the recent announcement that a new corporate alliance has been formed to vie for government business process management (BPM) contracts.
Bytes Systems Integration, Metastorm and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) said they would pool their strengths in a partnership aimed at landing government contracts.
According to Bytes director Adam Rabie, the alliance has already landed a BPM deal with a parastatal, but he was reluctant to divulge details.
Under the new partnership, PwC will define government departments' compliance needs, as well as a process through which to address these. Bytes will deploy the needed equipment to support these processes, with a particular focus on Metastorm's BPM suite.
The alliance plans to target national and provincial government departments, as well as parastatals.
Balancing act
"There seems to be a constant trade-off [within government] between improving service delivery and complying with key legislation," says PwC partner Jan Grey. "This increases the cost of compliance with no assurance that compliance is effectively achieved."
Metastorm director of international sales Neil Berry says: "Governments all over the world are facing similar challenges, such as aligning strategy with compliance regulations."
He believes Metastorm's experience in major public sector BPM installations in the US will help it in this regard. The company can bring best practice models into use "to help government use technology most effectively to improve processes".
Rabie adds: "If all this doesn't impact on service delivery, I think we've missed the plot. Unless organisations realise they need to partner with government, we are actually not going to be able to help government deliver."
He says government departments that engage the new partnership will see cost savings in the long- and short-term. It would cost these departments significantly more to approach different technology providers individually to address BPM processes, he notes.
Related stories:
Bytes beefs-up backbone
Security is increasingly integrated
Metastorm buys Proforma
Share