Citizen engagement platform GovChat and the national Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) have extended their existing partnership for five more years.
GovChat says the extension builds on the previous five years of collaboration and co-creation between the two entities.
Founded in 2016 and launched in 2018, GovChat is the official communications platform for government. It has been co-created with COGTA over the years, delivering public services to over 9.3 million active users.
The previous phase of the partnership enabled citizens to report municipal service issues across the country to the appropriate municipality, and allowed communities to connect to and find out who their ward councillor and traditional authority are, according to GovChat.
The platform also enabled millions of South Africans to digitally apply for the South African Social Security Agency’s social relief in distress grants during the COVID-19 period.
In terms of the next phase of the partnership, citizens will have access to more co-created features, and options to access more government services digitally, reveals GovChat.
Furthermore, it states the partnership will include providing access for those who are economically vulnerable with the load-shedding schedule, and assisting municipalities with payment capabilities and historical debt recovery using GovChat technology.
“GovChat’s technology and data intelligence will further assist COGTA and its agencies with predictive capability and real-time anonymised data reporting for social sentiment, and service delivery through procured state of service reports and insights, with national, provincial, municipal and ward level vantages.”
CEO Eldrid Jordaan points out the partnership extension seeks to introduce new services and solutions, to enhance government’s capacity to deliver on its all-important mandate.
“We are pleased to announce that we have signed a five-year partnership extension with government, on the back of our proven co-creation model to support and build new ways to deliver services to citizens effectively.
“More importantly, the partnership offers the flexibility to innovate over time on both the technology and back-end systems side, as well as strong anonymised data analytics, dashboard and insights for our partners.
“It’s very early days and we have much more to do. We’re excited to work with COGTA as we bring this new local government experience to life.”
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