Municipality in a Box

Image by KimNowacki, CC-BY-ND

Municipality in a Box aims to deliver a package, or toolbox, comprising of a systems architecture, process maps, open source software (OSS), implementation methodology and templates that will be used by municipalities to improve their service delivery.

The initiative aims to:

• deliver real capability and develop real skills while demonstrating the practical validity of the use of OSS in government;
• radically alter the status quo with respect to ICT and service delivery, impacting upon a broad range of stakeholders from government, to citizens, to the ICT industry and the broader economy; and
• to take the concept of the information society to a new level in South Africa – practically showing how ICT can impact on people’s day-to-day lives – from ensuring that clean water comes from a tap, to ensuring street lights are working, through to the creation of jobs.

Hetu Consulting, the company leading this project in partnership with members of the IT4All-africa network, emphasises that the key issue is not the use of OSS technology, but more about people, process and technology approach.

The project also seeks to ensure that processes are streamlined to help the local authority to manage its resources more efficiently and to help create a citizen and service delivery-focussed environment.  It also seeks to utilise technology that will enable end-to-end business processes, ensuring simultaneously that staff is adequately resourced to operate the technology and implement the business processes.

The motivation for the use of OSS is to achieve synergy with other strategies within government. The key objective is to get local authorities to use technology to help solve their service delivery issues. Therefore the approach suggested by Hetu Consulting is to use OSS to complement and provide an integration platform for existing solutions in the marketplace, while emphasizing the people, process and technology approach.

In the execution of this project, the following will be achieved:

• Municipalities will have a free e-Government platform;
• Municipalities will have access to the standardised process maps that go along with these systems; and
• In the implementation of the project, processes will be standardised and staff will be skilled. This should result in the public receiving standardised, consistent and improved service delivery.

For more information email contact@hetuconsulting.com

Visit Hetu Consulting’s website here to find out more about the Municipality-in-a-box product offering.