Patrick Shields is Software AG\u2019s firebrand and Chief Technology Officer. His vision of transforming the public sector with digitization and creating digital government in Africa, is underpinned by the \u201cpaperless office\u201d movement of the recent past brought into the high tech present.<\/p>\n
Software AG\u2019s process redesign proposition is steering the change that drives the enhancement of socio-economic value chains in national, provincial and local government, re-engineering management, operational and supporting public service processes using lean management principles.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us, digitization means committing what human beings know as their work responsibilities into graphical models that can be computerized and automated. So, instead of depending on humans to remember what they\u2019re supposed to do, diverting attention from the actual work, the idea is to free up workers to that they can focus on the quality of service delivery and offer a sentiment-based, human approach.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor example, a citizen in a municipal office, rather than being captivated by all the forms and paperwork they have to fill in, can receive proper service from the person on the other side of the desk or counter. Technology should be able to do that for them. ICT should enable democracy,\u201d says Shields.<\/p>\n
Traditional workflow emphasizes the sequencing of activities \u2013 like the filling in of forms – but ignores the informational perspective \u2013 in this case the citizen. An artifact-centric process model, on the other hand, represents an operational model of organisational processes in which the changes and evolution of data \u2013 the citizen\u2019s story or information \u2013 is considered the main driver of the process.<\/p>\n
In this model, citizens – stakeholders in statals and parastatals – become the artifacts themselves, the catalysts of \u2018events\u2019. For example, an event here could mean lodging a complaint with a municipality or bringing an issue to a ward councilor\u2019s attention. Enablement occurs for citizens when this \u2018event\u2019 is transformed from a passive to an active element in an event-driven process chain.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s say someone in a rural area or a small village has an opinion about service delivery \u2013 how does that person get their voice heard by their ward councilor or minister? Web access requires a PC or smartphone. Africa has the highest per capita figure of cellphone use anywhere in the world, but only a third of those users have smartphones. So in terms of inclusion, of getting my voice heard, unless my minister can hear my opinion via my text-based phone, there\u2019s no chance of communication, other than face-to-face.<\/p>\n
\u201cYesterday\u2019s tools \u2013 like paper or phone calls \u2013 aren’t always effective today. In order to enable democracy with ICT, we have to take advantage of things like USSD \u2013 the *100* or *141*# functions that are on all cellphones. I would love to see the government\u2019s various departments have those numbers available, and that facility flighted on a radio and TV. Then we can automatically collate that information, recording which cell company, tower, location, date and person that particular message came from,\u201d explains Shields.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce that message is aggregated into actual information, then a minister or manager can respond quickly, assigning the information to a particular department, creating a ticket or work order number, sending an official to that village or rural area to go and see the person and attend to them. Public service issues are similar all over Africa. Kenya, for instance, ensures all their citizens have access to banking facilities using text-based mobile devices. The lowest common denominator of technology serves the highest function: getting citizen comments, thoughts and actions into data format so that the right people can action it and be held accountable to it.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor example, the original person sending the query can be contacted three days after sending the message and asked if their query had been attended to yet. This uses today\u2019s technology for today\u2019s problems. In 20 years we\u2019ll have another set of problems so technology has to be able to adjust to enhance the lives of ordinary people. The challenges of doing this are, if its call centre based, to properly log and assign the information,\u201d Patrick Shields maintains.<\/p>\n
Africa demands its own homegrown ecosystem: 25 million South Africans live in metro areas, the rest in rural. Shields predicts a convergence in the way metro and rural operations operate, with the text-based phone the common denominator.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the key concepts in digitization is \u2018events\u2019. An event is a piece of data that has a date\/time stamp. In the case of the rural person sending the inquiry, the event is the fact that they’ve reached out, with the date and time attached. Once something becomes an event it can have other information associated with it,\u201d Patrick Shields clarifies.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvents are also triggers for activity, in this case getting the citizen\u2019s story to the right person in the public service, which then triggers the appropriate action, like getting the official to follow up on the inquiry. This can help the country immeasurably by contributing to organisational maturity, strengthening the response to inquiries by making them consistent every time. In business terms this is known as the continuous maturity model (CMM), measuring how well an organisation executes its internal processes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf all the processes are in the minds of the workers, they can\u2019t be measured. If the processes are digitized, it can determine if the event triggered the right chain of activities. Did that official follow up on the citizen\u2019s complaint? If not, a manager can intervene and trigger a new chain of activity, enhancing public works by holding the workers accountable,\u201d avers Shields.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen government departments get their budgets there are always performance plans that state the objectives and actions to be followed in spending the money \u2013 the measurements. The big challenge when it\u2019s time to give the reports, is the big scramble for information and figures to give to the Auditor General (AG), for example, how many water leaks were actually fixed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe challenge for monitoring and evaluation is that there needs to be documented activity. For example, funding in itself is an event that triggers activity, distributing services to the citizens. We should be able to measure that, rolling that spend up into dashboards to show audit-readiness, well before the AG arrives. Extended into granularity, digitization can enable future activity and spend \u2013 for instance, recording that at a future date, specific areas and water leak fixtures will be attended to, and at what estimated cost, using real time monitoring,\u201d Shields states.<\/p>\n
\u201cProcess, events, measuring and monitoring are the factors underlying digitization. Ekurhuleni\u2019s goal is to be a \u201cdigital city\u201d that even smaller municipalities can come to, to be provided with ICT support. When Software AG unpacked seven of their \u201ccitizen facing\u201d processes, we discovered that there were 138 inner processes. It was interesting in that the seven processes were horizontally structured while the 138 were top-bottom. Software AG started at their value chain \u2013 \u2018create, service and retire the customer\u2019 \u2013 their three highest-service levels as a municipality, then went into specific department functions like electricity & water services, waste collection, rezoning, building plans, property alienation, and then further into services such as indigent support, such as disadvantaged citizens applying for relief on their rates.<\/p>\n
\u201cEkurhuleni\u2019s anti-fraud measures for Indigent Support were enforced by manual checkpoints, causing the process to be delayed and the citizen in dire straits to wait for relief. According to Ekurhuleni\u2019s legislation they needed to have a response to potential indigent citizens within 21 days. So we modeled the process the way it was with all the manual checkpoints and then we adopted a \u201cTo Be\u201d (redesign) framework, rearranging the process to make it more efficient. Software AG helped the Ekurhuleni Indigent support team shave over 70 days off an indigent citizens\u2019 waiting time for a response to their applications,\u201d Shields notes.<\/p>\n
\u201cSoftware AG is not an expert in indigent management. The real experts are people like Ekurhuleni\u2019s indigent support clerks, indigent finance clerks and accountants, so we empowered them to design their own process. We asked them the relevant questions about their processes, then designed the software to support the processes they designed, letting their ideas and expertise organically inform the software build. When Ekurhuleni updates their Indigent legislation, their Indigent processes can be quickly updated and re-deployed. We call this \u201cAgility\u201d, or the ability to quickly adjust to change.<\/p>\n
\u201cDigitization is a journey and you can see immediate value in it, but the real value comes in year two and as the organisation matures. It services the front line people because they have ownership; and executives using our system can steer their organisation though process objectives,\u201d concludes Shields.<\/p>\n
Software AG offers internal and external internship programmes, and there are plans to take unemployed indigent people with the right competencies and teach them the technology, for placement into the Ekurhuleni metro and private corporations. The company also trains small businesses to use the technology for job creation.<\/p>\n
The majority shareholder of Software AG is the Software AG Foundation. Dividends from Software AG stock are used to fund the company\u2019s educational and community service initiatives. Software AG is implementing partnerships with innovation hubs and universities in South Africa to give them free access to learning technology software; Shields is the local executive sponsor for this programme.<\/p>\n
Patrick Shields and Software AG make a robust, formidable case for public service digitization enhancing government\u2019s organisational maturity into new and exciting paradigm shifts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Patrick Shields is Software AG’s firebrand and Chief Technology Officer. His vision of transforming the public sector with digitization and creating digital government in Africa, is underpinned by the “paperless office” movement of the recent past brought into the high … Continue reading