The South African government could vastly reduce its operating costs while improving service to its constituents, by introducing more electronic self-service options for citizens.
Across industries such as banking and telecommunications, self-service is already the preferred channel for customer interaction, because of the convenience it offers consumers and the efficiencies it offers enterprises. It makes enormous sense for the public sector to follow their lead.
Given the enormous pressures that national, provincial and local government is under for service delivery, it should be seizing the opportunity that self-service offers to free up resources for strategic projects and to deliver more convenience to citizens. Although we lag the international trend, many government agencies around the world already allow citizens and ratepayers to use self-service channels for everything from rate and tax payments to licence renewals.
Self-service can no longer be ignored in a world where people are using Web-based technologies to get more involved in the political process and to engage with government. For example, Barack Obama's presidential campaign in the US effectively leveraged social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook to mobilise supporters and interact with voters. In South Africa, most parties have started at least to experiment with tools such as Twitter, blogs and Facebook as a means of interacting with citizens.
These tools are great ways for politicians to interact with constituents, and to gather and disperse information. The service delivery components of government should also be using the Web to reach citizens - imagine how many calls could be diverted from municipal call centres if they used their Web sites and channels like Twitter and Facebook to communicate to their citizens.
What is self-service?
Self-service enables government to transact and interact with citizens using low-cost electronic channels that can be made available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Self-service is a natural extension from using the Web as a platform to communicate with the public. Self-service is all about leveraging technology to deliver anywhere, anytime access to government, and at a fraction of the cost of relying on service centres and call centres.
Self-service is already the preferred channel for customer interaction, because of the convenience it offers consumers and the efficiencies it offers enterprises.
Kevin Meltzer is business development director at Consology.
Some self-service offerings are already in place in the South African government. A handful of government departments at national level have seized the self-service opportunity, including SARS. But self-service offers particularly significant benefits at the local government level, which is the frontline of interaction between citizens and government.
Most people interact with national government only occasionally, when they need a new passport or identity document, for example. But they need to constantly transact and interact with their municipalities to pay bills such as rates and water, report potholes, and so on.
One valid question that might be asked is: is self-service viable in a country where Internet penetration is so low? The answer is that self-service can span a range of channels - including the Internet, IVR-enabled call centres, cellphones and kiosks.
Massive benefits
The challenges of integrating and automating back-office processes to enable self-service are massive, but they are more than justified by the payback self-service delivers. Self-service allows government to achieve cost-savings across printing and mailing, administration and other operating areas. It also streamlines revenue collection, fault logging, account management and other common transactions and interactions.
But self-service isn't just about efficiency and cost-savings. Citizen self-service in e-government is about moving citizens from in-line to online, freeing them from the queues and frustrations usually associated with government interactions. It also allows government to enter into dialogue with the people it serves through a transparent and easy-to-use interface. Through self-service, government can offer intuitive, responsive and improved citizen touch points countrywide to the benefit of the population it serves.
It is an ideal way for government bodies and agencies to gather complaints, queries and suggestions from ratepayers and citizens, so they can respond to their needs.
As such, it gives citizens a voice and helps to improve their relations with government. It's a win-win solution that creates enormous benefit for the government and the people it serves.
* Kevin Meltzer is business development director at Consology.
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