Big Brother needs better networking
ONE of the critical challenges facing the South African government and other governments around the world is how to link disparate IT systems into a single architecture that integrates businesses across the government enterprise.
Dan Ellappa, public sector director of Oracle South Africa, said: “In the past, government agencies tended to operate fairly independently of one another. This meant that they deployed a variety of different IT systems that frequently were, and still are, incompatible with each other. This is compounded by the fact that there are different levels of government — national, provincial and local. Trying to get all these systems to work together is a huge challenge.
“The state and local government landscape has shifted over the past few years, and it has become increasingly evident that agencies need to find a way to bridge the communication gap between these data silos in their organisations. In fact, many initiatives such as security and e-government will stand or fall upon successful integration.”
Broadly, the concept of e-government involves automating and computerising as much as possible of the contact between citizens and the agencies that govern them.
Applying for a driver’s licence, for example, could be done online at your local authority’s website. This information would be available to other authorities such as the traffic police.
“If government is able to have a collaborative view of all of its citizens, it will be able to help them more quickly and effectively. It would also significantly reduce costs,” said Ellappa. However, he said, technology could not be a solution on its own. There was a skills shortage that needed to be addressed for government to work effectively.
“We need to ensure that we have a skilled and trained workforce. Bringing in new technology to solve problems can sometimes create new obstacles. The government often has difficulty in meeting project deadlines due to inadequate technical staffing and prolonged budget and approval cycles,” said Ellappa.
Much of the work in technology and government has to do with billing systems. Many South Africans are overcharged for services, some are not charged at all, and some are registered with different authorities at the same time on systems that cannot communicate with one another.
“Interoperability of government IT systems at all levels is imperative as a growing portion of transactions, whether in the public or the private sector, are made electronically. If the government is able to establish interoperability between its many systems, it will help it implement more effective solutions for its citizens. It will also dramatically improve efficiency,” said Ellappa.
“At Oracle we have a range of technology solutions that fit across most departments in the public sector. In health agencies, for example, technology can be used to speed up patient interactions and render better treatment,” he said.
Today’s underfunded public health IT infrastructure is in dire need of upgrades. Many systems lack the ability to present a single view of a patient. So while one hospital in a suburb of a city like Johannesburg might have detailed and accurate electronic records of a patient, because its IT systems are unable to communicate with another hospital where treatment is required, everything has to be done twice.
“Our solutions help bring laboratories, hospitals, clinics and local departments of health together with centres for disease control and prevention, for example, to enable disease surveillance and immunisation services,” said Ellapa.
“In an ideal world, e-government would give all agencies a single view of each of its citizens. Between birth and death, South Africans have hundreds of interactions with government at all levels. Everything from birth certificates to taxation, licensing and levies have to be captured and recorded. They also need to be followed up.
A single central database that can distribute this information at a click of a mouse to whatever agency requires it is a massive efficiency booster.
“With today’s lightning-fast communications technologies and online banking facilities, it is theoretically possible for every interaction with government to be completely electronic. There should be no need for forms, queues or the time-consuming processing of paper documents,” he said.
For citizens, e-government would mean greater convenience, efficiency and speed. While in South Africa the majority of people did not have access to the tools that make e-government possible, many did have access to public Internet terminals and the most popular tool of communication in South Africa — the cellphone.
“Anyone who can be reached via cellphone can have a basic but fundamental electronic interaction with government,” said Ellappa.
“The benefit to government is faster collection of revenues, more efficient billing and a single view of every citizen’s interactions with the state at all levels of government.”
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