THE FUTURE WE WANT - CPSI · 2016-04-28 · 6.1 Mobile Technology for Community Health in Ghana (MOTECH Ghana) 6.2 Find My School 6.3 DevTrac 6.4 MRI Agro 7. REVIEWS 7.1 Why Nations

PUBLIC SECTOR INNOVATIONSMOMCONNECT

NEWS BRIEFSDIGITRUCK BRIDGING DIGITAL DIVIDE

INSIGHTSCONTINENTAL IMPERATIVES OF THE AFRICAN CHARTER

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THE SOUTH AFRICAN PUBLIC SECTOR INNOVATION JOURNAL

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VOL. 6 • ISSUE 2 • 2016

THE FUTURE WE WANT

2 VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

CENTRE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE INNOVATION (CPSI)

The CPSI is mandated to develop innovative, sustainable and responsive models for improved service delivery. The work of the CPSI is guided by an understanding of innovation in a public sector context as “the creation and implementation of new and service delivery solutions (systems, processes, methods, models, products and services) resulting in significant improvements in outcomes, efficiency, effectiveness and quality”.

The CPSI facilitates the unearthing, development and implementation of innovative ideas within and throughout the public sector. It achieves this by facilitating pilot projects aimed at demonstrating the value of innovative solutions, and through activities that create an enabling environment within the public sector to support and sustain innovation. The CPSI’s cross-sector reach makes it a resource for the whole of government, thus bridging institutional boundaries.

Through active research and knowledge sharing platforms and products, the CPSI identifies and shares lessons and information on innovation trends nationally, across Africa and internationally. The CPSI partners with a range of individuals and institutions in government, business and the community in exciting and mutually beneficial ways. This partnership model allows us to leverage financial and/or intellectual capital in support of government priorities.

The CPSI is guided by the following fundamental principles:

• DEMAND-DRIVEN: The CPSI is committed to responding to identified and clearly articulated service delivery challenges and their root causes.

• MULTI-STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT AND PARTNERING: The CPSI does not directly deliver services. Its emphasis is on facilitating partnerships which cut across all spheres and sectors of government to address

silos that stifle integration and holistic approaches.

• LEVERAGING ICT AS AN ENABLER: The CPSI supports Government departments in enhancing access to services through leveraging and exploiting the power of technology in their operations and services.

• REPLICATION: The CPSI advocates for and drives the adaptation, replication and mainstreaming of innovative

solutions.

• EMBRACING DIVERSITY: Innovations rarely happen in a closed circuit or homogeneous setting. To find holistic solutions to challenges, multi-stakeholder teams are gathered to interrogate these challenges.

VisionA solution-focused, effective and efficient Public Sector through innovation.

Mission

To act as facilitator for the unearthing, development and practical implementation of innovative solutions within and throughout the public service.

Mandate• Provide the Minister for Public Service and Administration with independent, diverse and forward-looking research findings

and advice on innovative service delivery with a specific focus on government’s priorities.

• Enhance public service transformation through innovation partnerships for incubating, testing and piloting innovative solutions.

• Support the creation of an enabling environment for innovation within the structures and agencies of the South African government.

3VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016 3

CONTENT

MANAGING EDITOR Lydia Phalwane • EDITOR Welcome Sekwati • EDITORIAL TEAM Nsizwa Dlamini, Thuli Radebe, Pierre Schoonraad, Lindani Mthethwa • DESIGN AND LAYOUT Siyethemba Kunene • PRINTING Image Hero

ISSN:2075-6054

Ideas That Work: The South African Public Sector

Innovation Journal is a biannual journal published

by the CPSI.

The views of the authors may not necessarily

be those of the CPSI. Copyright of material in this publication is vested in the CPSI and/or the authors. Requests to republish any of the material should be

directed to the CPSI.

An electronic copy of this journal can be downloaded

from www.cpsi.co.za/publications.php

ADDRESS: Corporate 66 Office Park, Cnr Lenchen & Von Willich,

Centurion, 0046

Tel: +27 (12) 683 2800Fax: +27 (12) 643 0943E-mail: [email protected]

www.cpsi.co.za

SEND CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE EDITOR AT

THE ABOVE CONTACT DETAILS.

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1. EDITORIAL1.1 Editor1.2 Minister’s Call 1.3 Message from the Deputy Minister 1.4 From the CEO’s Desk

2. INSIGHTS 2.1 Key Priorities and Challenges in Science and Technology2.2 Home Affairs Providing Fertile Ground For Innovation2.3 Continental Imperatives of the African Charter on Values and Principles of Public Service and Administration2.4 The City of Cape Town leading the way through Innovation2.5 Innovating the Future – Disruptive and Incremental innovations 2.6 Practical Leadership That Supports Organisational Innovation2.7 What do experts say? Insights on Innovation in Government2.8 The Broader Healing Mission for the Health Sector

3. PUBLIC SECTOR INNOVATION3.1 Case Management for Revenue Collection3.2 MomConnect – Improving Access to Quality Healthcare3.3 Safe Anaesthesia for Africa – Saving Lives3.4 The Shintshimpilo Driver Development Programme3.5 Ensuring Community Health through Rodent Management Programme 4. NEWS BRIEFS4.1 SA Research Team Develops a Concentrated Solar Power System4.2 New South African telescope to promote the sciences4.3 3D simulator launched to help stop road carnage4.4 DigiTruck helps bridge digital divide4.5 South Africa ranks 30 for worldwide innovation influence4.6 Minister for Public Service and Administration visits the CPSI4.7 Synopsis of the Health Sector-specific Workshop - Scaling-up Health Service Innovations4.8 13th CPSI Public Sector Innovation Awards 2015

5. AWARDS AND ACCOLADES 5.1 Rhodes Professor wins African Union (AU) Award for Research5.2 Edinburgh Medal for SA Astronomer

6. INTERNATIONAL INNOVATION 6.1 Mobile Technology for Community Health in Ghana (MOTECH Ghana)6.2 Find My School6.3 DevTrac6.4 MRI Agro

7. REVIEWS7.1 Why Nations Fail: The origins of power, prosperity and power

4 VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

From left to right:

WELCOME SEKWATI - Deputy Director: Enabling Environment

THULI RADEBE - Chief Executive Officer

LYDIA PHALWANE - Chief Director: Enabling Environment

PIERRE SCHOONRAAD - Chief Director: Research and Development

LINDANI MTHETHWA - Chief Director: Solution Support and Incubation

NSIZWA DLAMINI - Deputy Director: Innovation Research

SIYETHEMBA KUNENE - Deputy Director: Multimedia Innovation

EDITORIAL TEAM

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LEARN, SHARE AND INNOVATE

Welcome to the autumn edition of Ideas that Work: the South African Public Sector Innovation Journal.

This journal is not published as a nice-to-read. Instead, it is one of the most critical platforms for the CPSI to promote innovation and innovative thinking in the public sector.

Ideas that Work is, in borrowing one government term, an effective multi-purpose vehicle that invariably supports the CPSI in dispatching its strategic mandate of spurring the public sector to leverage innovation to achieve Vision 2030 of the NDP.

Firstly, it serves to showcase the enormous wealth of innovation present in many public sector institutions across the three spheres of our government. Not only does this dispel the myth about the glaring lack of innovation in the public sector. Importantly, this journal concretely flourishes the abundance of public sector innovative projects so that public officials can learn from each other and share new innovative solutions, knowledge and expertise for the betterment of service delivery.

Secondly, it serves as a repository for case studies and projects on innovative solutions. This ensures that this wealth of intellectual capital is not lost to government but is well documented and

kept safely for future reference, particularly during replication. This also helps in ensuring non-wastage of resources through unnecessary duplications.

But, even more important, internationally, this journal puts the South African public sector in the limelight for our relentless pursuance of innovation as a catalyst to improve the delivery of services to citizens. Our journal is widely read beyond our boundaries as it also sits on our web page. In this edition we feature from the public sector, case studies such as MomConnect, which is an innovation from the Health Sector to promote proper healthcare and information access for mothers during and after pregnancy; Safe Anaesthesia, which talks to an innovative way of dealing with backlogs of anaesthetists in public hospitals; the Shintshimpilo Driver Development Programme from KZN to promote safe driving on our roads while combating poverty and, the Rodent Management Programme, a rat combatting initiative from Alexandra in Gauteng.

Most of the material published in this edition is from the 9th CPSI Public Sector Innovation Conference held last year in Cape Town. The section under Insights is specifically based on the conference, featuring valuable and insightful inputs by Minister Naledi Pandor and Minister Malusi Gigaba from the departments of

Science and Technology and Home Affairs respectively; Councillor Gareth Broor, Mayoral Committee Member in the City of Cape Town and Mr Steven H Isaack from Namibia.

Ideas that work is there to celebrate award-winning innovators, thereby motivating all of us to emulate their example and plug up the courage to innovate. In this edition we doff our hats to two outstanding South Africans whose work has earned them international recognition. We proudly feature Professor Tebello Nyokong an internationally renowned scientist from Rhodes University who won a prestigious African Union (AU) award for her pioneering work in nanotechnology. We also feature Kevin Govender who has successfully harnessed the scientific knowledge of astronomy and integrated it with social development and capacity building for and with those most in need. For this, Kevin became the first South African to receive a medal at the 2016 Edinburgh International Science Festival.

In addition to all these, we also include the usual content such as News Briefs which are odd and ends on innovation, and of course a book review to whip up your appetite for reading.

Do enjoy reading and remember that rather than being a preserve for the selected few, innovation can be practiced by everybody.

EDITORIAL

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MINISTER’S CALL

REINVENTING THE PUBLIC SECTOR THROUGH INNOVATION

The Annual Public Sector Innovation Conference is a unique event in the public sector, focussing exclusively on innovation as a key enabler of service delivery improvement. Most importantly it supports the CPSI’s vision of building a solution-focussed effective and efficient public service through innovation.

Aligned with the CPSI’s mandate of entrenching and nurturing the culture and practice of innovation in the public sector, this event critically serves as a strategic platform to showcase innovative solutions with a view of encouraging their replication where need arises. It affords public officials a rare opportunity to come together and deliberate on innovation. It provides public officials and delegates from partnering sectors an opportunity to explore innovative solutions that will enhance the lives of our citizens.

The call to reinvent the public sector through innovation, echoed in the theme of the 9th CPSI Public Service Innovation conference, refers to one of the fundamental processes currently underway in our public sector. It is one of the key priorities that our government has embarked on to improve its performance. It is a commitment that demands of everyone active citizenship to collaborate across sectors to reinvent, redesign and ‘rebuild’ a government of the future that

By Hon Adv. Ngoako A. Ramatlhodi (Dr), (MP)Minister for the Public Service and Administration


evolves with time and is relevant and responsive to the ever-changing dynamic needs of the citizens.

We need to take a cue from the National Development Plan (NDP) stating that “both national and international institutions need to be overhauled”, because “in most countries, the public sector is linked into out-dated national models that do not allow it to deal with global challenges”.

Working together with the CPSI and guided by the NDP, we need to fully leverage innovation as one of the key building-blocks for a capable state. Because innovation is about new thinking and new ideas, it can only take root within a culture that draws on one’s social awareness and identity as a basis for forward-thinking, creativity and openness to change. These should constitute the strategic direction for the public sector.

As a blueprint towards the achievement of Vision 2030, the NDP provides guidance by unpacking a number of key drivers for change and what would constitute an enabling environment. Innovation, it says, should start to become pervasive across the state, business and social sectors.

We have already embarked on this journey. Public servants at the coal face are challenging outdated ways of doing things that are no longer meeting the

needs of our connected, sophisticated and informed citizens. They are pushing boundaries to move beyond ordinariness to find new, extra-ordinary ways of delivering services.

As one of its key programmes, the CPSI coordinates the Public Sector Innovation Awards Programme annually and invites government and private sector institutions to enter innovative projects that have improved public service delivery. The overwhelming number of entries in the form of outstanding projects received annually, tells a story of a public sector that is capable of thinking progressively and is solution-driven.

Through the CPSI, a number of processes and services in key areas of our government have been reinvented while some innovations from the coal face were replicated. These innovations are literally saving their departments millions of Rands whilst redefining service standards. This is of critical importance given the economic conditions prevailing at the moment. But more than that, these innovations demonstrate the hunger of officials to be part of the change they want to see.

Many international scholars such as Bason, Osbourne and Rondinelli, recognised that reinventing government through innovation, quality improvement and productivity is never an easy process.

Experience has shown that governments embarking on this road face strong obstacles and opposition from those benefiting from the status quo. Innovations often fail when there is lack of strong support from political leaders and heads of government, leading to innovators being punished and departments withholding resources to implement the changes effectively. We need to be flexible and continue to break down silos and “turf battles” through cooperative projects.

Reinventing government may be a long, complicated and contentious process, but it is the only process that will allow us to realise our vision of creating a better life for all. Above all, we should be encouraged by the many examples that we see from the private sector of how ICTs, when optimally leveraged, can open up complex multi-channels that defy spatial and socio-economic limitations in making services available to all citizens regardless of their background.

We need to forge working partnerships with a wide span that includes strategic partners such as academia, industry, civil society and specifically our National System of Innovation (NSI), to optimise the impact of innovation as a catalyst for enhanced service delivery. However, innovation can only thrive in a permissive and supportive environment. This is true for us as a country at large where our competitiveness is dependent on a strong NSI and it is equally true for a public sector that is solution-focussed.

In conclusion, despite the many gains that we have made in increasing citizen access to services, we are aware of the gaps that we still have to plug going forward. This requires public officials to seize invaluable opportunities at their disposal to collectively engage, share and exchange knowledge and experiences on innovative solutions that improve service delivery. As responsible citizens we should all play our role to explore a range of areas where innovation can be used to deliver services and make it permeate through our institutions. If we work together and innovate together, we can make a difference to the lives of our citizens.

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MESSAGE FROM THE DEPUTY MINISTER

South Africa was one of the founding members of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) when it was formally launched in 2011. This partnership is aimed at providing an international platform for governments and civil society to work together to implement ambitious open government reforms to make their governments more open, accountable, and responsive to citizens. Since then, OGP has grown from 8 countries to the 63 participating countries.

We live in an era known as the knowledge economy, where knowledge is not only empowering but also liberating. People require knowledge to be able to decide on their destiny, albeit in politics, economics, etc. Any move to withhold information can have catastrophic socio-economic and political consequences.

Being accountable to citizens and to always remain relevant and responsive to their needs is, by all standards, one of the most daunting challenges to any government. This enormous obligation does not only go so far as the quality of services a government provides or its efficacy in that. Our transformational agenda involves a relentless and sustained pursuit of an open, inclusive agenda in making government accessible to our citizens.

Our work within the OGP has received widespread recognition amongst member states earning us the position of Special Envoy to this august international initiative. Furthermore, in my new position as Chairperson of the OGP Steering Committee, I have resolved to divert my attention to the role that the legislatures can play in advancing open government.

The act of opening up the legislature is essential for any democracy and is crucial for its proper functioning. It is an objective that we have to collectively fight to advance because greater openness of the legislative process means that citizens have better access to information about laws under consideration and opportunities to engage in the policy-making processes.

The 2012 Rome Declaration of Parliamentary Openness seeks to make parliaments more ‘open’ and to urge them to:

• Promote a culture of openness and transparency;

• Keep accurate records of all parliamentary information;

• Make this data easily accessible and usable, and

• Utilise technology to adequately communicate vital information to their respective publics.

Since 1994, South Africa has been consistent with its participatory democracy actions including in parliamentary processes.

The importance of the citizen in the work of Parliament is enshrined in the Constitution, which instructs Parliament to facilitate public participation in the law-making process, to conduct its business in an open manner and to take reasonable measures for public access to its committee meetings and sittings of the House. This is premised on Parliament’s role to represent the people and ensure government by the people under the Constitution, an approach which is linked with the principles of the Open Government Partnership.

Our Constitution directs that we uphold the right of both the individual citizen and or a group of citizens in organised formations to participate in parliamentary processes. In the past 21 years of our democracy we have witnessed, as a country, a growing culture of public participation. This is more evident especially amongst previously marginalised groups with regards to community issues such as land reform, the management of natural resources, fisheries, etc.

One of our practices as part of involving the public in the parliamentary process

OPEN LEGISLATURE FOR ADVANCED PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY

By Hon Ms. Ayanda Dlodlo, (MP)Deputy Minister for the Public Service and Administration


is through the annual State of the Nation Address (SONA). In preparation for the SONA, the public is invited to provide inputs on matters that they want to be addressed by the President using various platforms and media.

Similarly, in terms of the budgetary process, citizens are afforded an opportunity to submit their written ‘Tips to the Minister of Finance’ on what they think are the priorities that government should focus on in terms of spending. As a result, South Africa ranks number third (3) in the Global Budget Transparency Index.

Parliament has the overall responsibility for transparency of the entire budgeting process and as such has to ensure that the budget is debated in Parliament with the involvement of organised interest groups and civil society, the media and the general public. The budget is formally debated with the organised interest groups through public hearings in which presentations are received from these organised groups representing different sectoral interests.

Our activist parliamentary committee system which allows unprecedented room for public participation is one of the hallmarks of South Africa’s relatively young democracy. Unlike plenary sessions, committees provide a point of entry for the public.

In this sense, the shift towards more influential committees is in line with the shift away from a purely representative towards a more participatory model of democracy. Through the committees, members of the public can also participate in public hearings where they can make oral submissions on a legislation that is before Parliament.

The programme Taking Parliament to the People (TPTTP) is also an innovation within the South African Parliament. Introduced in 2002 by the National Council of Provinces (NCOP), the TPTTP programme gives our people an opportunity to make their voices heard. The programme provides communities with the opportunity of

meeting face-to-face with their public representatives from both the legislative (Parliament, Provincial legislatures, and local councils) and executive arms of state.

An evaluation of parliamentary openness in South Africa was conducted by the People’s Assembly (a South African not-for-profit organisation that provides information about public representatives) using the openness indicators outlined in the parliamentary openness declaration of 2001. According to this evaluation report, South Africa achieved a moderate showing, satisfying most of the criteria

We also need to move towards using social media platforms for two way communication rather than using them for information dissemination only as is currently the case.

We know that parliament by its nature is a mechanism for accountability, openness and transparency, as well as for oversight on the work of government. It is critical that Parliaments play a role in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.

My experience in the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) is that even though Parliaments are an integral part of this governance mechanism, very few parliaments and parliamentarians are actively involved. This in my opinion has to change – our parliaments should not only focus on oversight over national programmes but also take an active role in international governance openness

and transparency initiatives such as the OGP and in Africa’s case the Africa Peer Review Mechanism.

Therefore, it is highly crucial that going forward we look into: civic technology

innovation and how it can transform citizen participation; how countries are harnessing data to support the National Development Agendas; open government for integrity as a way of addressing corruption and accountability challenges; the importance of the open government in re-thinking privacy in the 21st century, and the use of open government to guarantee access to justice.

In conclusion, true to our active participation in the OGP, we are bound by our constitution to be accountable to citizens through our legislative arms of state. Therefore, for the growth and continued sustainability of OGP, we need to forge strong collaborations as government, private sector and civil society to advance the innovation agenda around legislative openness, technologies that can improve transparency or opportunities for citizen participation and international standards that can help support good practice, specifically in the area of legislative openness.

necessary to call it an open parliament.

Whilst we are proud of the achievements we have made as a country, we have full appreciation of the need to improve especially by leveraging on platforms such as the Legislative Openness Working Group of the OGP. A special focus needs to be on responding to legitimate criticism that our Parliament has not been able to entrench a sense of ownership of parliamentary processes by our people.

Our people do not yet fully utilise the link to Parliament through which they can engage it directly on issues that affect them. They could do this in their individual capacity through constituency offices, written petitions or as communities with specific matters that need the attention of the National Assembly or National Council of Provinces.

Citizenparticipation

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OGP

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FROM THE CEO’S DESK

Our organisation, the Centre for Public Service Innovation (CPSI), is highly enthused by the overwhelming and unrelenting participation of delegates from across the three spheres of government and the private and civic sectors in the Annual CPSI Public Sector Innovation conference. This, to us, is a special vote of confidence, from our colleagues in the public sector, in our initiative and its significance in promoting innovation for the modernisation of our service delivery machinery. Furthermore, it speaks to the issue of buy-in and ownership.

This event has over the years grown phenomenally proving to be a valuable asset for the entire sector. Public officials have without doubt taken ownership of the Innovation conference. To those of us tasked with driving innovation in the public sector, this is a boon in our favour but most importantly, it is a motivating sign of a battle half won.

When it comes to innovation, there always seems to be this irresistible temptation both in the public and private sectors to delve into theoretical and abstract definitions. However, this is somewhat far removed from the mark considering the actual thinking behind the Public Sector Innovation Conference and of course what it seeks to achieve. Whatever definition one holds pertaining to the concept

of innovation in its totality, inclusive of its various nuances, it should owe its legitimacy to a firm grasp of concrete issues that public officials have to contend with on a daily basis at the coalface of service delivery.

The above explanation sets out a clear context for the annual conference. First off and of primary importance, it should always be practical in nature, providing delegates with a rare and unique opportunity to live innovation. Secondly, it should be experiential in nature, providing actual, practical experiences of innovation through various inputs and the tested innovative solutions that have made a commendable impact on solving actual service delivery challenges elsewhere.

Thirdly, the conference should provide an ideal environment for the proliferation of knowledge. It should create opportunities for learning and sharing of knowledge, taking advantage of those that are already living and benefiting from innovation and for identify solutions that address challenges for possible scaling up and replication. Fourthly, the Conference should continue to facilitate a platform for our political principals to engage the officials on relevant issues.

The presence of Ministers of Science and Technology and Home Affairs were the highlight of the 2015 Conference. Their participation and inputs went a long way to infusing and entrenching keenness amongst the officials to embrace innovation as a vehicle for maximising the impact of their outcomes.

The CPSI conference is historically renowned for its ability to encourage the forging of cross-sectoral partnerships and collaborations in innovation – the formation of the so-called communities of innovators. Delegates coming to the conference year in, year out, comprise a varied cohort of public officials of all ranks from across the public sector who share a passion for innovating. They come to the conference in order to explore partnerships and collaboration possibilities for maximum impact in

By Thuli RadebeCEO: Centre for Public Service Innovation

THE CPSI CONFERENCE AS A COLLABORATIVE PLATFORM FOR PUBLIC SECTOR INNOVATION

The complexities in service delivery, the sophistication levels of our citizens, and the promises that we have made leave us no choice but to modernise our approaches through innovation.

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terms of innovation. They identify and interrogate the challenges and dynamics that characterise the public service environment that either enable or block progress in the era of innovation.

The CPSI values all delegates to the conference as they are the most important and, dare I say, indispensable resource whose total commitment to the conference gives us an edge in achieving the outcomes of our government. It seems impossible to do so in ordinary traditional ways. The complexities in service delivery, the sophistication levels of our citizens,

and the promises that we have made leave us no choice but to modernise our approaches through innovation in line with the National Development Plan.

With South Africa increasingly consolidating its role internationally within the global village, regional and continental integration has become of prime importance. Once again, the CPSI had the pleasure of hosting delegates from the Republic of Namibia this year. Namibia has become a highly strategic partner of South Africa, and the CPSI in particular, collaborating with and supporting us in

terms of our continental responsibilities – our innovation and awards programmes. These crucial partnerships strategically determine our success in running big projects. Countries call on one another for collaboration and support. As a government component, the CPSI celebrates the diversity in terms of delegates and partners as regards the conference. After all, it is only when we are mixed that we can pursue the ideals of integration and cross sector collaboration, which are some of the foundations of public sector innovation.

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It is very rare that any talk around innovation in the public sector would conclude without concerns being raised about the stifling impact of controls and regulations on public sector innovation.

Based on its role, the public sector can ideally be referred to as the actual coalface in terms of its fundamental responsibility of transforming our society. The public sector is undoubtedly the primary vehicle for change in South Africa. The private sector, on the other hand, has its own agenda with different interests that it has to pursue. If the public sector has to achieve fundamental transformation and real change in terms of the core challenges we are confronted with, it has to take a bold and resolute decision to make that difference.

Our various ideological perspectives such as the advancement of the national democratic revolution or the achievement of a socialist society, will remain theory if the public sector is unable to galvanise a concomitant response from itself as the frontline of our endeavours. I think the problems that we face in government offer us an opportunity to alter the public sector for the better. Despite this, the public sector has improved tremendously over the years. There is a marked difference between the public sector of today compared to more than two decades ago in 1994.

As part of our strategy to improve the public sector, we should always value the importance of inter-governmental collaboration and integration in

KEY PRIORITIES AND CHALLENGES IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

By Hon Ms Naledi Pandor, MPMinister of Science and Technology

advancing public sector transformation. Collaboration and partnerships are some of the pillars of public sector success. We all have to work together to get rid of silo-mentality. The unfortunate but true reality is that no individual possesses the knowledge of everything. It takes a unified force made up of different individuals to bring forth the kind of intellectual capacity that can be of great use to our endeavour.

The public sector needs urgent transformation so that it can be geared up to meet new and challenging demands. A key priority in this regard is building up the capability of state institutions to act proactively rather than responsively

to challenges. The public sector needs to be designed and managed mostly at the local level to allow effective and meaningful involvement of the public and communities.

Around the world, there are countless examples of radical initiatives that deliver better results for less money. The sad reality about these approaches is that they tend to remain outside of mainstream public services. Because of this deep-seated obliviousness to the existing best practices elsewhere, there is, instead, a distorted notion that South Africa is the first country in the world to address transformation.

Globally, many countries continue to pursue nation building and in the process they have to confront transformation challenges. Within this context, in our pursuance of transformation, part of our innovation should involve learning what other nations have done, adjusting their interventions to suit our context and implementing accordingly. Thinking that we are the first makes South Africa miss vital opportunities.

Barriers to Innovation

In transforming the public sector through innovation, there are some key inhibitors which, if not dealt with, would otherwise

INSIGHTS

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the local and Small, Medium and Micro Enterprise (SMME) level. It is therefore crucial that government supports small innovative companies. There should be transparency whereby actual money, spent on procurement from SMMEs by both government and the suppliers to government, should be made public as evidence. In addition, large companies should be compelled to furnish their historical track record of doing business with SMMEs as the basis for awarding of contracts with big corporates.

Government needs to be creative and innovative in all avenues. The truth is, government has a solid and robust regulatory environment. However, the main challenge is the inability to use the rules and regulations innovatively.

deter the successful adoption of innovation amongst public servants. Some of these inhibitors include lack of funding and commissioning for new approaches, a culture of risk aversion and the absence of incentives for innovation.

It is very rare that any talk around innovation in the public sector would conclude without concerns being raised about the stifling impact of controls and regulations on public sector innovation. Public servants complain about the difficulty of engaging in radical innovation while conscious of the imposing Treasury regulations or Auditor-General’s prescripts. We need to find an ideal environment wherein regulations and radical innovation can mutually coexist, where administration does not inhibit radical innovation, where public bureaucracy allows the flexibility for radical change in how things are done to suit the context.

We know, for instance, that information technology can radically improve public sector performance, whether in administration or service delivery. However, it is not a question of having a good IT department, but of great significance is for all public officials to be empowered and skilled on various IT systems for them to be able to improve their performance and productivity in delivering services to the citizens.

Critical Success Factors

In mitigation of the barriers mentioned above, it is important for Government institutions to rally together to achieve the state’s priority of job creation and economic development, particularly at

The public sector needs a sudden and relentless change from blind compliance to being oriented towards achieving national objectives.

Strides in Science and Technology

South Africa is building the biggest radio telescope in the whole world called the Square Kilometre Array. The SKA, as it is commonly known, is a radio telescope project 50 times more powerful and ten thousand times faster than any other. When completed, the SKA will consist of thousands of dishes and antennae, the combined area of which gives rise to its name, the Square Kilometre Array or SKA. It is a global infrastructure project which will enable activities in twenty countries

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across five continents, all linked to the SKA. The total project costs will run into billions of dollars with much of these being spent on relaying, storing and analysing data captured by the antennae. This task will require processing power estimated to be equal to several millions of today’s fastest computers put together.

Communications and data storage are envisaged to be the greatest challenges that the project will have to contend with. Project SKA will generate data at a rate estimated between twice and ten times the daily traffic on the entire world-wide-web today. This project is not just an astronomy project. As John Womersley, CEO of the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) recently stated, “SKA is to some extent an IT project with an astronomy question as a driver.”

SKA is not simply an infrastructure project nor is it simply a science project. It is the kind of project that pushes the boundaries of global technology. The project has so far attracted big technology companies that will benefit from opportunities linked to the project. The benefits are mainly in relation to the development of knowledge and technologies that will keep these companies at the leading edge of computing. This in turn will benefit computer users in many spheres, from finance to government, through industry and medicine to other science research.

It is known that science pushes the boundaries of knowledge. However, highly sophisticated and leading edge projects such as SKA have the ambition to push those boundaries on the largest scale imaginable. This also has unforeseeable knock-on effects reminiscent of how the mainframe computer enabled the invention of the personal computer (PC) which enabled word processing. This later enabled file sharing, which enabled the modem, which enabled the world-wide-web, which enabled content which in turn led to the creation of content search engines such as Google, culminating in the invention of Google driverless cars.

Conclusion

Despite all the strides we have made in the public sector, what we all need to give attention to is the public sector research community nexus. Evidence-based policy making does not appear to be firmly entrenched in public sector practices. Government has at its disposal,

Despite all the strides we have made in the public sector, we all need to give attention to is the public sector research community nexus. Evidence-based policy making does not appear to be firmly entrenched in public sector practices.

a fountain of evidence which is seldom used to support delivery and policy responses. Perhaps as a way forward, every department should be required to attach evidence of research to its proposed policies or strategies with poverty, inequality and employment as primary objectives of that research. Such an approach would allow the practitioners to take responsibility in initiating solutions and actions that directly respond to the challenges of our society.

The truth is, the essence of existence of any public sector is fundamentally to always strive to respond to the challenges of its citizens. All efforts towards transformation and improvement should revolve around that.

INSIGHTS

15VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

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16 VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

INSIGHTS

Background

The Department of Home Affairs (DHA) is certainly one of the most critical institutions within the government of South Africa. He reminded us how the department has to account for the population within the borders of the country – both citizens and non-citizens. This robust mandate entails issuing of Identity documents, passports, births, marriage and death certificates. Furthermore, DHA is responsible for the management of the national population register and its related programmes including national immigration.

DHA forms a crucial nexus between economic development, national security as well as governance and administration. The department assumes an overarching, cross-sectoral role as a critical partner to all other government departments to ensure economic growth through the services that the department offers. However, against this crucial mandate entrusted to the department, Home Affairs was for a long time, narrowly associated with the issuing of identity documents, passports and certificates while very little was known in terms of their purpose for both the holder and the country as a whole. Unfortunately, the same could be said about the department’s officials who had a very narrow view of their role in relation to the services that their department offered.

To the public they were known as ordinary clerks.

Human capital was put at the back-burner with very little done by way of recruitment and investment in people for growth and empowerment. First off, it simply negated

the culture and philosophy of a learning institution, which formed the strategic direction of government. Secondly, this worked against the spirit of innovation that the department had adopted and sought to promote, as well as its general ethos to invest in its own human capital.

HOME AFFAIRS PROVIDING FERTILE GROUND FOR INNOVATION

By Hon. Mr Malusi Gigaba, MPMinister of Home Affairs

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This was not only for the department’s image but for the good of its clients both citizens and visitors, who would benefit immensely from the professional services that the department should ordinarily offer. For a variety of obvious reasons, it was inevitable that measures had to be put in place to turn this situation around. This urgently required putting the department on a high performance track.

It was against this background that the department embarked on a modernisation programme, putting emphasis on, amongst others, the introduction of e-government. This was obviously a drastic step towards radicalising and revolutionising the department and the way things were normally done, including the provision of a paperless service to citizens. Given the size of the department and the complexity of its mandate, there were many other crucial elements which, when tackled head on, would fundamentally translate into success factors.

Critical Success Factors

The first and most important of these elements pertains to human capital, the people who work for the department. The Department needed to undertake an intense and relentless review of the way its employees view themselves, their qualifications, their culture, their mind-set, the way they view their clients and the way they view the services the department delivers in view of the priorities of government as a whole. Equally important, the department needed to refocus on the way it views and invests in their empowerment and personal development to ensure optimal and competitive

performance. The department needed to create and nurture a sustainable enabling and learning environment and a culture of professionalism to support government and the country’s ambition of achieving wholesale improvement in public sector performance and productivity.

Of critical importance are the service providers that the DHA uses in ensuring the successful delivery of its wide bouquet of services. Home Affairs has the best platform to create a paperless, modern and efficient, convenient one-stop service. The way in which citizens apply for smart ID cards and passports is a good example of the remarkably advanced capabilities in the department.

Importantly, the Department of Home Affairs relies heavily on the efficacy of contracted network suppliers in providing an uninterrupted network infrastructure to ensure reliable and consistent service delivery. On countless occasions, citizens visiting Home Affairs offices arrive only to find systems down or in some instances working in offline mode. This is unacceptable, with not only the department taking the blame but most

importantly the network suppliers since Home Affairs is their client. The ability of service providers to be viewed as professionals depends largely on what kind of service they provide to their clients. However, because they do not interface with clients at the front office, they tend to escape unscathed despite their unreliable and interruptible network. To utilise Live Capture for Smart ID Card and passport applications, we require a solid network that is uninterruptable and available 24/7. Therefore, the second critical success factor towards innovation at the Department of Home Affairs is an uninterrupted network supply.

The third success factor involves the basket of services that the Department of Home Affairs offers. Typical examples include the Smart ID Card with all its complex capabilities, passports, the National Identification System, the Electronic Movement Control System, or the E-channels Programme. However, instead of giving in to complacency, the department is encouraged and determined to always invest in more research working with various partners such as CSIR, HSRC, CPSI and others to

On countless occasions, citizens visiting Home Affairs offices arrive only to find systems down or in some instances working in offline mode.

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INSIGHTS

continue to aim for excellence in the kind of services provided. There will always be a margin of improvement particularly as the number of applications for new Smart IDs increases on a daily basis. For instance, there is already a need for improvement in the Live Capture that the department has recently implemented, to enable citizens who need reissuing of ID Cards to apply for them without having to repeat the usual process of applying.

We can learn more from Malaysia where the process of reapplying for a lost ID card has been highly simplified and expedited, thanks to technology. Instead of visiting Home Affairs offices to resubmit documents, reapplication for lost ID cards is done online at a kiosk in a shopping mall. Applicants are identified by their fingerprint or iris using biometric technology. Payment is done in many ways including EFT. The document is ultimately sent to an applicant’s preferred point of collection.

This Malaysian case study is without any doubt the best model that that Home Affairs should pursue without any hesitation. However, the critical success factor in this regard is the formation of strategic partnerships, including with the CPSI, CSIR and HSRC, amongst others. The reality is, no government department can deliver on such highly complex and sophisticated projects in isolation. With so many critical requirements that are fundamental in guaranteeing the safe provision of such services, like cyber-security, strategic

partnerships are critical in bringing about an innovative perspective.

There are a number of examples of the sort of value that partnerships can bring. For instance, the specifications on the new Smart ID Cards which Home Affairs is rolling out currently, were done at CSIR by South African engineers. The reality is, with public-public partnerships so much can be achieved because South Africa has much more capacity and capability than is often credited. Unfortunately, we tend to look elsewhere for innovations to deliver innovative services required, while overlooking the wealth of capabilities amongst ourselves.

Leadership

Related to the first critical success factor, that is, people, is leadership. The DHA has a scarcity of leadership of the quality required both at the front office and the back office. The department requires leadership that has empathy, the ability to put themselves into clients’ shoes and respond in a reassuring manner so that they depart with a different experience.

The front office will not succeed if the back office is bloated, unresponsive and indifferent. There is a whole lot of organisational revolutionisation that is needed so that everybody understands their role in supporting others. Everybody else, including the Minister and the Deputy Minister, must lead by example to create an environment where everybody realises their own leadership potential

and responsibility and actually play their part. Whether sitting in a small office in Umtata, or driving a mobile unit, officials need to understand that they are all leaders and their contribution as individuals bolsters the contribution of the whole organisation as well as that of government as a whole.

Conclusion

Success factors required to provide an innovative service and to continue being innovative in the provision of services cannot be restricted to individual programmes such as the National Identification System, the Electronic Movement Control System or the E-channels Programme. The attainment of these factors, will pave the way for the existence of an enabling environment that is fertile ground for innovation. An enabling environment for innovation can only be achieved if there is a proper solid infrastructure and correct foundation as well as the correct mind-set.

Any failure in achieving some of these critical success factors will result in the perpetuation of a ‘silo’ mentality in the public sector where we would continue to think in isolation. There would not be any form of integration between the front and back offices, civic services and immigration services and, more seriously, the department, its service suppliers, as well as critical partners such as the Government Printing Works who are responsible for printing all security documents.

I have therefore established a Ministerial Modernisation Programme Committee (MMPC) comprising delegates from various departments including CSIR, HSRC SITA, Telkom and others. This committee will meet on a quarterly basis chaired by the Minister to evaluate progress on the various programmes of DHA and decide on the way forward. A project manager will be appointed to drive the steering committee that supports the MMPC and to provide a holistic view of innovation at the Department of Home Affairs and all the programmes that should be implemented.

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INSIGHTS

CONTINENTAL IMPERATIVES OF THE AFRICAN CHARTER ON VALUES AND PRINCIPLES OF PUBLIC SERVICE AND ADMINISTRATIONBy Steven H IsaackRepublic of Namibia

Background

The first Pan-African Conference of Ministers of Public/Civil Service met in Tangiers, Morocco in 1994. In that conference, the ministers noted a number of important elements pertaining to the improvement of public services on the continent. These included, amongst others, the need for greater efficiency and effectiveness in public service delivery and the critical challenge of establ ishing effective ways and means to encourage greater productivity and performance amongst public servants.

The Ministers’ conference, as it was known then, has evolved considerably from its original form and is now known as the African Union Commission Specialised Technical Committee (STC) Number 8. Importantly it deals with issues of public service, local government, decentralisation and urban development.

The Contextual Overview on the Charter

The African Charter on the Values and Principles of Public Service and Administration is in itself a conceptual

continental innovation by the Ministers of Public Services on the African continent. The initial African Public Service Charter was adopted in February 2001 at the second Ministerial Conference held in Windhoek, Namibia.

In formulating the Charter, the ministers moved from the general consensus on the need for uniformity of standards and a broader understanding and appreciation

by all member states. The Ministers emphasised the need for the Charter to be easily accessible to all the member states. In addition, its relevance and value

had to be broadly communicated. Most importantly, its content needed to find expression and meaning in the actions and lives of all public servants, civil servants, as well as citizens across the continent. The realisation of the shared values agenda of the continent particularly as it relates to its governance component was also highly crucial.

The Rationale behind the Charter

The formulation of the Charter was driven by the need to consolidate the collective

commitment made by member states towards better and efficient service delivery. Importantly, it was also about improving service delivery, combatting corruption and protecting the rights of citizens as well as users of public services. Above of all, it is about promoting good governance and sustainable development on the continent.

Some 36 member states across the continent from a field of 54, signed the African Charter, with 12 member states that have ratified it. The countries who have ratified the charter are Algeria, Burundi, Cameroon, Congo, Kenya, Mali, Malawi, Mozambique, Mauritius, Namibia, South Africa and Tanzania. Fifteen ratifications are needed for the charter to come into force as per the African Union requirements.

The long-term vision of the charter is to build capable developmental states across the continent over a time frame of about 10 years. The Charter in itself is part of a whole array of initiatives that are aimed at enhancing capable developmental states on the continent – this is referred to as the long term strategy.

Similarly, the National Development Plan (NDP) in South Africa talks about developing the country into a capable developmental state. Incidentally, that

The African approach to innovation and transformation needs to be defined by us as Africans.

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also, forms part of the overall vision of the Ministers responsible for public Civil/Service in Africa, which, in essence shows that South Africa is in line with the strategic thinking and direction of the continent as a whole.

The Specifications of the Charter

Article 8 of the African Charter refers to the modernisation of the public service. It is about facilitating the introduction of modern and innovative procedures and systems and the use of modern technologies to support and improve public service delivery. It is also about simplifying procedures, processes and formalities.

The reality in most jurisdictions across the continent is that of a public service that is completely hamstrung by bureaucracy. On a daily basis we contend with deep-rooted mannerisms and hard core mind sets. These completely work against our aspiration of modernising the public service. In moving forward, we need to simplify our procedures and formalities to facilitate accessibility and affordability of the services that we render.

Article 9 of the Charter deals prominently with integrity and the importance of professionalising the public service. Public servants are expected to demonstrate excellence and innovation in the performance of their duties. Innovation and professionalism are two key elements that are highly interlinked.

Fifty years after the formation of the Organisation of African Unity in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1963, Heads of States and the African Union (AU), met and reflected on the past successes and challenges on the continent. At the same time, they mapped up the way forward in terms of the next 50 years for the continent. As part of the 50th Anniversary Solemn Declaration, they crafted a Vision called Agenda 2063.

Agenda 2063, is a rededication by African Heads of States to an enduring Pan-African vision of “An Integrated Prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in the global arena.” It is both a Vision and an Action Plan that contains eight aspirations which serve as pillars for the kind of Africa we all, as Africans, collectively aspire to in the next 50 years and how that can be achieved. This Agenda is essentially about continuity of actions underpinned by a guiding principle drawing appropriate lessons, building upon what has worked in the past; and in brief making every effort to do things better.

There is a clear link with the African Union’s Agenda 2063 where Aspirations 1 and 6 refer specifically to innovation as one of the underpinning enablers of achieving the ‘Africa We Want’ (see the boxes below).

Aspiration 1 talks about a prosperous Africa based on inclusive growth and sustainable development. This aspiration refers to access to education and skills revolution amongst citizens of the continent underpinned by science, technology and innovation for a knowledge society. It is a call for African people to innovate to create a knowledge society – one that can consolidate the Pan-African vision of an integrated, prosperous and competitive global player.

Aspiration 6 deals with an Africa where development is people driven, unleashing the potential of its women and youth. In that context, the Africa that is envisaged in 2063 will be caring, putting emphasis on gender equity and empowering women to participate in all spheres of life. It is an Africa that promotes innovation and entrepreneurship. The creativity, energy, drive and passion to innovate in African youth and women will subsequently be the driving force behind the continent’s political, social, cultural and economic transformation.

This Africa we want demands of us, whether at the continental and sub-regional and country level, to set a new trajectory that will enable us to meet all the aspirations of our people. We need to leverage the opportunities in our unique demography, the natural resources that we have as a continent, urbanisation as well as our technology and trade as a spring-board to realise the transformation that we desire as a people.

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Article 29 covers issues about capacity building. The capable developmental state extensively referred to earlier, should possess the requisite capacity to help us in strengthening the effectiveness and efficiency of governance and administration on the Continent. The focus is on leveraging the knowledge networks that we have on the Continent to strengthen capacity in public servants. It is also about providing working tools and creating and nurturing a conducive working environment for the application of new and exciting knowledge. It is about putting in place mechanisms and processes for the exchange of expertise, knowledge, information technology, good governance and best practices.

The issue of recognition and rewarding is inarguably, almost synonymous with performance and productivity. Article 25 of the Charter deals extensively with that, highlighting the need in particularly to recognise outstanding performance, creativity and innovation. South Africa is leading the way through its vital innovation stimulating programmes, particularly the Public Sector Innovation

Awards Programmes and the Innovation Conference. However, it is critical to note that more work needs to be done in terms of recognizing and rewarding excellence. The African Union Commission is expected to provide innovative experiences and to institute a system of awards for innovation. The All-Africa Public Sector Innovation Awards (AAPSIA), which forms part of the Ministers’ programme led by South Africa, is but a small step in the right direction.

The All-Africa Public Sector Innovation Awards

The AAPSIA programme was established under the championship of South Africa as part of other highly strategic initiatives such as The Africa Public Service Day, Anti-Corruption, Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Development.

The AAPSIA programme was launched in 2005 in Addis Ababa Ethiopia. The first formal AAPSIA ceremony was held in Midrand, South Africa, as part of the sixth Pan-African Conference of Ministers followed by Nairobi Kenya in 2011 and lastly Congo Brazzaville in 2013.

Critical Drivers of Innovation within the Context of AAPSIA There are a number of critical elements that can create an enabling environment that is ideal for innovation. These include having an entrepreneurial spirit, willingness to commit resources to innovation; and having the right type of organisation that encourages and nurtures innovation. We need to boldly move from the convention, and not settle for the obvious while at the same time not shying away from asking hard and fast questions.

Entrepreneurship is about organising and managing a new and creative enterprise inside government. The sustenance of entrepreneurship requires an unflinching and resolute commitment both at the political and organisational levels, respectively. The best way to move forward in terms of encouraging innovation is through the establishment and nurturing of a culture of having self-supporting, self-designing and self-managing teams. It should be borne in mind that innovation is not the exclusive-preserve of the private sector. Public servants working in government can and truly are innovating.

Entrepreneurship leads to initiating and facilitating action that would otherwise not occur. It is about activating unutilised resources, inspiring and supporting non-

Knowledge management is important. We need to create our own repositories of good practices and good governance on the continent.

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routine behaviour and re-orienting and re-combining material and human resources to achieve outcomes that otherwise would be impossible to achieve.

Critical Enablers of innovation

Critical enablers of innovation include changing attitudes and mind-sets. In the context of the ongoing African Agenda it is about strengthening the Pan-African values of self-reliance, of solidarity, hard work and prosperity to build on African successes, experiences and best practices. It is also about the ownership of the African narrative and the brand. We have to tell our own story about our numerous achievements in order to emphatically signal our continental aspiration of being a competitive world player.

The African approach to innovation and transformation needs to be defined by us as Africans so that we can,

amongst ourselves, learn from the unique diversity on the continent and share the experiences that we have.

Conclusion

If we innovate together openly as Africans we stand a much bigger chance to eliminate possibilities of reinventing

the wheel and unnecessarily wasting resources. We can learn from each other and exchange home-grown solutions for our common and diverse challenges. We can address our own realities through sharing of experiences.

Knowledge management is important. We need to create our own repositories of good practices and good governance on the continent. The sort of challenges that countries face as well as their successes and failures form part of their identity and profile but also becomes part of us in terms of our unity and the Agenda that we pursue as Africans.

Most importantly, we need to trust in our own solutions because the challenges as well as the solutions that we have derive from our common reality. We need to move beyond competition, break down silos and learn from each other. We need to get passionate about innovation and solicit political and senior management buy in. We need to remember as we move forward that our future is Pan-African. We cannot and should not forget that we are part of the big picture.

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In 2014, the City of Cape Town received the accolade of World’s design capital. This accolade was testament to a commitment birthed of a passion for local government to have innovation at the centre not only of the city life but most notably also the way the city is governed.

The bestowing of this highly prestigious accolade which was borne out of innovation, raised the profile of the city of Cape Town. The City, instantly, became an envy of many cities across the globe and, most importantly, a shining model that everyone looked up to and wanted to emulate. Soon thereafter, as cherry on top, the World Times declared Cape Town the best destination to visit in the world. As a city, besides opting for innovation in terms of our governance and general city life, we were weary of the fact that if not acted upon, innovation can remain a mere concept. As a result, our point of

departure was to take a hard and intense look externally and internally at the various processes and operations used in running and managing the city. Our main aim was to identify weak points in our governance and administration, and to tap into our innovative capacity for possible solutions.

Our transformational journey, which was centred around innovation was simply themed, Live Design and Transform Lives. This simple but punchy and captivating slogan would create awareness around the direction and focus of the city in terms of its destination through innovation. The theme would help in drumming up support and buy-in from the citizens who are reassured of the transformative impact of innovation and design on their lives. But

also of critical importance the theme draws from the National Development Plan (NDP) in encouraging the participation of citizens and communities in their own development as active South Africans.

It is not a long time since the City opted on innovation as a guiding principle in improving governance and service delivery to its citizens. However, already a number of projects that are being implemented are demonstrating the value of innovation as regards service delivery improvement.

Early in 2015, we began installing our average speed cameras on some of our very busy roads, starting with the Nelson Mandela Boulevard to deal with excessive speeding and reckless driving in order to

THE CITY OF CAPE TOWN LEADING THE WAY THROUGH INNOVATION

By Counsellor Garreth BroorCity of Cape Town

We understand that broadband is fundamental in the creation of an enabling environment with opportunities for growth and digital inclusion.

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ensure general road safety. The cameras are positioned at various intervals along a stretch of road to capture vehicle registration numbers and record the location, date and exact time of passage. Using the data, our metro police can calculate the average speed of each vehicle travelling along that stretch of road. The aim of the project is to enforce adherence to road safety regulations even where there are no surveillance cameras.

We also implemented our open design policy. The policy encourages government data to be made accessible to everybody, including the public sector, entrepreneurs and communities so that we can all work together using the data to create business opportunities. This encourages transparency and openness in government information while also promoting open innovation.

Being a modern day city and the world’s design capital we needed to take some tangible time to increase access to broadband. Many people will agreeably say that broadband should be a basic right as observable with other fundamental rights given that activism in the economy is so often determined by broadband in an era of technology. The City of Cape Town has to-date saved R117 million in costs, increased the speed of city internet 3000 times and licenced third party service providers with the opportunity to plug into our network. In addition, we have linked 43

provincial government buildings and 141 city buildings.

We understand that broadband is fundamental in the creation of an enabling environment with opportunities for growth and digital inclusion. This is directly in line with our NDP’s prerogative to create the right conditions for investment and to create an up cycle of economic development.

Other innovations include the Transport for Cape Town App. This application presents commuters across the city of Cape Town with all the available schedules for public transport. The application has made it easier for residents and visitors to move around the city. It has solved one of the biggest complains we had, since implementing the new bus rapid system and other measures, namely the difficulty of getting around the city. The Transport for Cape Town App typically demonstrates the value of cutting-edge technological solutions in the face of urbanisation which is something that all cities, whether in South Africa, around the continent and the world at large face.

In the health sector the City, working in partnership with the provincial government and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, has now rolled out a number of Anti-retroviral (ARV) clubs and treatment facilities across our metro. As a result, patients are able to go to the

club room for a check-up and receive pre-packaged medication. This has reduced the time patients spend both waiting for ARV medication and eased congestion in health facilities. Furthermore, it has considerably reduced the level of non-compliance in terms of ARV treatment thus improving the lives of thousands of patients who are on chronic medication.

The motivation behind the design and innovation is twofold: First of, it is centred around human dignity and the improvement and care that everyone deserves. In addition, it provides an opportunity for engagement and citizen participation where every citizen becomes a maker of their destiny.

Finally, on economic development the city has worked with local universities in creating an enabling environment. This entailed developing a programme that has identified 70 business nodes across the city. Appropriate interventions were introduced in those business nodes including the first municipal incentive scheme to complement the existing Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Atlantis, set up with the National government. In addition, an e-camp system was developed with the aim of tracking business potential of each of the business nodes across the city while making information readily available for entrepreneurs and developers to enable informed business decision-making.

In conclusion, in reference to Benjamin Barber’s book published in 2013 provocatively titled If Mayors Ruled the World, we need to recognise that in urban centres and in an age where the majority of people for the first time live in cities and urban areas, the role of innovation in local government is fundamental. This would be in partnership with the private sector, national and provincial governments. Tackling the big issues of climate change, urbanisation and economic inclusion can only successfully happen through partnerships.

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INSIGHTS

INNOVATING THE FUTURE – DISRUPTIVE AND INCREMENTAL INNOVATIONS

By McLean SibandaCEO, The Innovation Hub

Introduction

The term disruptive innovation is known to have been coined by Clayton Christensen, a Harvard University professor and businessman. In his well-known work titled The Innovators’ Dilemma - When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, Christensen defines disruptive innovation as “An innovation that creates a new market by applying a different set of values, which ultimately (and unexpectedly) overtakes an existing market”.

Ordinarily, disruptive innovation can be interpreted as any invention which has been created to serve a particular purpose but is essentially used for another purpose with equal or more success. Examples would typically include telephony, computing, data storage and, uniquely interesting, the SARS e-filing. Of these, the latter, SARS e-filing, which is in essence an improvement of an existing system rather than an invention, dispels the popular myth that relates innovation solely to new first-time inventions.

Examples of Disruptive Innovations

TELEPHONY

Amongst others, the evolution of the telephone over the years provides a clear indication of what disruptive innovation really is.

From a basic, two-way analogue audio-communication system of the sixties, to the present day highly sophisticated digital devices that almost resemble hand-held mini computers, the telephone has evolved radically. In its evolution it took on a number of services including the SMS (Short Messaging System), Skype and WhatsApp which introduced online calling. The inclusion of a camera has further revolutionerised the telephone to also carry visual images digitally. Now with the invention of the cloud, the whole concept of telephony has been disrupted beyond any imagination.

The cellular mobile phone has certainly displaced the conventional fix-line telephone. And interestingly, many

people on our continent who have never had access to fix-line telephone now have access to mobile phones. From being a status symbol in the 90s, the mobile phone has furiously invaded people’s lives, moving from a nice-to-have to an absolute necessity in their daily existence, sometimes a matter of life and death.

Mobile technology has become disruptive in many aspects of people’s lives. The one area in which it has had tremendous impact is in banking. For instance, while a large proportion of people in Africa did not have access to banking, now they are able to do banking transactions anywhere anytime, thanks to the mobile technology. In Sub-Saharan Africa for instance, the mobile phone has become a substitute for formal banking. In East Africa, M-Pesa has made immeasurable impact in terms of mobile banking.

Mobile technology has opened up an avenue of possibilities for millions of people. For instance, a company that is being incubated by the Innovation Hub developed a system which enables people to pay for parking using their mobile phones. Called kaChing, the system eliminates the need for people to use cash to pay for parking.

Another area where the disruptive impact of mobile technology has been

We need to take into consideration the social consequences of the sort of technologies that emerge from disruptive innovation.

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tremendously felt is the healthcare sector. Mobile technology has enabled long-distance, cost-effective diagnosis of eye conditions. For instance instead of travelling vast distances to visit an optometrist for physical eye examination and diagnosis, patients visit a local clinic where an image of the eye is captured using a smartphone and sent far way to an optometrist for an immediate, correct diagnosis. In addition, in terms of hearing impairment, the University of Pretoria has been researching the development of a mobile solution that would enable people to test their inner hearing. This device, connected to a cellphone and calibrated specifically for each brand, is replacing more expensive equipment used in the past.

DATA STORAGE

Data storage in the 60s was done using the floppy disk or diskette as it was commonly known. Developed by IBM, the floppy disk was a type of disk storage composed of a disk of a thin flexible magnetic storage medium, readable by a floppy disk drive (FDD) and sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles (Wikipedia). This was later replaced by hard drives with more improved security, followed by

CDs, DVDs, SD cards and the memory stick (removable flash memory card invented by Sony). More radically, with the advent of the cloud, people are able to rent space on the cloud to store their data where physical storage is no longer required.

OTHER EXAMPLES OF DISRUPTIVE INNOVATIONS

The technology has advanced to a point of people being able to operate items such as geysers from a distance using carbon track. We have further moved from the internet of things to the internet of everything, everywhere. On the world-wide-web, everything has become interconnected.

Computing has evolved radically from the huge mainframes which were only operated by specialised people to the personal computers (PCs and laptops) that are gradually becoming ordinary household items accessible to everyone. The invention of three dimension (3D) printing has certainly changed manufacturing to extreme limits and made it quicker. We have moved from additive manufacturing which is typically based on foundry practices to computer-based designing and printing e.g. chairs, prosthetics or artificial limbs etc.

Lastly, Uber, recently introduced in South Africa, is inarguably one of the best examples of disruptive innovation. Uber came into an industry that is old and obsolete. They found a way to mobilise drivers and empower them to run their own businesses on their own platform with more innovative and secure ways of payment. Uber guarantees security to passengers, in terms of knowing the driver and reducing the waiting time.

IMPORTANT FACTS TO REMEMBER ABOUT DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION There are countless advantages that one can recount in favour of disruptive innovation. However, the one positive thing that stands out is that it undeniably demonstrates the daring passion in a people to radically venture out of the ordinary in pursuit of solutions to challenges. However, this opens a door for a whole range of adaptive adjustments that have to be considered in view of the preeminent disruption of the norm.

We need to reflect, for instance, on what the whole notion of disruptive innovation really implies in terms of information security, corporate culture as well as processes and procedures that we have as civil servants.

s

1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s

2000s 2005s 2011s 2012s

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INSIGHTS

We need to take into consideration the social consequences of the sort of technologies that emerge from disruptive innovation. For instance, how does Uber accommodate the conventional taxi drivers rather than squeeze them out of the system. Uber has to find a way to coexist alongside the conventional taxi system. There could also be other avenues that can be explored to ensure that people whose environments have been disrupted are not left out of the loop such as retraining them for other opportunities in the job market.

The Innovation Hub was established in 2005 by the Gauteng government as one of the Strategic Infrastructure Investments. The Innovation Hub is a subsidiary of what used to be called Blue IQ, now called the Gauteng Growth and Development Agency and its vision is to be a model science park and the innovation agency of choice for fostering socio economic development and competitiveness in Gauteng.

As part of its strategic mandate, the Innovation Hub has to continuously focus on incubating high-growth knowledge based companies and ICT green economy as well as biosciences. The business model of The Innovation Hub supports the achievement of four strategic outcomes. These are to establish and manage an

enabling environment and initiatives to support innovation, enterprise and human capital development to contribute towards economic growth, the creation of decent jobs and poverty reduction in Gauteng.

The Innovation Hub is involved in several innovation projects that are mostly aimed towards improving lives of citizens, particularly the disadvantaged sections of our society. Many of the projects that the institution runs are done in the townships to take innovation to the people.

In many of these projects, The Innovation Hub works closely with metros where actual service delivery takes place. Currently, there are on-going discussions with the Ekurhuleni Metro to open up eKasi Labs in Tembisa. eKasi Labs, established in townships, offer young people co-creation spaces inside laboratories that are well-resourced with state of the art computers, 3D printers and uncapped internet connectivity to play and research. The key message is for municipalities to take a cue from the Innovation Hub and provide limitless access to internet connectivity to the youth so that they can innovate. The Innovation Hub also runs a project in Alexandra called Start-Up Weekends. This project was launched in March 2015 and it is run in partnership with the IDC and DBSA.

In order to encourage entrepreneurship and sound business management skills, the Innovation Hub convenes a networking session every Monday called Maxum Monday. These sessions provide a rare opportunity for local people interested in business to listen to talks by renowned entrepreneurs and to later network with other established entrepreneurs for knowledge sharing and learning.

The Innovation Hub prides itself for always striving to be an innovation catalyst for a smart Gauteng and broadly South Africa at large.

Conclusion

Innovation is about new ideas and approaches to doing things. Innovation can never be innovation happening in the vacuum. Instead it has to be informed by and responsive to a particular challenge. Therefore, innovation must address real challenges.

It is important to bear in mind that innovation has always been taking place since time in memorial. Societies have always had to innovate in order to adapt and cope with their prevailing circumstances. Innovation can be construed as an integral part of human survival. Innovation can take place without always being disruptive and radical in nature. However, similarly it is critical to remember the role of disruptive innovation in carving out new markets. Finally, the truth about incremental innovation is that it fuels disruptive innovation.

The Innovation Hub is involved in several innovation projects that are mostly aimed towards improving lives of citizens, particularly the disadvantaged sections of our society.

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Optimise your health the fun way

with GEMS – at no extra cost

Dance, skip and walk your way to weight loss

At no additional cost, the Government Employees Medical Scheme’s (GEMS) members and their dependants who are also employed in the public service can apply to take part in this health and exercise programme. This is in keeping with the GEMS commitment to provide public service employees with access to excellent healthcare which is both aff ordable and effi cient.

GEMS’s philosophy is to encourage proactive health, which not only can go a long way to preventing non-communicable diseases but can also help with stress management and boosts the immune system.

Exercise not only sculpts the body but also has innumerable benefi ts for the body’s health. People who exercise regularly are less likely to contract illnesses such as colon cancer, for example. Exercise also assists in the management of other healthcare risks and medical conditions, such type 2 diabetes. In combination with a balanced and varied diet, exercise also assists in the prevention of heart disease and stroke, as well as assisting in the management of high blood pressure.

GEMS also understands that embarking on an exercise regime can seem daunting to members, which is why the GEMS Fitness programme has been specially designed for maximum fun to keep motivation levels up.

If you join the GEMS Fitness programme, you will receive a � tness welcome pack, which includes:

Bene� ts of joining• An annual fi tness assessment,• Access to a GEMS Contact Centre that

provides health coaches and support agents for wearable device and fi tness-related queries,

• Access to onsite exercise sessions, and• Comprehensive information on exercise,

nutrition and all the information you need to embrace a healthier lifestyle.

In addition, you will have access to the GEMS Fitness Journey portal via My Health to help you track your personal journey to fi tness. It includes a range of features such as challenge my friends, view my wellness/fi tness reports, view my overall health and many more.

There are three simple steps to joining the GEMS Fitness exercise and health programme:

1. You need to be a principal GEMS member or a dependant who is also employed in the public sector.

2. You need to be validated; which means your department needs to agree to participate. GEMS will then come to your department to host an activation event.

3. You need to attend an activation event and complete a form to activate your GEMS Fitness membership.

Validated members can join the GEMS Fitness programme through the GEMS Fitness call centre on 0860 00 4367. Alternatively you can register on the GEMS Fitness Journey web portal via gems.� tnessjourney.co.za.

Leading an active lifestyle and reaching your ideal weight need not be a drag. The recently launched GEMS Fitness programme encourages members to get into shape the fun and high-tech way.

• a skipping rope,• a set of earphones,• a fi tness tracking device,• a water bottle,• a drawstring bag and • a gym towel.[ [

Striving Towards an Affordable, Excellent and Member Centric Scheme

30 VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

INSIGHTS

PRACTICAL LEADERSHIP THAT SUPPORTS ORGANISATIONAL INNOVATION

By S’onqoba Maseko First National Bank

Leadership is a very broad concept – one that has numerous layers and nuances. However, whenever I am called upon to reflect on this subject with its complexities, my approach is to always peel the concept to its bare essentials or basics. For starters, we need to understand that titles do not make leaders. There is a vast difference between an individual or so-called leader by title and another indiv idual who naturally assumes leadership. The former has nothing to show but their title while the latter has their actions. In a title there often lies a false sense of power.

As leaders in our respective organisations, it is critical that we decide whether we want to be real leaders in the actual sense of the word, really practising the trait of leadership instead of being leaders by virtue of the power that comes through a title. The truth is, without any title, everyone should virtually be a leader in their rightful way. Most of the time, leadership takes place within the confines of a certain context, which is defined by a particular group of people in a particular milieu within a given organisation or department. However, the risk is, with

time people are often assimilated and eventually naturalised into this kind of environment where upon anything that somewhat disrupts the ‘familiar’ equation is instinctively rejected.

In the public service for instance, there are individuals who put up their hands to

attend conferences a s d e l e g a t e s r e p r e s e n t i n g their respective departments. After each conference such people lie low in wait for another conference oblivious of their

responsibility to share the knowledge and expertise gained from these conferences. The pattern of conference attendance becomes quite frequent while comparatively nothing of any concrete and positive value comes through and as a result, the status quo remains.

True impact does not lie in the number of people who take the initiative to lead by sharing the information and knowledge they have gathered. Instead, it lies in how much impetus or determination there is to act on the knowledge and create change. One person can light a spark that would eventually ignite into real tangible innovation that will help solve our service

delivery challenges.

If a small fraction of 4 out of a total of 400 people attending a conference where they are exposed to innovation can go back and make an impact in their respective departments, only then will we see innovation take place. Everyone who leads a team should realise that they have the ability to influence their respective departments. As a result the onus is with them never to let the information, learning and inspiration that they have amassed go to waste. As a leader they can take the initiative to lead from the front and effect change.

A 142-country study by Gallup on The State of The Global Workplace revealed that the largest proportion of employees worldwide (63%) were found to be “not engaged”. In his analysis of the study, Steve Crabtree described these people as lacking motivation and thus less likely to invest discretionary effort in organisational goals or outcomes. The study also found that about 1 in every four employees (24%) are “actively disengaged,” which means that they are unhappy and unproductive at work and liable to spread negativity to coworkers.

On the contrary, a comparatively paltry proportion of only 13% of employees worldwide were engaged at their work,

The truth is, without any title, everyone should virtually be a leader in their rightful way.

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are psychologically committed to their jobs and likely to be making positive contributions to their organisations.

To most business leaders and managers, what is likely to come out of this data can only be described as utter disappointment because of the comparatively meagre pool of ‘engaged’ employees that can take the vision of the organisations forward. After all as Gallup noted, engaged employees are the key to driving innovation and growth in organisations. Engaged employees are more productive, profitable, safer, create stronger customer relationships, and stay longer with their company than less engaged employees. Engaged employees work with passion and feel a profound connection to their company. They drive innovation and move the organisation forward.”[1] Our knee-jerk reaction as business leaders would most likely be to focus on the 87% which combines those who are neutral and actively engaged with an aim of helping them out of the abyss onto the ‘actively engaged’ status.

The experience from First National Bank (FNB) is somewhat different. Faced with almost a similar challenge, FNB did the

exact opposite opting instead to focus on those that are already actively engaged to drive innovation with immense success. The moral of the story is to take a leaf from FNB’s book of success and to focus on those who are actively engaged and are converted into innovation regardless of the size of proportion. Fact is, they are passionate to drive innovation. The point of departure should be, if only 13% of the workforce are engaged, how do you build on that passion to help them to be more engaged. How do you help them to translate their innovation into real tangible projects? How do we harness that passion and energy already inherent in them to influence the organisational environment

into one that appeals to the other less engaged employees? Human nature is such that people are more likely to go where there is energy – propelled by positive peer pressure.

FNB did not start with a crew of like-minded 33 000 employees who were all keen to innovate. We always start somewhere with a small number of employees in the organisation who are naturally predisposed or inclined towards innovation because of their natural curiosity. Therefore, instead of instinctively concentrating on the not so actively engaged persons to convert them to innovate, rather go where the energy is, where people are already passionate about innovation and like lights in the dark, they will attract the moths.

The public sector can, through the CPSI, also focus on the “converted” to ensure that they become a motivation to others who are “not engaged” at work. With over a million public servants across all spheres of government, much more work needs to be done to harness the innovation spirit in the public sector.

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INSIGHTS

WHAT DO EXPERTS SAY? INSIGHTS ON INNOVATION IN GOVERNMENT

Introduction

Last year, during the 9th CPSI Public Sector Innovation Conference held in Cape Town, senior public servants, civil society advocates, academics and private sector experts converged under the theme: Reinventing the Public Sector through Innovation.

The role of dialogue, particularly in the pursuit of better and innovative ways to improve service delivery, can never be underestimated. Critically, there has to be multi-lateral channels of engagement wherein key stakeholders from a variety of sectors can contextualise and institutionalise innovation and ensure that it does not happen in a vacuum. The CPSI conference is one such platform where thought leaders engage on public sector innovation.

Beyond promoting the role of innovation in effectively combating the triple challenge of poverty, inequality and unemployment as envisaged in the National Development Plan (NDP), the theme of the 2015 CPSI Conference sought to prompt robust cross-sectoral debates on ways of reinventing and

Synopsis by Mashwahle Diphofa, DG, Department of Public Service and Administration.

reengineering the public sector through innovation. One of these debates was a discussion amongst experts representing government, business and academia sharing their sector-specific experiences pertaining to public sector innovation. The discussants included Siyanda??? from South African Local Government Association (SALGA), Dr Malebona Matsoso, Director-General of the National Department of Health, Ms S’onqoba Maseko, Head of First National Bank’s (FNB), Innovators Programme, Mr Ntjantji Gosebo, Government Chief Information Officer (GCIO) at the Department of Public Service and Administration and Dr Francois Bonicci from the Bertha Centre for Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Cape Town.

The discussions started from a common point of departure, namely that innovation is a critical ingredient in modernising service delivery in response to the needs of the citizens. They further agreed that innovation is a crucial requirement for the effective implementation of the NDP.

In unpacking the concept of innovation in public sector service delivery, experts agreed that innovation is about the

adoption of new and different ways of doing things as opposed to stagnating in old, obsolete and less effective ways. They also negated the general tendency to limit innovation to refer to new technological inventions and other contraptions. Innovation should be all-embracive to include new approaches, ideas and methods of doing things. Furthermore, they identified creative thinking, unfettered imagination and broadmindedness as key markers and enablers of innovation in employees.

Sianda explained that in building a capable state, South Africa has been on a somewhat trial-and-error trajectory, constantly trying out various approaches with the hope of obtaining better results in service delivery. He further explained that while innovation is ordinarily associated with using and finding new technologies, it can also involve the use of existing technologies, tools and interventions differently in order to get a desired outcome. “Technology is useful as a base but what is important is the mind-set on how to use it innovatively to get the envisaged results,” he explained. This supports the fact that innovation is a great enabler of innovation.

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To illustrate this, Sianda referred to a number of examples from Johannesburg, Tshwane and Cape Town. These are providing broadband to enhance access to services, economic transformation, education, and e-governance. For instance, in the City of Tshwane this service has been expanded to include a web-based innovation that builds on the traditional ways, such as public meetings, to interface with the municipal leadership . In another example, the Drakenstein Municipality in the Western Cape solved a long-standing problem related to excessive loss of water due to leakages by doing things differently and using technology that minimises pressure on the water reticulation infrastructure system. This innovative intervention reduced water losses and saved the municipality over R700 million over ten years.

Dr Malebona Matsoso agreed that we should refrain from restricting innovation to new ideas. In addition, she threw a gauntlet to the CPSI to initiate a different thinking on how non-health related technology could be used to solve health problems. She pointed to a number of pioneering initiatives in this regard including the Lodox scanner. Initially used in the mining sector to detect stolen diamonds hidden on people’s bodies, the technology has now evolved into a whole body scanning solution that can detect tuberculosis in people.

Other examples of non-health related solutions used to solve health problems include MomConnect which stretches the role of cellphone technology beyond pure daily interaction to serving as a tool to provide healthcare support to mothers during and after pregnancy (see full article in this edition). She also referred to the on-going, commendable work done by young South Africans working for CSIR using nano-technology to develop TB and Malaria medication. This symbolises a giant leap as the medication is developed for the World Health Organisation to be used throughout the world.

From the banking sector, S’onqoba Maseko referred to a number of examples of radical or disruptive innovation. She

cited InContact, an SMS notification to alert clients through their cellphones about a transaction and their banking account, and eWallet, an instant way to send money from an FNB account to anyone. On what is considered another revolutionary venture, FNB stepped outside the bounds of banking to pioneer the sale of cellphone services, smart phones and tablets by a bank. Through a structured process, the bank harnesses ideas and innovations that originate from its staff members, and incentivises ideas that are eventually implemented by the bank.

Key Success Factors in Public Sector Innovation

Following the tone setting discussions of the ministerial panel consisting of Ministers Naledi Pandor and Malusi Gigaba of the Departments of Science and Technology and Home Affairs respectively, the experts identified a number of crucial success factors which can effectively fast-track the institutionalisation and nurturing of innovation within the public sector. These are:

LEADERSHIP

Experts agreed that leadership is crucial to the entrenchment of innovation in the public sector. S’onqoba Maseko explained the critical role that a leader plays in inspiring employees to be innovative. Referring to the former CEO of FNB, Mr Michael Jordan, she explained the importance of a leader in creating an inspiring and permissive environment where employees are empowered to proactively innovate freely without fear of failure. A leader should motivate staff and importantly trust them enough to support them in making bold and daring ventures which can eventually define the destiny of the organisation.

However, on a rather different disposition, S’onqoba intimated that a leader should not be solely defined in terms of a title or rank and power associated with it. She maintained that every employee is a leader in his/her own right and that the onus lies with each to confidently dispatch those duties of leadership that come with such

a responsibility.

In summing up experts’ inputs on leadership, Sianda from SALGA said: It is one thing having ideas and putting them on paper and another to have the energy and the necessary leadership to transcend all the challenges to achieve outcomes.

CULTURE

There was common consensus amongst experts about the need to cultivate the type of organisational culture that is conducive for innovation to thrive in a workplace. Said S’onqoba: “Without the right culture in place, innovation will be stifled.” She explained that with the right culture in place, one is guaranteed the ability to attract and retain innovators in a company or organisation. This is a kind of culture that “empowers people to be absurd enough to come up with crazy ideas that can change an industry but also change a company.”

A culture that is conducive to innovation should have a stimulus. This could be intrinsic, whereby people become self-motivated to defy the status quo and consistently search for new solutions. Alternatively, the stimulus could be external where the kind of leadership like that of Michael Jordan at FNB provides the space for people to think differently. Other sources for such a stimulus could include colleagues, customers and clients or citizens looking for better services. However, to Maseko, the sustenance of an innovation-friendly culture is in essence inseparable from and largely hinged on the presence of solid leadership. Leadership, to her, is the main engine or touchstone for the entrenchment of innovation in an organisation.

TOP-DOWN VS BOTTOM-UP CULTURE

Francois Bonicci made a distinction between a top-down and a bottom-up culture of innovation. In the former, innovation only takes place at top management level without the involvement of people at the coalface level. This type of organisational culture regrettably excludes ordinary staff from contributing

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ideas towards innovation. As a result, said Bonicci, “whatever innovation taking place becomes innovation for innovation’s sake.”

He encouraged delegates to adopt a culture that promotes social innovation. Said Bonicci: “Social innovation is about products, new processes and new services that generate social value and not necessarily economic value.” Bonicci lamented a culture of innovation

characterised by a misplaced obsession with technology and applications in government and cautioned about the readiness to invest in R&D and human capital with a positive mindset about e-government. “Why do we not invest such enthusiasm in services - how we organise ourselves to deliver services to people; how we engage society and how the services that we deliver can improve the lives of citizens.” He called for clear processes underpinning how innovation unfolds. He advised that technology can only serve as an enabler but not the be-all and end-all.

In terms of the bottom-up culture, the reality is that real innovative solutions to real service delivery challenges can only originate from front-line workers. “While we have top-down policies to solve challenges,” he warned, “we should also be open to people who work on the frontline because they have a reliable knowledge of the real challenges of citizens.”

Typical examples in this regard include the Kangaroo Care Approach and Abundant Life Initiative (palliative care). Kangaroo Care (Skin-to-skin) is a method which promotes placing a premature baby against its mother’s chest for warmth instead of using an incubator which might not be available. The latter, Abundant Life (palliative care) promotes proper

home-based care for people who are in the terminal phase who can no longer be helped by drugs or technology devices. Both solutions originated from workers based at the coalface of service delivery.

Another example of a solution based on bottom-up innovations is that of an innovation hub at the Groote Schuur Hospital, i.e. the first innovation facility in a public sector facility, established in partnership with the government of

the Western Cape. Based on numerous interviews and engagements with all hospital staff, the solution is able to provide effective solutions to typical challenges such as long waiting lines, referrals, staff moral and gaps in the service delivery value chain.

Said Bonicci, “While money was invested into the project, the real investment as regards the Groote Schuur Innovation Hub

was into the facilitation of a culture for innovation.” This is, in essence, investment into the creation of a safe space for public officials to innovate freely. “Innovation is about risk and not about failure.” he said.

RECOGNISING INNOVATION WITHIN THE WORKPLACE Contrary to the recurring negative assertion amongst public officials, the public sector has in place a solidly clear policy on how employees can be incentivised. The challenge is that some public officials are not familiar with government policies and regulations. Chapter 1 of the Public Service Regulations, Part G reads: If an employee makes a suggestion, improvement or invention of exceptional value to the department or the public service as a whole, the executive authority may reward the employee through any non-monetary reward, a non-pensionable cash award not exceeding 20 percent of the employee’s pensionable annual salary, or with the Minister’s approval a non-pensionable award in excess of 20 percent of the employee’s annual salary. On her part, S’onqoba Maseko warned

There was common consensus amongst experts about the need to cultivate the type of organisational culture that is conducive for innovation to thrive in a workplace.

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against the existing culture of narrowing down recognition and rewarding to money by stating “If this was only about money, employees would eventually lose interest and leave their companies.” She pointed out that there are many ways of incentivising innovation which can be explored.

Lessons and Challenges on innovation in the public sector

Moving from a point of view of innovation as a comprehensive but necessary change, experts shared extensively on their experiences pertaining to the kinds of challenges that they have typically encountered related to innovation in the public sector environment.

While noting that the bulk of service delivery projects, including projects carried out by other government spheres, take place at municipal level, Sianda lamented the existence of several key challenges that adversely impact service delivery such as human resources and capacity limitations, financial constraints, amongst others. “It is also true that the capacity, both human and technological is limited in most of our municipalities which happen to be mostly smaller municipalities.” He explained that larger municipalities such as Metros tend to excel in their service delivery projects simply because they are better resourced.

Sianda reported how “the consequences of failure in those areas where there are several resource limitations are much more than in those areas where you have a bit of manoeuvrability.” “What is more”, he said, “those compliance-driven targets become more challenging, including getting clean audits because there is no reason for compromising on bad governance.”

He cautioned against over-emphasis on compliance and over-regulation, adding that this might stifle the culture of innovation within local government. “We need to allow a bit of flexibility,” Sianda concluded. He further advised that, with the right mindset and culture, whether at

leadership or coalface level, challenges of limitations can be overcome. As Sianda believes, “If we get those quick wins right, we might not require a lot of capital outlay.”

Maseko reminded delegates that contrary to popular belief, innovation can take place anywhere and that there are as many regulations in the private sector as there are in the public sector. Issues might be different with equally different nuances, however, the main challenge in the public sector is about the kind of mindset and negative attitude regarding innovating in the public sector.

According to Ntjatji Gosebo, the public sector has major gaps in terms of using information technology to deliver services to the citizenry. Many municipalities do not have IT managers or CIOs to oversee ICT usage to deliver services to citizens. The ICT function is mostly outsourced in some government departments. Where CIOs exist, their job descriptions do not support the Annual Performance Plans of the departments. For instance, none of the CIOs is bound by their contract to facilitate the use of ICT in delivering services to citizens.

He also referred to several other key challenges that hamper e-government from happening, including unstable or unreliable network and poor bandwidth. This is against the background of the public service being more concerned about reaching a target of 54 million citizens in terms of wifi coverage, and less about the quality of coverage. Other challenges that he highlighted include technology ageing rapidly, the need to train people as and when new technology is installed and the huge expense of acquiring technology, particularly as it is mainly imported from other countries. Furthermore the cost of technology works against government’s plan to roll-out e-government. Technology, e.g. smartphones and computers need to be affordable to citizens. On the other hand, we need to increase free wifi coverage to mitigate against the exorbitant cost of data in South Africa.

According to Gosebo, government needs to create an enabling environment to allow public officials to innovate without any impediments. The biggest challenge is not about how the public sector is set up but how it is configured. Therefore, there is a need for a forum to deal with such impediments, e.g. procurement, information technology, amongst others.

Conclusion

It was quite clear from the robust discussions that innovation is as necessary to the public sector as it is to the private sector . The panel concurred that leadership and organisational culture are crucial in nurturing the correct mindset throughout the organisation and allowing innovation to flourish.

Lastly, Government needs to build partnerships with the private sector and civil society to make innovation, in particular social innovation, happen. Innovation is not the sole responsibility of either government, private sector, civil society or the academia. Innovation comes from allowing and empowering people to think outside of the box and rewarding them for their achievements.

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THE BROADER HEALING MISSION FOR THE HEALTH SECTOR

By Nsizwa DlaminiCPSI

were doing to address their problems. So he sat around kitchen tables with mothers and fathers who did not understand why their daughter had some rare form of cancer, why their son woke up late at night chocking for breath, why the water tasted so bad. They had no money, no technical skills, no political power, but, they were demanding answers and challenging the most powerful companies in their communities because they were fighting for the lives of their families. Gary was impressed with their bravery and fierce defence of their children. He imagined if it was his daughter that was sick, poisoned by a factory down the street. As a result of this experience, he delved deeper into the issue and joined a movement of people who were fighting against pollution in their communities.

In 1992 he heard something so disturbing, the US government reported that hospitals were the largest source of dioxin contamination in the country. Dioxin is produced by burning chlorinated plastics which are linked to cancer, brain damage and birth defects. The health sector, devoted to healing, was itself a large source of contamination. This was just the tip of the iceberg, because hospitals were also an enormous source of mercury contamination.

There is enough mercury in one

thermometer to contaminate a 20 acre lake. In 1996 there were millions of thermometers that were breaking in American hospitals. All ending up in the atmosphere and water and ultimately into the fish we eat. Around the world there were millions of thermometers that were breaking and ending up in the environment. In the same year the US government reported that there was enough mercury in kids that were being born which would lead them to have learning problems later in life. The fact that hospitals were poisoning people in the service of healing them, was shocking.

How are we going to stop epidemics such as cancer and other chronic diseases if the health care sector is contributing to it? As a result of all this, he started an organisation called Health Care Without Harm (HCWH) to solve the problem of health sector’s pollution and to put health back into the centre of healing.

But he had two problems in starting the organisation. The first problem was that he was frightened of hospitals because he thought they were dangerous places. The other problem was that he hardly knew anybody who worked in the healthcare sector. Despite these, he was ready to take on the industry that was 80% of the US economy and 10% globally. He was lucky as he met 3 women that worked in

When Gary Cohen was growing up there were two hospital experiences that made a deep impression on him. When he was 12 years old, his father went to hospital for a test. That was the last time he saw him because the next day he died because of a mistake caused by the hospital staff. Two years later, his brother who was 7 years old at that time was hit by a car and spent 18 days on a coma in hospital. They all thought he was going to die, but he came out of the coma and is still alive today and doing remarkably well. As a result, from an early age, he learnt that hospitals could be dangerous places, but also places where miracles can happen.

His first job after university was writing guide books to fabulous places in Europe – pubs in London, restaurants in Paris. After two years of eating and drinking his way around the world a friend asked him whether he would write a different kind of guidebook, which will focus on polluted places. He replied by saying, “nobody wants to visit those places”. His friend said the book would be a guide to people living in contaminated communities and would help them address the toxic threats they face. Gary agreed to work on this project.

When researching the book, he wanted to talk to people that lived in these polluted places and find out what they

INSIGHTS

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the health sector and they have been allies for more than 19 years.

They started by working with hospitals where the three ladies worked to show them how they could reduce toxic waste, how they could recycle the non-infectious parts, how they could stop burning all the waste and how they could save money in the process. They showed other hospitals how to do it.

By 2006 over 4000 medical waste incinerators were shut down in the US and American hospitals were no longer a large source of dioxin contamination. At the same time they worked with distributors of thermometers (Kaiser Permanente) to get them to phase out

the use of mercury in the manufacturing of thermometers. The problem was that the mercury thermometers were cheap and the alternatives cost a lot of money. But here size really matters, he says. Kaiser is a big company with 11 million members with enormous purchasing power. So when they said they would buy millions of non-mercury thermometers the price for the alternatives went down. As a result, within a few years they had phased down mercury thermometers.

They leveraged that victory with 5000 other hospitals, 14 pharmacy chains and 28 European countries. Argentina, the Philippines and by 2013 there was a global treaty signed that phases out all mercury measuring devices by year 2020.

These are early and important victories on a path to sustainable healthcare. But the health sector has a very long way to go before they embody the oath ‘to do no

harm’. These are the reasons:

• Hospitals use twice as much energy as commercial buildings. And the vast majority of this energy is dependent on fossil fuel. This addiction to fossil fuel is literally killing us. Each year more than 7 million people die from indoor and outdoor air pollution related to the burning of fossil fuels. This is twice as many people that die from AIDS, TB and malaria combined. So climate change is bringing an entirely new reality and a mandate to the health care sector to have a broader healing mission.

• Hospitals are still enormous consumers of toxic chemicals. Some of these chemicals leak directly into vulnerable patients when they are getting their fluids from IV bags and tubing made of toxic plastics. Some of the disinfectants used are asthma triggers which helps explain why nurses have some of the highest asthma rates of any profession.

• The hospital buildings themselves are built with toxic materials with depressing lighting. They look bad, they smell bad. It is as if the buildings themselves are on life support.

The HCWH have challenged health care architects if they can build hospitals without using toxic materials. They asked if they can build children’s hospitals without using chemicals that are linked to birth defects and asthma, for example. Health care architects then worked with HCWH to design a framework that puts health at the centre of building design. Within a few years hundreds of hospitals were coming up and being built. Hospitals that used energy efficient technologies that use natural light and use safer building materials. Hundreds of hospitals were built around the world, hospitals that promoted healing as opposed to making patients and employees feel sicker.

Having said all these, Gary feels that health care can do a lot better. Hospitals need to be anchors of community resilience, wellness and sustainability. Rather than cathedrals of chronic disease. Hospitals can be anchors, places of refuge in the

The CPSI believes that the sector-specific workshops will go a long way in fast-tracking the uptake of public sector innovations. Gary Cohen

38 VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

coming storms of climate change. They can be the last building standing in cases of extreme weather events. They can take care of those people that are sick and wounded by those extreme weather events.

They have enormous purchasing power and are economic engines in our communities. So HCWH is working with hospitals to transform what they buy and to use the power of health care to begin to transform what they buy to bend the economy towards health and justice. The following developments are promising:• Kaiser Permanente now has 50

farmers markets in their health care facilities and communities they serve. In addition, hundreds of hospitals are using their purchasing power support sustainable farmers in their communities to bring healthy food to their patients and employees.

• Kiowa Hospital in Kansas USA was wiped out by a tornado several years ago but it was rebuilt and now it completely runs on wind energy.

• The Swedish government requires all the pharmaceutical companies to disclose all the ecological impact of their drugs so that doctors can write prescriptions of drugs that are both effective and non-polluters of the environment.

These are hopeful signs that can move health care upstream to deal with a social and e n v i r o n m e n t a l condition that is making people sick in the first place. But there is still a lot of healing work that needs to be done. Hospitals and clinics around the world can be powered by renewable energy and can show the rest of us how to make this critical transformation to a low carbon future. Hospitals can lead the way in defending the rights of our kids to be born toxic free, defending our rights to clean air and water, to healthy food, to safe products that do not poison our kids. Health care can be critical in helping us to heal our relationship with nature. That can help us understand that you can have healthy people on a sick planet, because health care is the one sector of the economy that has healing as its mission. We can transform hospitals from being dangerous places to places where miracles can happen.

This is a powerful personal journey that gives insight not only to our present and the challenges it presents in the health sector, but also how we should deliver

the health service in future. In South Africa we have already started with the phasing out of mercury during our healing processes. In KwaZulu-Natal for example, there

was a closing down of medical incinerators and phasing out of Mercury devices in KwaZulu-Natal Health care system. There is also various initiatives relating to the management of toxic waste. These are encouraging. However, we must state that hospital employees are still exposed to toxic chemicals. For example, hospital cleaners are still using toxic cleaning chemicals which exposes them to sicknesses. With regards to new hospitals, we have not embarked on building new hospitals using architecture and building materials that promote healing. There are a few initiatives, particularly in the Western Cape where the idea is take advantage of healing capabilities of old buildings where architecture harnessed natural energy. Health care without harm is a good proposal that we should consider as a country moving forward.

Note: Article is largely a transcript of a video presentation Healing Hospitals that Gary Cohen delivered in Madrid, Spain

INSIGHTS

39VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

t +27 11 237 4500 f +27 11 314 9838218 Roan Crescent, Corporate Park North, Midrand, South AfricaPO Box 6973, Halfway House 1685, South Africa

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40 VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

Talk to your employer today about the new, improved medical scheme subsidy that will leave you with more cash in your pocket.

you gotta love

The heart of true health

If you are a Government employee and are looking for a medical scheme that puts you fi rst, contact us on *120*4367# or visit m.gems.gov.za. Check our Facebook page

http://www.facebook.com/GEMS:AGEMOFASCHEME to fi nd out how you can become a member of a winning medical scheme.

Please keep your PERSAL number handy when calling or sending a Facebook message. Ts & Cs and cellphone rates apply.

What is ...Big on bene� ts, low on costs, strong on health ... and is one of the GEMS among medical schemes?

Good news for members of GEMS

“A� ordability, accessibility and quality of care have long been the driving force behind the Government Employees Medical Scheme (GEMS),” says Liziwe Nkonyana, Communications and Member A� airs Executive of the Scheme. “For this reason, we were delighted with the recent 28.5% increase in the employer healthcare funding subsidy for in-service government employees. This is by all accounts making a tremendously positive di� erence to the lives of our members.”

“The fact that the employer contribution was backdated to January 2015, thereby resulting in a welcome � nancial windfall for Government employees in August, was well received by GEMS members across the board,” she adds.

GEMS – a positive force in healthcare

Nkonyana notes that GEMS has become an integral part of the South African healthcare funding landscape over the past decade. “GEMS is the only medical scheme in the country that has made an impact on and inroads into the previously uninsured market. The Scheme will continue to strive towards providing a� ordable healthcare cover for public service employees in South Africa.”

“The positive impact GEMS is having on the medical scheme industry continues to set an example to employers in all sectors of our economy where there is still a need to redress past imbalances. The Scheme has achieved this through focused practice, dedication and innovation,” she says.

Some interesting facts about GEMS:

• The Scheme has matured into South Africa’s second largest medical scheme.• It is responsible for 687,694 principal members and approximately 1.84 million lives. • 55.7% of all eligible public service employees are enrolled on the Scheme. • GEMS remains the fastest growing medical scheme in South Africa, with the Scheme processing more than 60 000 new

applications during 2014. • When compared to other medical schemes, the GEMS bene� t plans, namely Onyx, Ruby, Emerald, Beryl and Sapphire, are on average 15% less expensive, with similar or increased bene� ts.• GEMS remains the largest contributor to the overall growth of the medical scheme sector and represented 20.3% of the sector by the end of 2014. • At 7.8%, the non-healthcare expenditure of GEMS, which includes administration costs, is substantially lower than the industry average of 12%.• Over 12 500 healthcare providers are now registered on the GEMS network, ensuring that almost 90% of its members are now located within 10 km of a GEMS network provider.• The average age of GEMS bene� ciaries is 30.19.• The percentage of pensioners covered by the Scheme is 12.72%.

Furthermore, GEMS continues to engage in ongoing research to track the satisfaction levels of its members with respect to various aspects of the Scheme’s services, reveals Nkonyana. Findings from the independent satisfaction survey conducted in 2014 indicated that 78% of GEMS members are satis� ed with the Scheme. The overall level of satisfaction implies a high level of con� dence and trust in GEMS and strong brand loyalty.

The members who expressed their dissatisfaction with the Scheme believed that they were not receiving good value for money, which primarily stemmed from the fact that they had run out of funds or had exhausted their bene� ts and therefore had to fund certain services out of their own pockets. This con� rmed increasing a� ordability constraints witnessed throughout the healthcare funding industry and is a matter that is receiving considerable attention from the Scheme.

“The new, improved subsidy is assisting greatly in ensuring that the Scheme will continue to ful� l its all-important mandate of accessibility and a� ordability well into the future,” concludes Nkonyana.

How the improved employer subsidy will bene� t the members of GEMS

New subsidy Previous subsidy

In-service GEMS members In-service GEMS members

Principal member: R925 Member + 1 : R1 850 Member + 2 : R2 415 Member + 3 : R2 980 Member + 4 : R3 545

R720 R1 440 R1 880 R2 320 R2 760

Government pensioners on GEMS Government pensioners on GEMS

Principal member: R925Principal member + 1: R1 850Maximum medical assistance: R1 850 pm

R1 014

Level 1-5 GEMS members who retire on Sapphire will continue to receive 100% subsidy, provided the subsidy amount does not exceed the amount they retired on.

41VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

Talk to your employer today about the new, improved medical scheme subsidy that will leave you with more cash in your pocket.

you gotta love

The heart of true health

If you are a Government employee and are looking for a medical scheme that puts you fi rst, contact us on *120*4367# or visit m.gems.gov.za. Check our Facebook page

http://www.facebook.com/GEMS:AGEMOFASCHEME to fi nd out how you can become a member of a winning medical scheme.

Please keep your PERSAL number handy when calling or sending a Facebook message. Ts & Cs and cellphone rates apply.

What is ...Big on bene� ts, low on costs, strong on health ... and is one of the GEMS among medical schemes?

Good news for members of GEMS

“A� ordability, accessibility and quality of care have long been the driving force behind the Government Employees Medical Scheme (GEMS),” says Liziwe Nkonyana, Communications and Member A� airs Executive of the Scheme. “For this reason, we were delighted with the recent 28.5% increase in the employer healthcare funding subsidy for in-service government employees. This is by all accounts making a tremendously positive di� erence to the lives of our members.”

“The fact that the employer contribution was backdated to January 2015, thereby resulting in a welcome � nancial windfall for Government employees in August, was well received by GEMS members across the board,” she adds.

GEMS – a positive force in healthcare

Nkonyana notes that GEMS has become an integral part of the South African healthcare funding landscape over the past decade. “GEMS is the only medical scheme in the country that has made an impact on and inroads into the previously uninsured market. The Scheme will continue to strive towards providing a� ordable healthcare cover for public service employees in South Africa.”

“The positive impact GEMS is having on the medical scheme industry continues to set an example to employers in all sectors of our economy where there is still a need to redress past imbalances. The Scheme has achieved this through focused practice, dedication and innovation,” she says.

Some interesting facts about GEMS:

• The Scheme has matured into South Africa’s second largest medical scheme.• It is responsible for 687,694 principal members and approximately 1.84 million lives. • 55.7% of all eligible public service employees are enrolled on the Scheme. • GEMS remains the fastest growing medical scheme in South Africa, with the Scheme processing more than 60 000 new

applications during 2014. • When compared to other medical schemes, the GEMS bene� t plans, namely Onyx, Ruby, Emerald, Beryl and Sapphire, are on average 15% less expensive, with similar or increased bene� ts.• GEMS remains the largest contributor to the overall growth of the medical scheme sector and represented 20.3% of the sector by the end of 2014. • At 7.8%, the non-healthcare expenditure of GEMS, which includes administration costs, is substantially lower than the industry average of 12%.• Over 12 500 healthcare providers are now registered on the GEMS network, ensuring that almost 90% of its members are now located within 10 km of a GEMS network provider.• The average age of GEMS bene� ciaries is 30.19.• The percentage of pensioners covered by the Scheme is 12.72%.

Furthermore, GEMS continues to engage in ongoing research to track the satisfaction levels of its members with respect to various aspects of the Scheme’s services, reveals Nkonyana. Findings from the independent satisfaction survey conducted in 2014 indicated that 78% of GEMS members are satis� ed with the Scheme. The overall level of satisfaction implies a high level of con� dence and trust in GEMS and strong brand loyalty.

The members who expressed their dissatisfaction with the Scheme believed that they were not receiving good value for money, which primarily stemmed from the fact that they had run out of funds or had exhausted their bene� ts and therefore had to fund certain services out of their own pockets. This con� rmed increasing a� ordability constraints witnessed throughout the healthcare funding industry and is a matter that is receiving considerable attention from the Scheme.

“The new, improved subsidy is assisting greatly in ensuring that the Scheme will continue to ful� l its all-important mandate of accessibility and a� ordability well into the future,” concludes Nkonyana.

How the improved employer subsidy will bene� t the members of GEMS

New subsidy Previous subsidy

In-service GEMS members In-service GEMS members

Principal member: R925 Member + 1 : R1 850 Member + 2 : R2 415 Member + 3 : R2 980 Member + 4 : R3 545

R720 R1 440 R1 880 R2 320 R2 760

Government pensioners on GEMS Government pensioners on GEMS

Principal member: R925Principal member + 1: R1 850Maximum medical assistance: R1 850 pm

R1 014

Level 1-5 GEMS members who retire on Sapphire will continue to receive 100% subsidy, provided the subsidy amount does not exceed the amount they retired on.

42 VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

PUBLIC SECTOR INNOVATIONS

CASE MANAGEMENT FOR REVENUE COLLECTION

By Margaret MakwelaThembisa Hospital

Background

The core business of hospitals as health care facilities, is to provide comprehensive health care to citizens. However, hospitals cannot function well without certain critical processes and systems, which contribute towards the creation of the requisite working environment. Equally, hospitals require adequate resources, albeit human capital, financial resources, amongst others, for optimal performance. Deficiencies in any of these will have adverse consequences on the hospital’s ability to dispatch its core business.

Tembisa Hospital, situated in Olifantsfontein near Johannesburg, South Africa, has had to contend with a whole range of challenges mostly in revenue management and general administration. Areas that were affected included patient registration, ICT systems billing and revenue collection and many others. This lack of effectiveness and efficiency in revenue-related operations saw Tembisa Hospital battle with non-compliance issues regarding government regulations. However, more than that, and even more serious, the hospital’s ability to provide health care to citizens was ultimately compromised, leading to the displeasure of the surrounding communities. As a

result, it was inevitably clear that urgent intervention was required to turn the situation around. The solution came in the form of a case management system that was implemented by the Gauteng Department of Health in conjunction with the National Department of Health.

Prompted by the ongoing concerns about the dysfunctional state of Tembisa Hospital, the Department of Health in Gauteng initiated an audit in order to assess the situation as it prevailed in the hospital. The results of the audit quite expectedly revealed a large area of malfunctioning which, if left unattended

would bring the hospital to its knees financially.

The audit revealed a great void in terms of knowledge and skills in the areas of revenue management, particularly revenue collection and billing in particular regarding medical aid patients and their accounts. This was having very dire consequences on the hospital’s financial situation also made worse by the dearth of funding in government.

There were no standard procedures to manage these patients, who, once medical aid funds have been depleted or

43VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

exhausted, are transferred from Private Sector healthcare facilities to public hospitals where they are wrongly classified as public sector patients and charged less for services rendered, including admissions. Patients who are classified as private medical aid patients are charged as per Uniform Patient Fee Schedule tariffs and according to the level of care (currently ICU: R3 060 and Highcare: R1 232 per 12 hours respectively and General ward: R851 per day).

In addition, Tembisa hospital, like many other public health institutions, did not have a clear strategy on proper management of foreign nationals receiving healthcare services at public health care facilities in South Africa. The ill-preparedness on the part of the hospitals to deal with foreign nationals which was made even worse by the lack of proper documents denoting nationality status made patient and revenue management impossible and resulted in loss of revenue.

The audit also revealed widespread inaccurate capturing of pertinent data and ICD 10 Coding on the Patient Administration and Billing (PAAB) system. This challenge, especially involving patients with medical aid schemes, resulted in the rejection of claims or lapsing of accounts submitted for settlement to the Medical Schemes Fund.

Implementation of Case Management Approach

In anticipation for the proposed introduction of case management services in public hospitals by the provincial Department of Health, case managers at Tembisa Hospital decided to be proactive and laid down a foundation for case management and independently developed a Vision, Mission Statement and Protocols. This was done in line with the National Core Standard M16 Assessment Tool and the Medical Scheme Act 38 of 1998 and other government regulations.

Once the fundamentals such as the Vision, Mission and Protocols were in place, a number of strategies were developed to guide the implementation of the Case

Management Project.

First off, in order to publisise the project, a marketing strategy was developed aptly named the Push-and-Pull marketing strategy. The objective of this marketing strategy was to aggressively promote the concept of Case Management, PMB (Prescribed Minimum Benefit) and building a reputation with customers. Internally, the marketing strategy was aimed towards lobbying buy-in from hospital staff and internal stakeholders such as administrators and ward clerks, nursing staff, Executive Management and the Hospital CEO so that they could promote the new innovation and ensure that it added value to the organization.

In order to ensure the success of this strategy, a lot of preparatory work had to be done which included rigorous training of staff and mentoring and one-on-one interviews. Staff members were trained on vital elements such as the Uniform Patient Fee Schedule Tariff guide, charge sheets and Prescribed Minimum benefits.

Since the main conundrum as regards Tembisa Hospital was revenue collection, the thrust of the strategy was to identify solutions that would augment revenue

generation for the hospital. The starting point was to ensure that externally funded patients coming to public health facilities are charged as private patients at a low premium using UPFS Tariffs rates guides. The strategy emphasised the importance of following proper procedures in terms of paperwork and protocol in how various categories of patients, referred by e.g. SAPS, Correctional Services, Road Accident Fund and foreign missions are handled. The strategy also calls for a proper classification of private medical patients who are transferred from private clinics to public health facilities after their medical aid funds are exhausted or depleted.

The third focus area of the strategy dealing with Clinical Efficiency Management Systems seeks to secure the rights of patients ensuring that they receive adequate, safe, quality health care. The procedure involves amongst others: • determining whether the ongoing

services are reasonable, medically necessary, and covered by the patient’s medical aid;

• establishing processes, procedures and protocols to manage financial risks relating to payment for healthcare services

The introduction of this project at Tembisa Hospital created a competitive edge amongst staff members.

44 VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

• protecting and mitigating against unnecessary cost being imposed on patients by advising them to apply for ex gratia;

• introducing proper procedures to monitor and mitigate against medical aid funds being exhausted, and

• ensuring the proper charging of patients and reduction of claims rejections and stale accounts.

Introducing Community Empowerment

From the onset, it became evident from the much improved cash inflow that the strategy was effective, but the escalation of health care costs impacted negatively on the budget because of overcrowding and extended average length of hospital stay. This raised the need for innovative ideas to create awareness and Community Empowerment as part of case management.

In terms of Community Empowerment, case managers conduct daily ward rounds to identify patients’ needs in line with the 6 Quality Priorities based on the National Core Standards as set out by the National Department of Health. They made provision to visit out patients clinics during morning and afternoons to promote clinics as an alternative to hospitalisation. The target group for this alternative included chronically ill patients, senior citizens diagnosed with stroke but

not on proactive treatment and terminally ill patients diagnosed with cancer. These patients need not be admitted to a tertiary hospital but may be referred to alternative means of hospitalization. The objective of these visits and related health talks was to help patients adjust to living as independently and safely as possible, to reduce cyclical patterns of short-term readmission to acute facilities to achieve cost reduction and to reduce chances of patients developing nosocomial infections.

The strategy assisted in ensuring a smooth transition of care during patient discharge or transfers to other settings i.e. Step down facilities, Home based care , Rehabilitation facilities, and Palliative or Hospice Centres which have doctors and nurses on duty for 24 hours for continuous care.

The Impact of the Innovation

REDUCTION OF THE AVERAGE LENGTH OF STAY

Soon after the inclusion of community empowerment as part of case management, there was an immediate reduction in the average length of stay from 27.8 days to 10 days especially amongst patients diagnosed with TB, HIV and AIDS. This resulted in phenomenal cost savings for the hospital. Another key area where Case Management

and Community Empowerment showed positive impact was a marked improvement in compliance to treatment as well as reduced complications and cyclical patterns of short-term readmission to acute facilities.

PARADIGM SHIFT

Furthermore, there was a visible paradigm shift. Customers /patients enrolled on medical aid now began to consult at Tembisa Hospital outpatients/family medicine which is open 24/7 and fully resourced with a doctor and nurses on duty. The Survey conducted showed a marked improvement in staff attitude and perceptions.

REVENUE COLLECTION

The collaboration with the billing unit resulted in a marked efficiency in revenue generation and collection, ensuring that expectations and targets are met. For instance, while the target set for Tembisa Hospital for the financial year 2013/2014 was R18 million, the total revenue collected by the end of the financial year amounted to R19 127 057, which was a surplus of R1 127 000.

OTHER SPIN-OFFS

There was a marked improvement in the patients’ quality of life and their life expectancy because of the referral system to alternative hospitalization.

Futhermore the introduction of this project at Tembisa Hospital created a competitive edge amongst staff members. It also stimulated internal motivation for them to enter different competitions to improve quality performance and raised efficiency in the standard of nursing care. As a result the team won various awards including the Case Management Association of South Africa (CMASA) National Awards in 2012 and 2013. It also won the Best Case Manager of the Year Award in the Public Sector in the CMASA national awards in 2015. The project was also recognized as follows: Khanyisa Awards Best Case Management project in 2012, the Dinaledi Service Excellence Awards Face


45VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

of Government 2013, Dinaledi Service Excellence Awards Face of Government and Best National Core Standards in Case Management in 2013 and the Khanyisa Awards National Core standards in 2014. The team also won an Award in the 2014 CPSI Public Sector Innovation Awards, under the category: Innovative Enhancements of Internal Systems of Government. Sustainability

Coming up with an innovation is beyond doubt highly commendable. However, it is more important to ensure that such an innovation becomes more sustainable and continues to make the positive impact with a lasting legacy. In implementing the Tembisa C a s e M a n a g e m e n t Project, the team made considerable efforts to ensure the project’s sustainability. They also lobbied for top-down management support and buy-in from the CEO to the Executive management, to strengthen and motivate staff to attain set objectives for the organization.

Efforts were also made to invest in on-going staff training and development and community empowerment involving their families for excellent outcomes. Strong Public Private Partnerships with Medikredit, GEMS and Alexander Forbes amongst others, were forged for an in-service training for hospital administration clerks and case managers to enhance pertinent data capturing skills. The team organised self-assessments and monthly meetings for the Quality Assurance Committee to identify service delivery gaps while ensuring a constant audit of books and files for ongoing monitoring and maintenance of standards.

Replicability

The Case Management project has put Tembisa Hospital on the map as the centre

for benchmarking on case management for the whole of Gauteng and other provinces. Following the success of the project, a number of hospitals, including St. Ritas Hospital in Limpopo Province followed suit to replicate the innovation. The Ekurhuleni District Management reported major improvements in the reduction of overcrowding and cyclical readmissions of patients in hospitals

under their jurisdiction, f o l l o w i n g t h e i r replication of the Case Management initiative. The Medikredit report pointed to major improvements in revenue generation in most of Gauteng provincial and regional hospitals where the Case Management project was replicated.

Lessons learnt

The case management initiative, being an innovation and a new approach to the way

things are conventionally done, will elicit a measure of resistance mostly attributable to perceptions and unfounded fears. It is crucial that people learn to adapt to modern trends of doing things. People need to work hard to resist their paralysis when faced with change, whether in the form of new technology, approach, methods, etc.

Transparency, particularly when it comes to customer service failures is of paramount importance. What is more important is

the ability to act quickly and decisively in correcting such failures to ensure that we put customers first and strive to satisfy their needs. We need to set clear goals which are supported by quantifiable indicators and questionnaires. Occasionally we should run qualitative and quantitative surveys to identify service delivery gaps.

Finally, there is no individual or team that has all the knowledge and expertise in the world to successfully work alone in isolation. We need to collaborate and share ideas across the spectrum and create synergy across sectors to add value to our organisations. By collaborating and forming partnerships across sectors, we can facilitate cross pollination of innovative ideas and knowledge required to help our country achieve the vision of the National Development Plan (NDP).

Conclusion

There are several challenges that the health care sector has to contend with on a daily basis. Revenue and proper patient management are some of those challenges which are endemic to several hospitals and if they are not urgently contained, can have dire consequences on health care provision to the citizens.

The Case Management innovation has certainly elevated the hospital to a pioneering status for the whole of Gauteng Province and the country as a whole. Tembisa hospital has certainly led the way in ensuring that the concept of case management and the M16 National Quality Assurance Assessment Tool is known, practiced, acknowledged and understood in the Public Sector.

From the onset, it became evident from the much improved cash inflow that the strategy was effective but the escalation of health care costs impacted negatively on the budget.

46 VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016


MOMCONNECT – IMPROVING ACCESS TO QUALITY HEALTHCARE

By Dr Yogan PillayNational Department of Health (NDoH)

Background

Maternal and paediatric healthcare is one of the greatest concerns the world over. Every year, developing countries face a big problem of maternal and child mortality particularly during birth, mainly due to a lack of proper care facilities and other resources. While South Africa has made commendable progress in the area of maternal and child mortality, a lot still remains to be done to prevent those incidents that still occur. South Africa has to work hard to improve the quality of healthcare we provide to citizens to meet the Sustainable Development Goals to reduce child and maternal mortality.

In South Africa virtually every pregnant woman has access to a cellphone. Given

(By the time of going to print MomConnect had won Silver (second) Prize at the AAPAM Innovation Management Award held in Lusaka, Zambia in March 2016)

the challenge of maternal and child related mortalities in our hospitals, it was therefore considered that appropriate use of cellphone technology can potentially accelerate interventions of proven value. It is for this reason that the National Department of Health decided to use mobile technology to provide relevant information to pregnant women.

MomConnect provides a mechanism for electronically registering all pregnant women in the public health system as early as possible by enabling community health workers (CHWs) to help them with pre-registration before they can be booked at the antenatal clinic (ANC). It also enables sending of targeted health promotion messages to pregnant women to improve their health and that of their infants.

Importantly, the mechanism is interactive, thereby allowing pregnant women to provide feedback on the services they have received. Finally, it goes a long way towards supporting nurses and midwives who provide the service.

The Innovation

The project includes a number of technical elements that have never been used in the public sector in South Africa. MomConnect is the first public sector system to use cross-network free-to-use cellphone services to register people for a service and allow them to provide feedback through the service rating survey. It is also the first project by the NDoH to be aligned to the health Normative Standards Framework which has set the foundations for interoperability between systems.

In addition to being the first project to use specific technologies, MomConnect has also implemented a helpdesk which provides support on maternal and child health issues as well as a way for women to compliment or complain about the services they receive from health facilities. These compliments and/or complaints can be linked to a specific health facility through a unique identifying code. This is the first cellphone text-based messaging being used for citizen interaction by the Department of Health.

The project has built upon experiences of various mHealth initiatives in the maternal and child health domain, but overall it is original. Organisations with experience in this area were part of a task team which

47VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

helped to provide direction for the project.

Impact on Maternal Health Services

MomConnect continues to show tremendous potential in solving many identified service delivery challenges that taint the image of the public health care sector. In the first year of the project over 500 000 women were registered on maternal and infant health messaging. It serves as a supplementary service to health education provided at clinics. MomConnect provides a vital stage-based health promotion messages to pregnant women and new mothers directly to their own cellphones. A recent survey of a sample of women shows that an overwhelming percentage of those sampled (90%), reported finding the messages very useful.

The service rating surveys and complaints line are helping the department of health to address service delivery issues at facility level. The MomConnect service ratings survey provides a way for key service delivery data to be tracked. This data is held on a central database at NDoH and can be used to identify trends in the service delivery performances in provinces and districts.

All complaints raised through the MomConnect helpline are recorded and handled through a case management process. Details are sent to district focal points for investigation and provide feedback within 10 days. Where no feedback is received, the complaints are escalated to the highest level within the Department of Health. This system empowers users of health facilities to help the Department of Health to identify weaknesses in the health system and come up with interventions that will help improve services.

An important component of this project is its strong monitoring and evaluation capacity. The Universities of Stellenbosch

and Western Cape were engaged to provide an extensive assessment of the impact of the MomConnect project. The M&E is designed as formative and summative and aims to ensure that the program achieves its objectives by measuring a set of specifics. The aim is to ensure that the project has measurable, achievable, realistic and time-limited indicators related to program input, process, outputs and outcomes, each with their sources of verification as well as underlying assumptions.

Sustainability

The project is largely reliant on donor funding with an aim to transition to departmental funding in the near future. To ensure good value for money the MomConnect project is continually assessing ways to reduce costs and improve its effectiveness. Already, there is a strategic plan to include a specific data

service which will reduce costs of registration and messaging.

In addition, cellphone operators are being approached to reduce their charges whilst ICASA had committed to investigating a “no cost” to the department as social good.

Chal lenges and Lessons

As a national scale project, MomConnect has faced

a number of challenges in its initial rollout. For example, the technology that is used in the project has never been tried on such a large scale previously in South Africa. In addition, over 30 000 health care workers working in about 4 000 health facilities needed to be trained on registering women on MomConnect.

Although there have been significant challenges, the project has benefited greatly from committed leadership by the Minister of Health and senior managers in the National Department of Health. It has also effectively leveraged the support of a large number of partners to overcome the technological, logistical and capacity challenges that the project has faced.

Conclusion

There is general consensus that most maternal and child-related deaths that occur in public health facilities could be avoided if some basic interventions were put in place.

MomConnect is continuously proving to be one of the most essential projects in public sector healthcare provision. Up to today, the project has continued to empower pregnant women across South Africa with vital information, enabling them to take charge of their lives.

Mobile technology offers endless opportunities to deal with a myriad of challenges that the public sector faces in rendering services to the citizenry.

In the first year of the project over 500 000 women were registered on maternal and infant health messaging. It serves as a supplementary service to health education provided at clinics.

48 VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016


SAFE ANAESTHESIA FOR AFRICA – SAVING LIVESBy Dr Selina SewpersadNgwelezane Hospital

Background

Many developing countries, including South Africa, are faced with anaesthetic-related deaths which could be easily prevented. The South African National Committee for Confidential Enquiries into Maternal Deaths has identified a number of inadequacies in systems design for anaesthesia. These inadequacies, mainly due to the loss of airway and circulation, result in anaesthesia related mortality approximately 20 times higher than the international benchmark. This phenomenon is evident in district hospitals, where specialists are not always available. Over and above these

inadequacies, the lack of skills also adds to the poor health outcomes

Ngwelezana hospital, in Empangeni, KwaZulu-Natal province, had a major challenge of having only one specialist Anaesthetist while servicing a referral population of 2.5 million people. It is for this reason that the hospital has implemented a system design to empower medical officers in anaesthesia skills, especially in airway and circulation management, including ultrasound-guided anaesthesia. A logical decision was therefore to develop a model that could be rolled out to all levels of care, including district hospitals, in the entire region where

anaesthetic services are needed. The Innovation

The primary innovation, which made the system somewhat different and unusual, involves skills transfer at a very high level. The thrust of the system is empowerment where medical officers at a relatively lower level are trained to develop airways and circulation skills – a field that is traditionally reserved for specialist Anaesthetists in South Africa. By using the United Kingdom (UK) as a benchmark, it was possible to analyse the system’s design which allows for highly specialized and safe anaesthesia to be delivered by “Associate Specialists” who are highly trained but non-specialists.

Anaesthesia is the only medical speciality to be awarded that Six Sigma Award for systems design. A Six Sigma system has a near perfect defect rate (3.4 per million) thus giving an international benchmark for Anaesthesia Related Mortality of 1 in 200 000. This phenomenal rate has been achieved in countries such as the UK, USA and Australia where the Six Sigma system

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is used as a benchmark for Anaesthesia. The UK National Health Service (NHS) provides a model for National Health Insurance (NHI) and is therefore an appropriate benchmark. However the model has never been effectively used as a benchmark for Anaesthesia in South Africa.

The two principles of systems design for anaesthesia are anticipation and resilience. This has been demonstrated to be effective in the hands of Medical Officers who have been appropriately trained with prior choice of safest equipment and technique. Medical Officers are taught the following skills:

• The use of a C-Mac or Pocket Mac Video-laryngoscope for airway management;

• The use of Phenylephrine infusion for Caesarean Sections under spinal anaesthesia;

• Circulatory resuscitation guidelines for surgical patients, and

• Point of care arterial blood gas analysis.

Without this specialised training of medical officers, the following services

would not be possible: Orthopaedics, General Surgery, Urology, Ear Nose and Throat (ENT), Dentals/Maxillofacial and Ophthalmology.

The provision of this specialised service has reduced theatre waiting times for patients. This innovation has brought a tertiary hospital service to a lower level of care thus saving lives and improving the health outcomes.

The Orthopeadics department has maintained a zero waiting list for more than two years and this has led to less overcrowding in wards. Furthermore, the nurses are more confident in the quality of anaesthesia services provided. They have also received in-service training on specialised equipment which is being used in terms of the airway and circulation

management. This has enthused them to take pride in good outcomes and to support the medical officers, resulting in general improvement in the quality of care given to patients.

Lessons and Challenges

As with many other innovative projects, one of the critical success factors is in changing attitudes and mindsets. In the case of this project, changing the mindsets of special ists was the main hurdle. With the general feeling amongst

specialists about anaesthesia being a highly specialised area, there was general opposition to the training of non-specialists particularly at district hospitals.

The second challenge was in Supply Chain Management (SCM). The project relies on the procurement of new equipment and disposables. It is critical for SCM processes to be streamlined to support the implementation of this essential service.

Conclusion

Inadequacies in an area as sensitive and highly specialised as anaesthetics can have consequences of unparalleled proportion, as implied by the National Committee for Confidential Enquiries into Maternal Deaths. It is for this reason that the innovative thrust of this project calls for empowerment of medical officers in anaesthesia administration. This initiative has reduced the backlog in theatre waiting times in hospitals. Medical Officers have proven to be equally effective. More than that, they have improved the quality of service for patients by cutting down turnaround times.

One of the major strengths of the project is that it can be replicated by any other region and also in any other medical speciality. All that is required is an analysis and knowledge of the principles of the systems design for the speciality and how countries like the UK, Australia and USA have used this to reach benchmarked outcomes.

The project can be replicated by providing training to Medical Officers at District Hospitals with the hope that similar outcomes would be obtained in Obstetric Anaesthesia. In addition, the model of skills transfer can be useful in training staff in other healthcare categories to increase access to quality care in Anaesthesia.

The provision of this specialised service has reduced theatre waiting times for patients. This innovation has brought a tertiary hospital service to a lower level of care thus saving lives and improving the health outcomes.

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THE SHINTSHIMPILO DRIVER DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME

By Prajen ParmanandRoad Traffic Inspectorate, KZN

Project Overview

The Road Traffic Inspectorate (RTI) is a component of the provincial Department of Transport, based in Pietermaritzburg. The mandate of RTI is to ensure law enforcement on the N3 National Route and the examination of learners’ driving licences at the Mkondeni Testing Centre.

In 2012 RTI Pietermaritzburg received a special Ministerial Award of R8000 during the Public Sector Innovation Awards Ceremony for outstanding contribution in public sector innovation. RTI decided that the prize money should be channelled into developing the local community while at the same time integrating law enforcement practice. This led to the birth of the Shintshimpilo Driver Development Programme. True to the meaning of its name, Shintshimpilo which means “change life”, is an inspiring program whose overall aim is amongst others, to train and give learners from disadvantaged communities an opportunity to acquire a learner’s and driver’s licence in order to empower them for competitive participation in the job market.

To kick-start the project, a number of schools in rural areas were visited to identify areas of possible intervention. From the ten matriculants identified by principals from selected schools, what

emerged, as a common denominator and major challenge, was extreme and grinding poverty and excruciatingly difficult living conditions. One key area, particularly for youth, concerned the acquisition of drivers’ licences. Raising money for transport to the Traffic department and for lessons, bookings and the whole process of acquiring a drivers’ license was almost impossible.

Another challenge facing the Department of Transport, the Province of KwaZulu-Natal and the entire country has to do with the intolerably high road fatalities in South Africa. This has devastating implications on the country’s economy as government has to divert huge sums of capital towards healthcare and compensation at the expense of service delivery.

Objectives of the Project

The Driver Development Programme is mainly about youth empowerment and ultimately, job creation. The project aims to enable learners from economically marginalized backgrounds to obtain their driver’s licences against all odds. This in turn has a domino effect on other hopeful learners who have observed and hope to achieve the same. Being in possession of drivers’ licences puts youth in a good

stand to become career drivers and gain meaningful employment in the public and private sector, including the taxi industry, tourism, shuttle companies, freight companies and community development projects.

Another objective of the programme, which derives from the Department of Transport’s mandate, is to safe lives. By facilitating access to drivers’ licences, the project equips youth with proper driving skills and methods to ensure safe driving.

The Innovation

The project is overall very different from other projects. This is because other than being beneficial to the individual scholar, the project largely impacts on the upliftment of the community at large. Since its inception, the project has grown in magnitude and support, One such example is the formation of a partnership through a Memorandum of Understanding between RTI Pietermaritzburg and the Themba Njilo Foundation (An NGO foundation that prides itself in rural upliftment, development and poverty alleviation programmes).

The partnership has since enabled the project to broaden its scope from an initial

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investment of R8000 to a unique project that is outstandingly able to offer RDP houses to the destitute, food parcels to the poorest of the poor and aid in tertiary education offering bursary fee payments for students. Through the magnitude of moral concern and a profound interest in education for the youth and rural development, various local businesses eagerly joined in to drive the project to greater heights.

Impact

The Shintshimpilo Driver Development Programme project continues to live up to its name of changing peoples’ lives by contributing towards rural development and community development by supporting learners throughout their secondary and tertiary education and helping them obtain driver’s licences.

Since the inception of the programme the number of schools enrolled grew from 5 to 12 schools. Five Grade 12 top achievers from each school involved in the project were given the opportunity to train towards obtaining the learners and drivers’ licences. To date, over 200 driving licences have been issued to successful students. All learners who successfully obtained drivers’ licences were given a food hamper for their families as an incentive from the project.

The project has not only assisted learners to have a driver’s license, but also opened the doors for them to be absorbed in the labour market or to be eligible for employment in local, provincial, and national government departments. Through this project our learners are working as drivers in low cost housing and Extended Public Works Programmes, which our government is implementing in their communities.

At a social level the project gives learners an opportunity to engage with stakeholders from public, non-government and private sector. This opens

up their span of socialising, for beneficial purposes, with various stakeholders, which in turn broadens their worldview. Events, like driver’s license handovers, afford communities an opportunity to showcase their various cultures and artistic talents. Untapped talents get exposure through this project.

At a cognitive level students develop self-esteem through achievement. It is a fact that individuals need to satisfy first their biogenic needs before they could satisfy their psychogenic needs. Biogenic needs relates to shelter, food and clothing. Psychogenic needs relates to education, self-esteem and self-actualization. Driver license relates to the satisfaction of psychogenic needs, which occupy the upper end of hierarchy.

Sustainability

In order to ensure sustainability of the programme, the Department of Transport has a partnership up with Umgundgundlovu Municipality in Pietermaritzburg as well as many other businesses which are

investing in the project. However in addition to funding, companies that manufacture school uniforms are required as partners to ensure continued supply of school informs to needy pupils.

The involvement of the Themba Nji lo Foundation (a registered and reputable NGO that receives funding from

the government) in the Shintshimpilo Project by means of a Memorandum of Understanding - serves to ensure that the long term needs of the project are met, hence resulting in long term sustainability of the project. Chain Food Stores (Save Hyper Stores) have been approached to aid with basic food resources to assist in the project. Furthermore various driving schools within the Pietermaritzburg region have approached the organizing committee of the project to pledge their future support, hence also contributing to

the long-term sustainability of the project.

Replication

The Shintshimpilo driver development programme is replicable, hence the steady growth in the number of schools in Pietermaritzburg enrolled from the initial 5 to 12. Altogether 27 schools in Pietermaritzburg are not yet included in the project but plans are afoot to include them once enough funding is obtained.

In addition, presentations on the Shintshimpilo project have been made to various Driving Licence Testing Centre’s and Municipal Traffic Departments within KZN in order to facilitate replication of the project.

On an encouraging note, the Shintshimpilo driver development programme managed to obtain buy-in from the Mayor of Pietermaritzburg. This highly commendable effort resulted in 20 students from five different schools being assisted.

Conclusion

The Shintshimpilo Drivers Licence Development Programme has contributed significantly to the development of youth and simultaneously impacted positively on road safety. The primary objective of the development programme is to equip the youth from underdeveloped rural areas in obtaining their driving licences, which ultimately would place them in a more marketable position in the job market.

Poverty, crime and a lack of education remain the trepidations facing the country today. The Shintshimpilo driver development programme is a very relevant initiative in that it is directly aligned with government’s overall efforts to improve lives particularly in dealing with those challenges. The provision of RDP houses to indigent households as well as assisting learners in obtaining driving licences and providing food parcels and school uniforms to learners from destitute families ensures that the programme makes a difference in critical areas in the lives of citizens.

The Driver Development Programme is mainly about youth empowerment and ultimately, job creation.

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ENSURING COMMUNITY HEALTH THROUGH RODENT MANAGEMENT PROGRAMME

By Nsizwa DlaminiCPSI

Background and Problem Statement Alexandra township, north of Johannesburg, Gauteng Province, is faced with the problem of rodent infestation in its already crowded population of above 500 000. This problem started when passages and/or streets in between the brick and mortar houses meant to divide houses from one another were used to construct “informal dwelling places” (shacks). The number of residents increased leading to overcrowding that resulted in constraints with essential services such as refuse removal and maintenance of sewage systems in the

township. This lead to the infestation as rodents can breed every 28 days, producing up to 10 babies, leading to the increase in the number of rodents. Unlike other pests, they do not have a specific breeding season. The scale of the problem was huge and needed to be managed through an effective solution. Infestations by this species are not peculiar to South Africa. Other parts of the world have also experienced similar problems.

In other parts of Africa where health systems and governments have greatly collapsed, plague outbreaks occur among humans but often remain unreported.1 However, in June 2006, one hundred

deaths resulting from pneumonic plague were reported in the Ituri District of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. According to CDC reports, Africa’s plague foci are distributed from Uganda south on the eastern side of the continent, and throughout southern Africa including mainly Kenya, Tanzania, Zaire, Mozambique, and Botswana, with smaller outbreaks in other East African countries.

This case study looks at the ways in which the City of Johannesburg (CoJ) responded to the problem in Alexandra Township.

Causes of Rodent Infestation

There are several factors that are directly linked to the undesirable occurrence of rodent infestation. One of the major causes is poor waste management. Waste, especially organic waste, gives rodents sufficient food to grow and reproduce. There has also been strong scientific evidence that links rodent infestations with degraded living/housing conditions. Another key factor that seems to contribute towards rodent infestation is global warming. With the increasing heat due to the changes in weather patterns, rats are driven out of the woods into places of human dwellings for water.

Other factors include: poor management of water in homes, e.g.

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unnecessary water puddles and leaking taps and imbalances in the ecosystem caused by the removal and/or absence of animals that prey on rodents.

Dealing with Rodent Infestation

There is a range of ways that have been used throughout history to manage the spread of rodents. These include poisoning through rodenticides, kill trapping, and other extreme ways such as the use of snipers in the city of Tehran in Iran.2

Rodenticides are the main poison used to kill rodents. They have been used by farmers and rural settings to protect crop and also in households. The problem with rodenticides is that they result in the killing of non-target species such as dogs, cats, hawks and owls.3 Another option is the use of snap traps which are the most common type of traps that people use in communities. They include the classic rodent traps with the wood base and the newer metal clothespin traps. They are

designed to kill the trapped animal quickly and humanely. The problem with traps is that children that come in contact with them get hurt.

In response to the challenge of rodent infestation in Alexandra, the CoJ came up with two solutions to fight rodent infestation, namely the Owl Boxes project and Rats’ Cages Project. These initiatives are part of the City’s Rodent Management Programme which was established in 2012. The programme is a Public Private Partnership with companies such as Eco-solutions, Siyakhona and Lifeline.

The objectives of this programme were to create a hygienic, safe and clean environment that would ensure the prevention of rodent infestation and

related disease outbreaks in Alexandra Township. It also sought to educate communities on good hygiene practices and proper domestic waste disposal, thus ensuring the elimination of rats breeding spaces. Lastly, the programme aimed to reduce rat bites complaints reported to the already overworked health facilities’ staff at Alexandra Township.

Before the initiation of the Rodent Management Programme, the City’s main strategy was to pump carbon monoxide into rodent burrows at illegal dump sites in Alexandra. During this process, they identified three rodent hot spots in Alexandra: the shack area in 19th Avenue, San Kopano Community Centre and open ground on the corner of Vincent Shabalala Road and 16th Avenue. A generator was used to pump carbon monoxide into the burrows where rodents hide during the day. This process assisted in flushing them out of the burrows. They would be killed once outside the burrows.

This was followed by the initiatives as unpacked below:

Public, Private Partnerships are crucial for the success of any project

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OWL BOXES PROJECT

In 2012, the City introduced the Owl Box Project to manage the rodent infestation problem. The project involves placing Owl Boxes in various schools around the township. The project has been expanded to Marlboro where an Owl Box has been placed in a school.4 About R6 million was spent on buying the barn owls, the boxes and other materials needed for the initiative. The owls were kept in a feeding box at a local school and released to hunt for rodents after 21 days.5 This ensured that they return to the box as their home. While the project was proving effective, some unconfirmed reports surfaced pertaining to the use of owls to manage rodents. Based on a culturally based myth that Owls are evil creatures that can be used for witchcraft, it was alleged that some residents of Alexandra were beheading owls while others were cutting off their feet.6 The beheading and cutting of the legs of the owls could not be confirmed as no owl, according to the City was found in such a condition. In fact it later argued that such allegations were

meant to discredit the project.7

CoJ indicated that, as preparatory measures for the project, initiatives such as workshops and imbizos were organised with residents to educate them about the significant role that owls can play. According to Jonathan Haw of Eco-solutions, a private suppliers of the owls in the project, when the owls are brought into the school, the learners are allowed to interact with the owls and feed them as a strategy to effectively manage issues of ‘mythological fears’.

RATS’ CAGES PROJECT

The City bought and distributed cages to various households that wished to assist in the eradication of rodents. This helped ensure that the community actively participated in solving their own problem. Once the cages were distributed, residents use them as traps for rodents. As soon as a cage is filled with rodents, residents take it to the CoJ identified sites where they are gassed and killed. Pik-It Up, a waste collection agency, then collects the dead

rats and disposes them correctly.

Alongside the distribution of cages, health talks and door to door campaigns were conducted to create community awareness on causes of rodents infestation, their breeding places and disease outbreaks that result from such infestation. Promotional materials were issued to the community on the day such as Siyakhona (translated “we can”) branded T-shirts, wrist bands and fliers. Lifeline, a cellular phone company, provided cell phones which were given to any household that caught 60 or more rats. The project also involved Imbizos which were community dialogues over the Rats’ Cages Project. Media in the form of Alex Times and Alex FM Community Radio Station also played a phenomenal role in feeding the community with more information about the project.

The project coexisted with the initial project wherein rodents in highly infested areas were flushed out of their burrows using carbon monoxide. Over a period of two years following the launch of the Rat’s Cages project, it is estimated that a total of 28 400 rodents were gassed.

WASTE MANAGEMENT

To try and deal with waste management, the City conducted workshops with residents, educating them on better ways of managing waste and the benefits of looking after their own environment. Residents were also educated about the fact that household waste, open dustbins and dirty dishes left overnight create good conditions for rodents to survive. In order to manage illegal dumping which is said to fuel rodent infestation, the City converted some illegal dumping sites into parks and food gardens.8 The problem remains a challenge despite these attempts.

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THE IMPACT OF THE INTERVENTION

The major impact of the programme should be felt in the reduction of incidences involving children and rodent bites. Such incidences have not been reported in the media in 2015. Project implementers stress that the project has resulted in the creation of a safe environment for Alexandra Township. There was increased awareness on the causes of rodent infestation and the outbreak of related diseases. In addition, the community members were more motivated in actively participating in the project and related imbizos and taking full ownership of it. There was a significant reduction in the number of rat bites presented at the local government clinic since inception of the project. Finally, as a positive spin-off, residents complaint less about rodent infestation.

Since 19th March to 8th August 2013 about 3,917 cages were in circulation and this resulted in a large number of rodents being trapped and eliminated at the gas station. As insignificant as this figure might be relative to the staggering number of rodents out there, Peter Manganye said this number symbolises an overwhelming success in that rodents can litter three times a year – that’s 16 babies at a time, 48 rats a year. This number multiplied by 28 400 amounts to a billion rats that could have been infesting Alexandra.

With continuous engagements in environmental education with schools and the community, it is hoped that this will be an area of lasting impact. This is because the two initiatives will not work without the help of community members in managing the environment.

Challenges and Lessons

As in any service delivery programme, there are challenges that implementers have to contend with. The main problem is that Alexandra township does not have sufficient infrastructure to cater for its overwhelmingly large population. The number of shacks continues to grow, and with that are continued improper waste management practices as these households do not have proper bins

waste disposal. The situation is further complicated by poor or lack of proper ablution facilities.

As the project grows there is a need to expand the number of cages as well as Pest Controllers to additional receiving sites. On the other hand, in order to contribute to job creation and youth empowerment, the project has to employ community members as part of the Community Workers Programme to clean the rats’ cages before circulating back to the community again. Another major challenge is that some community members retain empty rats’ cages that are given to them instead of returning them. Lastly, project implementers still face a challenge of educating community members, particularly parents, about the importance of being responsible, not neglecting little children and living hygienic lives.

It seems that the biggest problem facing the City of Johannesburg in Alexandra is waste management. Despite the release of barn owls and rat cages, rubbish is still dumped outside some yards and on street corners. We have seen above that the community is desperate for proper rubbish bins that they can use to store waste.

The key lesson is that Public, Private Partnerships are crucial for the success of any project. However, also of fundamental importance, it is always worth bearing in mind that community education is important for the success of any project

Conclusion

The scale of the problem in Alexandra might not be as huge as the one experienced in Tehran, where government has resorted to using snipers to kill the rodents which are the size of cats. However, this problem needs to be prioritised lest it snowballs out of control. The reality according to Peter Manganye is that we will never wake up to a rodent-free world, especially in the City of Johannesburg, “but what we don’t want to see is the explosion beyond our ability to control them.”

The Rats Cage project is an important innovation because it is not only a project where cages are used to catch rodents but is a community engagement project with multiple stakeholders, which used creative ways to deal with the problem facing the community. For example, it creatively used a telecommunications company to get community members interested in the project through the cell phone incentive.

The same can be said about the Owl Box project. The Rats Cage project is very useful because it enables project implementers to conduct rodent body counts as a measure of success”.9 What is important is that they realised that this could not be the only solution, as they also implemented the Owl Box project. Programs that seek to deal with the problem of this nature should also be based on adequate knowledge of the ecology of the target species.

The strategy that was used by the City of Johannesburg to deal with mythologies surrounding owls was impressive. In the long term, it will improve the relationship between residents and nature as there is now improved understanding of rodent species, owls and the environment generally. The scale of rodent infestation in the City of Johannesburg has no parallels in South Africa. Other cities in South Africa will need to react before the problem escalates into unmanageable proportions and benchmark some of the innovative solutions implemented in the City.

1 “SA Rat Infestations” www.rense.com “Tehran Rats: Iran Reportedly Battles 2 Giant ‘Mutant’ Rodents With Snipers”,

Weird News, 03 March 2013.3 Solymar, B. “Rodent Management on

Farms and in New Tree Planting to Prevent Accidental

Poisonings of Raptors and Other Non Target Wildlife”, Ontario Barn Owl

Recovery Project, 2001.4 SABC News, 1 October 2014.5 “All they need in Alexandra township

is the Pied Piper of Hamelin”, Sowetan Live, 18 April 2013.

6 Radio 702, 17 October 2014.7 Ibid.8 SABC News, 1 October 2014.

56 VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 201628 VOL. 5 ISSUE 2 2015

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58 VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

NEWS BRIEFS

It has been predicted that concentrated solar power (CSP) will be the key to making solar energy a viable energy source over the next 30 years. However, up to now the challenge with CSP systems has been the size and cost of the technology involved. CSP systems require large mirrors, called heliostats, across a large area to generate enough energy to make the technology feasible and cost-effective. Mirrors track the sun’s movement throughout the day and reflect its energy to the top of a generator tower, where the heat is transferred to moving water that can create electricity.

Well, not anymore. South African solar energy researchers at Stellenbosch

SA RESEARCH TEAM DEVELOPS A CONCENTRATED SOLAR POWER SYSTEM

University have designed and developed the Helio100 system, which deals with the size issue. It is portable and easy to install but powerful. Helio100 has only 100 heliostat panels, but can generate 150kW of energy collectively, enough to power a small suburb. At the moment, the system is aimed at relieving the effects of load shedding, but once fully developed, Helio100 will be a viable alternative power source.

Paul Gauché who is the founding director of the university’s Solar Thermal Research Group that developed Helio100 accorded the system for its portability and easiness to instal. “Every part in it is manufacturable

and installable by two sets of hands,”

According to Athi Ntisana, a technologist on the team tasked with conceptualising, prototyping and building the finished systems, Helio100 is best suited for South Africa because of its abundant sunlight. Additionally, it will boost employment opportunities in the country as components will be manufactured locally.

Once the Helio100 system is fully functional and its technology perfected, the economies of scale will follow to possibly create the first affordable, small-scale, consumer-friendly CSP system. Source: The Guardian

NEW SOUTH AFRICAN TELESCOPE TO PROMOTE THE SCIENCES

Exploring the mysteries of the universe – and the awe we have for it – has been brought one step closer following the installation of a state-of-the-art telescope on North West University’s Mahikeng campus.

Professor Thebe Medupe, who is in charge of the Mahikeng Astronomical Observatory, said that while the telescope was only 40cm in diameter, it would not only benefit students at the university, but would also have a profound impact on the

Lucia Perez and Professor Thebe Medupe

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lives of South Africans.

The telescope will be used for community outreach to create more interest in science and technology. Said Professor Thebe Medupe, “We have a shortage of people in science… Given the fact that it is in a semi-rural area (in Mahikeng), the appeal of the telescope is very important in drawing people, and making them interested in science and technology.”

The telescope will provide a never imagined opportunity for Members of

the public to gaze into the heavens. The university has held a number of sessions where people were able to get up close with the moon, as well as planets like Jupiter, Saturn and Venus, with the help of a guide. More sessions would be held.

The telescope will help to scratch humanity’s existential itch trying to provide astronomy-based answers to questions about human origin and ultimate destiny.

The telescope will play a critical role in promoting physics and science in various

3D SIMULATOR LAUNCHED TO HELP STOP ROAD CARNAGESouth Africa is one of the countries with the highest nmber of road fatalities. Thousands of blood-curdling accidents take place on our roads, especially during Easter and Christmas holidays leaving people with fatal injuries or permanent disabilities.

In an effort to reduce fatal truck collisions in KwaZulu-Natal, the department of transport in the province launched a three-dimensional truck simulator — a first for South Africa.

T h e m o b i l e s i m u l a t o r , constructed in a caravan, is part of a two-phase pilot project intended to improve the skills of truck drivers. According to Jolene Boulton who is project manager, the first part of the project will use computer-based e-learning sessions to deal with pertinent issues that affect truck drivers such s checking vehicles before driving for faulty signals and how to resolve them. In the second phase of the course drivers begin the truck simulation.

The caravan that houses the truck simulator

is fitted with a computer to monitor and change scenarios which the driver is faced with, such as pedestrians on the road, other traffic, day and night conditions, as well as extreme weather conditions like rain and snow.

While driving the simulator, the driver is seated in what appears to be a regular truck seat, fitted with hydraulics to

mimic the inertia experienced in a vehicle.

The driver’s view is as it would be from inside the vehicle, with three projectors displaying views of the front, left and right while the driver’s actions are monitored by camera.

While the simulator might seem to be a glorified videogame, Wouter Roos, TMI Dynamatics’ developer of the simulator, said it was designed more to put the driver in a real-life scenario.

Boulton said the project was not a punitive measure but rather aimed to give drivers extra confidence in handling scenarios on the road. “This is part of the solution to save lives on the road.

The simulator was built to be mobile to train truck drivers at the premises they work at. Source: The Witness

learning institutions throughout the country. The innovative technology in the form of a camera linked to the telescope will enable university students and school pupils across the country to steer the telescope remotely to gaze deep into the galaxy.

The observatory will collaborate with schools around the country for sessions with the telescope, as well as to use it to assist physics students in tertiary institutions. Source: News24Wire

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NEWS BRIEFS

The realities of the so-called digital divide have never been so palpable than in impoverished mostly rural communities where a computer only exists in government offices. But not for long, thanks to a collaboration by some non-profit organisations who have joined hands to bridge the digital divide.

Recently, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, as a patron of Closing the Gap, together with Deloitte Belgium and Brothers for All, unveiled a first-of-its-kind mobile solar-powered DigiTruck at the V&A Waterfront in Western Cape.

The DigiTruck has the digital infrastructure to teach 18 pupils.

According to Olivier vanden Eynde, director at Deloitte Belgium and founder

and managing director of Close the Gap, technology is fast changing the face of education. He explained that learners today not only have computers to help them with schoolwork, they also use the internet for research while teachers use technology to enhance lessons.What is regrettable is that very little ICT infrastructure exists in vulnerable communities. His hope is for the track to positively impact the education of pupils in rural communities by using technology.

Since its inception in 2003, various Deloitte

firms have joined the initiative, with Deloitte South Africa in on the partnership with the organisation as it provides projects with high-quality computers to developing countries. Access to new technologies in rural and off-the-grid communities continues to be one of the most daunting challenges that has devastating negative effects on community development, whether educational, economic or otherwise.

“As a fully autonomous, solar-powered unit, the Deloitte DigiTruck will travel to various communities across the country to inspire learners to experience the power of technology through education,” explained vanden Eynde.

Brothers for All’s Sihle Tshabalala said he was proud to be associated with the initiative.

“Brothers for All is a non-profit organisation which teaches high school dropouts, teenage mothers, ex-convicts and prisoners in computer programming and skills.

“We teach them coding, building websites, blogs and mobile applications.”

Tshabalala hopes to take computer training directly into communities with the DigiTruck: “Its great to have found synergy with Close the Gap and to be able to work with them,” he said. Source: scitech/technology/news /

South Africa has ranked number 30 out of 56 countries in terms of its domestic policies supporting global innovation. The global technology think tank, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) released the data in its report, called Contributors and Detractors: Ranking Countries’ Impact on Global Innovation.

SOUTH AFRICA RANKS 30 FOR WORLDWIDE INNOVATION INFLUENCE

DIGITRUCK HELPS BRIDGE DIGITAL DIVIDE

The DigiTruck has the digital infrastructure to teach 18 pupils.

“More innovation will be the determining factor in achieving greater progress,” stated the report, released on 20 January. “Countries’ economic and trade policies can either help or hurt global innovation.

How does South Africa compare?South Africa and Kenya were the only

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African countries to have been featured. Kenya ranked at 51.

South Africa’s BRICS partners ranked as follows: Brazil came in at 41, Russia 42, India 54 and China 44.

The top spots were taken by Finland, Sweden, the UK, Singapore, Netherlands, and Denmark, respectively.

The authors of the report looked at various aspects that supported innovation locally, but which had a global effect, such as supportive tax systems, investing in the work force, and research and development.

“Robust innovation is essential for economic growth and progress,” said co-author Stephen Ezell, ITIF’s vice-president for global innovation. “As countries increasingly vie for leadership in the innovation economy, they can implement policies that try to benefit only themselves but harm the production of innovation in the rest of the world. Or they can implement ‘win-win’ policies that bolster their own innovation capacity while also generating positive spill-overs for the entire global economy. For innovation to flourish around the world, we need a system that is doing much more of the latter.”

According to technology news site IT Web, South Africa’s National Development Plan is the blueprint for “the national system of innovation to function in a coherent and co-ordinated manner, with broad objectives aligned with national priorities. “It seeks to improve the governance of the innovation system, especially by ensuring the alignment of science and technology innovations activities across government and by co-ordinating public funding.” Source: IT Web and SouthAfrica.info

South Africa’s BRICS partners ranked as follows: Brazil came in at 41, Russia 42, India 54 and China 44.

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62 VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

NEWS BRIEFS

The Centre for Public Service Innovation had the pleasure of hosting for the first time since assuming office, the Minister of Public Service and Administration Adv. Ngwako Ramahlodi. Accompanied by the chairperson of the Public Service Commission Adv. Richard Sizani, the Minister met with the CPSI CEO, Ms Thuli Radebe and her executive management team and was introduced to the work the organisation is doing towards transforming the public sector landscape to an innovative and forward thinking public sector.

Projects spearheaded by the CPSI including the Memeza household alarm project

MINISTER FOR PUBLIC SERVICE AND ADMINISTRATION VISITS THE CPSI

piloted in Diepsloot, the Helen Joseph Hospital Energy Efficiency project, the replication of the Saving Blood, Saving Lives award winning project from Edendale Hospital and the annual CPSI Public Sector Innovation Awards programme were presented to the

Minister. The Minister was quite pleased with the strides the CPSI has made towards fostering innovation and improving public sector service delivery.

During the visit both the Minister and Chairperson of the Public Service Commission were taken through the CPSI Multi-media Innovation Centre which showcases the winning service delivery innovations implemented in various departments across government. They also engaged with the various knowledge management systems that foster innovation practices across government departments country wide.

For more information on the CPSI’s MMIC visit www.cpsi.co.za/innovation-centre/

The Minister was quite pleased with the strides the CPSI has made towards fostering innovation and improving public sector service delivery.

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63VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

Exciting course:Leading Innovation in the Public Service

Do you want to innovate in the public sector? Do you want to demystify innovation?

Then you must attend the enthralling “Leading Innovation in the Public Service” course offered by the

School of Government in partnership with the Centre for Public Service innovation.

Innovation management within the public sector is one of the pillars of the knowledge economy. In practice, one will however find that very few managers know about innovation management and therefore cannot easily define it as different to other general concepts such as improvement, creativity or entrepreneurship.

THE PURPOSE OF THIS COURSE IS TO EMPOWER PUBLIC OFFICIALS TO:◊ Approach challenges in new and creative ways

◊ Apply innovation theory, models, principles and practices to work-related challenges in a specific context

◊ Analyse their own work environments in terms of the features of innovation and identify gaps that should be bridged in order

to embed innovation as a culture and practice

◊ Lead a team through a process of creative thinking and problem solving that is not traditional or expected so that it can yield

new possibilities and solutions for improved service delivery standards

The NSG: Tel: (+27) 086 100 8326

CRAIG JANSEN:[email protected]

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REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA

Department:National School of Government

The CPSI: Tel: 012 683 2800

LYDIA PHALWANE:[email protected]

For more information, please contact

Visit our websites:www.thensg.gov.zawww.cpsi.co.za

64 VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

NEWS BRIEFS

Introduction In line with the National Development Plan 2030 under the topic “A Capable & Developmental State” the CPSI, as part of its approach, works in partnership and collaboration with different stakeholders, in particular service delivery government departments, in sharing public sector innovation lessons and solutions to improve service delivery,. Furthermore, the CPSI also facilitates the replication of public sector innovations that are unearthed through the awards programme. Over the years, the organisation has, through its annual Awards Programme, identified the health sector as one of the most innovative sectors in the public sector. It is for this reason that in November 2015, the CPSI, for the first time, co-ordinated and facilitated a Health-Sector Workshop for Hospital Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) in Gauteng. The workshop was attended by hospital CEOs from 25 Gauteng hospitals. The theme of the workshop was Scaling up Health Service Innovation. The workshop

SYNOPSIS OF THE HEALTH SECTOR-SPECIFIC WORKSHOP - SCALING-UP HEALTH SERVICE INNOVATIONS

By Vincent Sikakane CPSI

served as an avenue for sharing knowledge and innovative solutions to advance the provision of quality healthcare service to the citizens of Gauteng.

In addition, the Gauteng Department of Health (GDoH) as always been a great proponent of innovation as a key ingredient of improved service delivery. In her 2015-16 Budget Vote, the Gauteng MEC for Health, Ms Qedani Mahlangu, stressed how the GDoH was harnessing the energy of innovators within this sector in order to make strides to meet the citizens’ needs. In addition, Ms Mahlangu indicated that the department is planning to establish an online platform for innovative ideas generation and sharing. 1

Objectives of the Workshop

The main objectives of the workshop were as follows:

• To showcase innovative solutions that have been successfully piloted, tested

and implemented within the health sector;

• To propose ways of scaling-up health service innovations within the Gauteng province; and

• To assist hospital CEO’s to create an enabling environment for innovation.

Overview of the Programme

The workshop was opened by Ms Thuli Radebe, CEO of the CPSI. In her opening

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remarks, Ms Radebe gave a brief exposé on the CPSI. The CPSI, she said, is a government institution with a cross-cutting mandate of driving public sector innovation across all sectors to modernise the service delivery machinery giving it impetus to respond to the citizens’ needs.

She located innovation as one of the key drivers of the National Development Plan (NDP) and identified the CPSI as a critical component in the National System of Innovation (NSI). She further highlighted the importance of creating an enabling environment within the health sector to encourage innovative ideas and solutions for service delivery enhancement. She also reiterated the importance of CPSI collaborating with service delivery institutions that are at the interface with citizens because this is where the needs-driven innovative solutions should be targeted.

Following the official opening remarks, a series of innovative solutions and case studies were shared with participants. These innovative practices also provided an opportunity for the participants to engage various presenters on their solutions and explore how these solutions could be used in their own contexts to

respond to similar and/or other service delivery challenges.

One of the innovative solutions, “Saving Blood, Saving Lives”, was presented by Dr Robert Wise, Head of Critical Care at Edendale Hospital in Kwa-Zulu Natal. The “Saving Blood, Saving Lives” initiative is a mechanism focused on reducing the ordering and misuse of blood and blood products to cut down on wastage and cost of blood and blood products at the hospital. It deploys a number of strategies, including the introduction of an ordering form, to monitor and manage the use of blood and blood products by clinicians. Ms Rosemary Ludwig, a pharmacy manager based at Port Shepstone Hospital, Kwa-Zulu Natal presented the second innovative initiative called Workplace Delivery of Medication. This initiative seeks to enhance systems in the hospital to speed up delivery of health services

and minimise congestion, long queues and long waiting time in the hospital. This challenges led to patients defaulting on their medication and at times missing their scheduled appointments at the hospital. The project ensures that medication is delivered directly to patients at their local clinics and predetermined collection points including their places of work. By so doing patients do not have to travel long distances to the hospital and take time off work for the purpose of collecting medicine. The initiative is patient focused and has led to cost savings for both the hospital and the patients.

In the third case study, Ms Katusha de Villiers, Project Manager, University of Cape Town (UCT): Bertha Centre, shared on the successful establishment of an innovation hub at Groote Schuur Hospital. A collaboration between the Bertha Centre for Health Care Innovation at the UCT and the Groote Schuur hospital (GSH). The establishment of an Innovation hub at a public hospital level is a new idea that was never tried in South Africa.

The hub is a hospital-wide initiative that seeks to inculcate an innovation mindset and create an enabling environment for public sector innovation to thrive leading to better patient care. The hub is used by all hospital staff to engage and explore innovative ways of providing health care services. GSH has put in place an incentive

The CPSI believes that the sector-specific workshops will go a long way in fast-tracking the uptake of public sector innovations.

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NEWS BRIEFS

scheme to recognise and award the innovative solutions that are eventually implemented in the hospital. This initiative provides an example of how public sector innovation can be mainstreamed at health facility level.

Way Forward

This workshop was used to set the stage for the replication of these innovative solutions in other hospitals. As a result, the last session of the workshop, chaired by Ms Gladys Bogoshi, CEO of Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital, was set aside to chart the way forward. During the session, a number of key discussion points and actions were raised. The delegates were highly enthused by the innovative solutions that were shared during the workshop and it was agreed that some of the solutions, like the Tele-radiology project implemented at Helen Joseph and Rahima Moosa hospitals, should be replicated throughout the province. It was further suggested that this innovations should be brought to the attention of the Gauteng MEC for Health to ensure they are up-scale in the province.

At the end of the workshop, delegates went on a tour of the Multimedia Innovation Centre (MMIC) at the CPSI offices. The hospitals CEOs were exposed to the many innovative and interactive functionalities of the MMIC. The interactive displays show public sector innovations. Included in the Centre are digital learning and planning tools designed to assist public servants to consolidate innovative ideas within workshop scenarios. The MMIC tour further exposed the hospital CEOs to various technologies that enhance innovation.

Conclusion

GDoH has always been very keen on innovation this is evident in the many

initiatives the province has implemented to break away from the status quo and finding new ways of doing things. One such example is the Helen Joseph hospital which has initiated various initiatives with the aim to improve health service delivery and improve internal processes in the hospital. Helen Joseph Hospital has, over the years, dominated the Annual Public Sector Innovation Awards with outstanding projects, bearing testimony to their zest to innovate. These projects include, amongst others, the Pharmacy Automation project in partnership with Right to Care, (using ATM-style machines to dispense

The “Saving Blood, Saving Lives” initiative is a mechanism focused on reducing the ordering and misuse of blood and blood products to cut down on wastage and cost.

medication), the Tele-radiology project, and the Green Hospital project that promotes use of cost effective strategies to reduce excessive energy and water consumption.

The CPSI believes that the sector-specific workshops will go a long way in fast-tracking the uptake of public sector innovations to solve the myriad of service delivery challenges the country faces.

1Gauteng Province Department of Health Budget Vote 2015-17 as tabled by MEC Qedani Mahlangu

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68 VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

AWARDS AND ACCOLADES

13TH CPSI PUBLIC SECTOR INNOVATION AWARDS 2015

‘South Africa is a developmental state that depends largely on the work of public servants’ said Minister of Public Service and Administration, Adv Ngoako Ramatlhodi.

Speaking at the 13th Annual CPSI Public Sector Innovation Awards in Kempton Park, Johannesburg, the Minister highlighted the importance of efficient public service and that the awards provided an opportunity to illustrate the smartness, creativity and innovation found in the fabric of public service.

The 2015 Innovator of the Year award was bestowed on Workplace Service Delivery of Medication, which operates at the Port Shepstone Provincial Hospital in KwaZulu-Natal. Altogether 96 projects were enrolled for the 2015 CPSI Public Sector Innovation Awards.

Minister Ramatlhodi thanked all the nominees and other hardworking public servants and said they give government the wings to fly. He congratulated the winners.

The Minister called for inter-governmental relations to be strengthened to enable collaboration and similar service delivery

The Minister called for inter-governmental relations to be strengthened.

at all spheres of government, from national, provincial to local and all other government institutions. Training should be given to public servants and they should be provided with necessary tools to carry out their work.

69VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

Young Endless Possibilities (YEP) is a non-profit organization that enables disadvantaged children to gain access and complete their studies at institutions of higher learning through provision of information, motivation, mentorship, support and events that are impactful.

OUR VISION & MISSION STATEMENT- We believe each and every single student who matriculates, deserves to

study at tertiary level or further their studies in any type of institution.- We believe that mentorship within our communities is vitally important.

Everybody needs guidance and someone that believes in them.- We believe, your past or who you are, does not depict what you can be

in life. You are great, beyond what you think, and all challenges can be overcome.

- We believe that dreaming and doing goes hand-in-hand, so we help those that want to be helped and will put in the effort.

- We promise that everyone that comes to us for assistance will be assisted, to the best of our knowledge and abilities.

- We see an evolving community, where we all dream beyond, and those that we mentor, to mentor those younger than them.

- We see more CA’s, doctors, lawyers come out of the poorest of the poorest communities all because they were equipped with all the right information, and had someone who said they believe in them, and they can do it.

SERVICES WE PROVIDE- Career counselling at our offices, and at the schools- Motivational talks at the schools.- Information on tertiary institutions and other further or training institutions for

matric students.- Select those students with outstanding results, and organize them bursaries.- Assistance with applying for tertiary institutions and bursaries.- Provide mentorship and support for the students throughout, the whole year.- Provide hope for a better future and tomorrow for the students.- Events which are impactful to the youth.

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70 VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

RHODES PROFESSOR WINS AFRICAN UNION (AU) AWARD FOR RESEARCH

An internationally renowned scientist from Rhodes University has won a prestigious African Union (AU) award for her cutting-edge research in nanotechnology.

The award to Professor Tebello Nyokong, who is involved in cancer research into alternative treatments to chemotherapy, was made at an AU Heads of States Summit earlier this year. Speaking in Addis Ababa after the announcement, President Jacob Zuma promised continued government investment in science and technology.

In her acceptance speech to African Heads of States, Professor Nyokong seized the opportunity to stress the importance of science to the leaders of the continent.

Professor Nyokong was given the prestigious R1.5-million AU Kwame Nkrumah Scientific Award handed out annually to an African scientist who has distinguished themselves in the fields of science‚ technology and innovation.

The awards were set up by the AU to acknowledge the importance of science and technology in developing the

AWARDS AND ACCOLADES

continent.

Congratulating Nyokong on the award, President Zuma said investment in science and technology by African governments would lead to homegrown solutions to many socio-economic and developmental challenges facing the continent. “The AU acknowledges that Africa’s most important resources are her people. “South Africa will continue to invest in the fields of science and technology‚ skills development and support innovation.” said President Zuma.

Nyokong is a distinguished professor at Rhodes University and director of the Nanotechnology and Innovation Centre, a national science facility established by the Department of Science and Technology in 2007.

Rhodes University vice-chancellor, Dr

Sizwe Mabizela, praised Nyokong saying she represented the institution “with great honour and distinction. “We are delighted with Professor Nyokong being recognised yet again as a truly outstanding scientist. We all burst with pride at the stellar achievements of one of our own”. According to Mabizela, Nyokong’s research outputs were “among the highest of any individual on the continent, and her contribution to the scholarly reputation of African scholarship is immense”.

“She has been responsible for strides made towards the effective treatment of cancer, through her contributions to photo-dynamic therapy. “She has also contributed influentially to the fabrication of sensors for various environmentally, biologically and medically important molecules.” Source: Dispatch and TMG Digital

Professor Tebello Nyokong

She has been responsible for strides made towards the effective treatment of cancer, through her contributions to photo-dynamic therapy.

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EDINBURGH MEDAL FOR SA ASTRONOMER

Kevin Govender will become the first South African to receive a medal at the 2016 Edinburgh International Science Festival. This is according to the National Research Foundation, The festival will be held sometime during 2016.

According to Dr Simon Gage, Director of Edinburgh International Science Festival, “The Edinburgh Medal is awarded to an individual or an organisation who have not only discovered great science but have contributed more broadly to society. It’s an unusual award that recognises two dimensions of the work - the scientific and the social consequences.”

Dr Simon Gage indicated that he has followed the work of Govender and the IAU for many years. He explained that the positive impact in the schools, universities and communities where they operate is incredible and helping to build a better world”.

Govender’s contribution took shape

through the creation and practical establishment of the IAU office in Cape Town, which integrates the pursuit of scientific knowledge with social development for and with those most in need. Under the pioneering stewardship of Govender, its first Director, the OAD has successfully harnessed astronomy in the service of global education and capacity building.

Launched in 2011 by the Minister of Science and Technology, Naledi Pandor, the office is hosted at the South African Astronomical Observatory in partnership with the National Research Foundation (NRF) and the South African Department of Science and Technology.

“Besides its technological, scientific and cultural contributions, astronomy fundamentally gives us the perspective we need to change the world,” said Govender. “It is amazing to see how this vision has rallied people and organisations from just about every continent. It has been, and continues to be a journey driven by many with a shared passion for both science and society.”

Govender and the president of the IAU, Silvia Torres Peimbert, will be presented with the Edinburgh Medal at Chambers of the City of Edinburgh Council, where they will give their winning address: Astronomy for a Better World in the presence of Lord (Martin) Rees, the Astronomer Royal. Lord Provost of the City of Edinburgh Council, Donald Wilson said the difference Govender and the IAU have made in developing countries is astronomical. “Govender has been leading the Office for Astronomy for Development since 2011 and has overseen the expansions from its roots in Cape Town to be extended to a further nine regional offices in Armenia, China, Columbia, Ethiopia, Jordan, Nigeria, Portugal, Thailand and Zambia,” said Wilson.

Govender, who is from the Cape Town-based Office of Astronomy for Development (OAD) and the International Astronomical Union (IAU), will be jointly awarded an Edinburgh Medal in recognition of his wide reaching contribution to science on March 30. Source: African News Agency

Kevin Govender

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relocates nurses from clinics to communities and mobilizes evidence-based strategies such as volunteerism and social support to enhance work processes and improve health outcomes.

The objective is to develop mobile-phone-based ealth IT and test the proposition that improved health information improves health outcomes.

INTERNATIONAL INNOVATIONS

THEME: E-HEALTH

MOBILE TECHNOLOGY FOR COMMUNITY HEALTH IN GHANA (MOTECH GHANA)Institution/Ministry: Ghana Ministry of Health (GHS)

IMPLEMENTATION DATE: 2000

First Published in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs Compendium of Innovative E-government Practices Volume V, United Nations, New York, 2013

COUNTRY: GHANA

SUMMARY

MoTeCH is part of the Ghana Health Service delivery for maternal health and explores the potential for health service of information technology. It has two main complementary applications: A Mobile-Midwife Application and a Nurse Application. Mobile-Midwife targets pregnant clients with educational and actionable messages who are tailored to their pregnancy stages. Couples can both access MoTeCH messages via SMS (text) or voice in the local dialect or English. Clients decide the time of day and frequency at which messages are delivered.

A national scaling up of a community-driven approach to health care services was launched by the Ghana Ministry of Health (GHS) in 2000 to reduce maternal and childhood mortality. Known as “CHPS” for the Community-based Health Planning and Services Initiative, the program

IMPACTS

Mobile technology for community health (MOTECH) project uses mobile phones to improve maternal and child health in rural Ghana. MOTECHS Mobile-Midwife application delivers vital health information to women in local language voice messages delivered on the mobile phone that are timed to the pregnancy. With over 30,000 women already benefitting, the messages continue through the first year of life and reinforce child positive care practices and vaccination schedules.

The evaluation research has been conducted in collaboration with the Navrongo Health Research Centre assessing changes in health seeking behavior and coverage of essential maternal and child health indicators The innovative mobile technology solution uses voice messaging as well as a Client Data Application for data and analytics. The Client Data Application enables rural health facility nurses to upload client data using “mforms” on their mobile phones. Source: http://www.wsis-award.org/More information on the project: http://ghsmotech.org/

Mobile technology for community health (MOTECH) project uses mobile phones to improve maternal and child health in rural Ghana.

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FIND MY SCHOOLInstitution/ Ministry: Department of Manufacturing, Trade Resources and Energy Innovation

COUNTRY: KENYA

for schools by location, name and exam scores. If the performance of a school has been declining, it gives you a report card that you can actually walk into the next schools board meeting with and ask question relevant to schools’ performance. The tool empowers parents to be actively involved in the running of the school.

THEME: E-GOVERNMENT, E-EDUCATION


SUMMARY

Using exam and school location data, the NGO Twaweza has developed an education application called “Find My School” that citizens can use to check relative performance of primary schools in the country. A fascinating portal provides parents with information on how individual schools in Kenya perform in national examinations. The underlying data is presented in a simplified way and visualized to be easily understood and shared.

Students in Kenya take standardized exams at the end of primary and secondary school. The results are big news in the country, but the press coverage usually focuses on just a part of the story such as which schools are top performers and how much they improved. Now starting its second year, the FIND MY SCHOOL PROJECT embedded four developers in media and civil society organizations to work toward making open data available to the public.

Still in beta, this application allows users to search

IMPACTS

Since the program launched in 2011 it has brought over 400 data sets related to issues like health, education and water into the public via an online portal. Under the auspices of Code for Kenya, fellows have helped media companies translate this data into stories and services that are relevant to all Kenyans. Further, the fellows helped these media companies open up their own data, sometimes going back decades or more.

New digital applications developed by the media and the civil society are making it easier for Kenyans to find the best schools and hospitals, as well as monitor crime trends and election campaigns. The Internet-based applications were developed and hosted by three media houses, Nation Media Group (NMG), Standard Group and Radio Africa and Twaweza, an NGO under the Code4Kenya project. The project is supported by the World Bank’s Innovation Fund in partnership with the African Media Initiative and Open Institute. Source: http://www.e-government.go.keMore information on the project: http://www.code4kenya.org/http://findmyschool.co.ke/http://www.code4kenya.org/?page_id=79http://odta.net/post/a-deeper-dive-for-open-data-josh-goldstein-on-code-4-kenya

New digital applications developed by the media and the civil society are making it easier for Kenyans to find the best schools and hospitals.

74 VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

such as rugged computers and digital doorways, DevTrac will merge traditional and real time data, while providing viewers the opportunity to simultaneously observe, in for themselves and contribute to this knowledge base.

INTERNATIONAL INNOVATIONS

THEME: E-PARTICIPATION, INFORMATION ACCESS, INFORMATION SHARING

DEVTRACInstitution/Ministry: Uganda Bureau of Statistics, UNICEF, GEOIS Working Group, OCHA


COUNTRY: UGANDA

SUMMARY

DevTrac is a Ugandan initiative led by a consortium of government and donor agencies: including the GEOIS Working group, OCHA, Uganda Bureau of Statistics and UNICEF to visualize and monitor the status of national services (schools, health centres, water points, etc) and development projects.

Traditional data collection methods often struggle to capture timely, reliable data and display and disseminate it in meaningful ways. Data is seldom shared between organizations, and rarely made public. Even worse, community workers on the frontlines and beneficiaries rarely receive feedback or even have access to this critical information. Innovative uses of new and existing technologies have already proven that we can successfully address these issues and revolutionize the way we do business. Key to this is a simple and publicly available tool to bring together, synthesize and visualize a diverse array of information and data. DevTrac is being designed for just this purpose, bridging the challenges of data collection and dissemination.

Through a combination of innovative data collection mechanisms, such as turning mobile phones into community reporting and information management tools, and efforts to improve connectivity to marginalized populations through locally appropriate hardware

IMPACTS

The government and NGOs will be able to better share information and prioritize interventions, district and national level officials will be able to immediately follow up on issues such as stock outs, and communities can use the tool for advocacy and accountability.Functionality of DevTrac by merging several layers of information and data has provided the following impacts:• A backdrop of basic socioeconomic/demographic data• Key infrastructure points (health facilities, primary schools, water

points, etc)• Status of key infrastructure data points with real time data

(functioning / non-functioning water points)• monitoring reports from communities, local governments, NGO

and UN staff• strengthen citizen-led service delivery monitoring• support community awareness and demand for basic entitlements• provide targeted, community derived information to service

delivery providers and “channels of influence”• create an “accountability chain” through publicly available

information• UNICEF Uganda staff have filed over 2,800 reports since DevTrac

went live (2012 data), and efforts to bring additional development partners on to the system are underway. In future, and on

a global scale, DevTrac could function as a dashboard for worldwide programmes such as the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement.

Source: Weblink: http://www.devtrac.ug/node/47http://www.studiohb.nl/specialprojects/DevTracMore information on the project: http://www.slideshare.net/tsaexpo/ureportdevtrachttp://www.mountbatten.net/it/clients/unicefuganda.htmlhttp://www.africaontherise.com/innovationsinuganda/http://domainsigma.com/whois/devtrac.netMore information on the product:http://www.devtrac.ug/

75VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

MRI AGROInstitution/ Ministry: Agriculture

COUNTRY: ZAMBIA

provided with ‘real-time’ reports on the prepaid products sold.

MRI Agro is uses prepaid vouchers as a means to promote and market their products. Farmers purchase the vouchers to ensure access to inputs when they need them and to benefit from discounts. Increased sales and improved efficiency and planning are the primary incentives for MRI Agro’s use of prepaid vouchers. MRI Agro is now exploring the use of prepaid vouchers for other seed crops as well, including soybean where supply and demand is more volatile.

THEME: E-GOVERNANCE/E-COMMERCE/M-AGRICULTURE


SUMMARY

MRI Agro application system is based on an electronic voucher or card that is provided to farmers after they prepay for the product. Each prepaid card has a unique scratch-off code number that is registered at point of purchase by the input retailer by submitting an SMS together with the farmer’s national identification and cell phone numbers. The network then sends an SMS to the farmer validating the product purchased and projected date of delivery. When the seed is available, an SMS is sent to the farmer to notify them of the date and retailer location for pick-up. Upon presentation of their corresponding identification to the retailer, the products are released to the farmer. The platform and network for prepaid vouchers was developed, and is currently maintained, by a private third party IT solutions provider-Zoona. All of the relevant actors (i.e., seed company, farmer, and input retailer) must establish an account with Zoona which enables them to track, administer, and manage their prepaid vouchers via the network. Input supply companies using Zoona are

IMPACTS

In Zambia, many farmers receive payment for their cash crops in June/July but few think about pre-ordering inputs for the upcoming maize season at that time. Therefore, seed demand is high just before planting (September-October) but availability of seed (especially high-yielding hybrid varieties) is often limited due to inefficient procurement planning and insufficient seed stocks. As an incentive to encourage farmers to prepay for seed and other inputs earlier in the year, MRI Agro offers a10% discount to customers using prepaid vouchers. While the program’s impact has not yet been determined, high farmer participation in the pilot suggests the continuation of the program will show a positive impact. MRI is now able to plan their procurement better and make logistical arrangements accordingly. Prepaid vouchers could also be used by companies engaged in outgrowing to facilitate access to inputs for their contract farmers. Source: http://www.zoona.co.za/home/WhatWeDo/More information on the project: https://communities.usaidallnet.gov/ictforag/node/381

High farmer participation in the pilot suggests the continuation of the program will show a positive impact.

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WHY NATIONS FAIL: THE ORIGINS OF POWER, PROSPERITY AND POWER

Author: Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson

Reviewer: Bongani Matomela

Written by professors from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, USA, this book is a very insightful piece on why some nations fail and others prosper. It is a must read for policy makers and scholars of the political economy and it offers a very interesting theory of world inequality. The book probes into the differences in incomes, prosperity and standards that separate countries of the world. It poses the question, why some poor countries prosper while others don’t?

The book ironically opens with an analogy based on the city of Nogales which is geographically divided by a border into two sections, i.e. Sonora which is part of Mexico, and Arizona, part of the United States of America (USA). While belonging to one city, Nogales, the people of Arizona in the USA are comparatively healthy and enjoy a higher standard of living by global standards. On the other hand, those in Sonora Mexico, live under different conditions, mostly uneducated with high mortality rates, poor health conditions and high crime rate. What differentiates the citizens, the authors argue, and this is their thesis and argument throughout the book, is a simple fact. Those staying

on the side of the Arizona USA border have access to education facilities and economic institutions and opportunities which enable them to make life choices such as a career path. The environment is conducive for business to thrive and there are established and vibrant democratic institutions, and an active citizenry which

hold the politicians and government to account. On the other side of the border, the opposite is true, there are no incentives for businesses and no thriving economic and political institutions.

The average citizen of the USA is seven times more prosperous than the average

Mexican citizen and more than ten times more prosperous than the citizen of Peru or Central America. Furthermore, he/she is about twenty times more prosperous than the average inhabitant of sub-Saharan Africa, and almost forty times more than those living in some of the poorest African countries. The reason for this advancement is that the economic and political institutions in the developed countries create incentives for people to become educated, to save and invest and to innovate and adopt new technologies, amongst other things.

The authors debunk some myths and theories on why other countries prosper and others fail to do so. On the geography myth that blames geographic differences for existing great divides, they argue, quite correctly, that the geographic concentration of prosperity give

REVIEWS

77VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

some credence, albeit superficial, to the geography hypothesis. They argue that there is no simple connection between climate or geography and economic success.

The authors further use South Africa as an example of a nation that is one of the most prosperous in the region despite its location in sub-Saharan Africa. They argue that inequality results largely from uneven dissemination a n d a d o p t i o n of technologies, institutional legacies from colonialism, political dictatorships, and not well developed economic institutions that incentivise people to prosper.

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The other myths that they sought to debunk is the culture hypothesis that attributes variation in the prosperity of a nation to national culture and the

ignorance hypothesis which argues that some nations are poor and some are rich because the citizens and/or the leaders do not know how to make poor countries rich, and that the Western leaders or people are better informed and advised. They argue that ignorance can explain at best a small part of inequality, hence the existing examples of disastrous policies

and mistakes from prosperous countries. Interestingly, they highlight that knowledge is key to this and continue to lay the blame

on political leaders and their self-enriching irrational decisions for the decline in most developing countries, notably in Africa, South and Central America.

Growth under extractive institutions is limited because it is centrally controlled, resources allocated into selected industries and sectors, and with minimal or no investment in innovation and technologies. Growth would firstly increase, they argue, but over a period of time would stagnate and collapse, as evidenced by the Soviet Union experience under the Bolsheviks illustrate, and the eventual fall of the Union in the 1980’s.

These authors have formulated their own theory of world inequality, and this is a fascinating, informative and indeed a cutting edge piece of scholarship in political economics and public policy making - a must read for anyone interested in this subject.

He average citizen of the USA is seven times more prosperous than the average Mexican citizen and more than ten times more prosperous than the citizen of Peru or Central America.

78 VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

79VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

14th ANNUAL CPSI PUBLIC SECTOR INNOVATION AWARDS 2016

The Centre for Public Service Innovation invites innovators in government departments, public entities, municipalities, public institutions and

partners to enter their service delivery innovations.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: 12 AUGUST 2016

CPSI Awards: Unearthing Innovation for a better Public Sector

Innovative Solutions Reducing the Cost of Delivering Services Innovative use of ICTs for Effective Service DeliveryInnovative Service Delivery InstitutionsInnovative Enhancements of Internal Systems of Government

Category winners compete for the coveted Public Sector Innovator of the Year Award.

Qualifying finalists are also entered into prestigious international Awards.

CATEGORIES:

80 VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

Eligibility

• The Awards are open to government departments at national, provincial and local levels.

• The private, academic or CBO/NGO sectors may also enter if the innovation is implemented in the public sector.

• The project must have originated in South Africa or have been adapted from another sector, province or country.

• The project must be fully implemented and operational for at least one year.

• The project must demonstrate direct benefits to South African citizens.

Entry guidelines and rules

• A project may only be entered for one category.

• All questions should be completed in full, in sequence and with as much information as possible, in line with the prescribed maximum words.

• Hand written entries are not encouraged. In cases where this is unavoidable, please write legibly.

• Hard copy entries should be stapled rather than bound.

• Faxed entries will not be accepted.

• Supporting evidence can be submitted to support the entry e.g. videos, publications, brochures, CD/DVD, newspaper clippings (unfortunately not returnable).

• The information provided in the entry form and during the verification process is legally binding.

Criteria for selection

Innovation:

• The project has to demonstrate the newness of the solution in a specific environment.

• Adaptations of innovations are also allowed.

• The adjudicators will base their assessment of entries on the CPSI’s definition of INNOVATION:

“The process of transforming an idea into a new or improved product, service, process or approach which fulfils the mandate of government and enhances service delivery.”

Sustainability:

• The project must be operational for at least a year and fully implemented.

• Steps taken towards ensuring long-term sustainability should be indicated.

Impact:

• The project should demonstrate tangible improvements in the quality and/or quantity of the delivered service(s).

• Where possible, indicate improvement in citizens’ satisfaction with the services.

• In Category 1, projects must indicate how savings were used to further improve service delivery and/or enhance internal efficiency.

• In the case of Category 4, the project should demonstrate significant improvements in internal efficiencies within the organisation.

Notes:

The CPSI shall not bear any costs relating to the entry, including postage.

The Annual CPSI Public Sector Innovation Awards programme encourages best practice in public sector innovation and service delivery. It recognises successful and effective service delivery initiatives that have been achieved through the application of innovative approaches, methodologies and tools.

81VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

1. Project Name

2. Name of Project Manager

3. Contact details: Postal and physical addressesTwo telephone numbers, incl. mobile numberE-mail

4. Name of organisation and type of entity (Department, municipality, institution, NGO, private, etc.) If NGO or private sector, clearly indicate the name of the public sector entity you are in partnership with.

5. Province(s) where the project is based or indicate if it is a national project.

6. Award category in which project is being entered (see overleaf)

7. Indicate if the project has previously been entered into the CPSI Awards. If so, in which year(s) and what has changed since?

8. Project Overview:a. Provide the reasons for starting the

project. What challenge was identified? (Max 100 words)

b. Goals and objectives of the project (Max 100 words)

c. Explain how the project is solving the identified service delivery challenge(s). (Max 100 words)

d. State how many years the project has been operational? (Should at least be 1 year)

9. The Innovation:a. What is innovative about the project?

(Max 300 words) b. Is the project original (your initiative) or

an adaptation? Explain. (Max 50 words)

10. Impact of the project: a. What service delivery improvements

have been achieved? (Max 500 words)b. What evidence of these improvements

can you provide? Where possible, quantify, e.g. increased number of beneficiaries, reduction in queues, etc. (Max 500 words)

11. Sustainability: How is the project currently being sustained? What has been put in place to ensure long-term sustainability? (Max 200 words)

12. Replication: Can the project be replicated? Have other entities copied it to improve service delivery in their organisations? Explain. (Max 300 words)

13. Challenges and Lessons: What problems where experienced and what did you learn during the implementation of the project? (Max 300 words)

14. Recognition: What other awards programmes has this project won?

15. References: Provide the names and contact details of three (3) references that could verify the project.

Remember to date and sign the submission with the following legally binding declaration:

I, (Full name and surname) agree that the information provided in this document is accurate and legally binding. I/We agree to abide by the rules of the CPSI Public Sector Innovation Awards.

The Awards provide opportunities for information sharing, learning, partnerships and the replication of successful initiatives.

Your submission must include the following: (Note: Download a soft copy of these questions from

www.cpsi.co.za/)

82 VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

empowers, entertains, educates

www.tshwane.gov.zawww.tshwane.gov.za

Free Wi-Fi a reality for Tshwane residents

Delivering more than 2,5 TB of data every day, with peaks of close to 3 TB per day, the service enables 250 MB of data per day for every connected device as well as unlimited access to the Tobetsa content portal where information related to education, jobs, eTshwane, Wi-Fi TV and sports can be enjoyed without any data restrictions.

It is the City’s vision to connect its residents to the digital economy through Wi-Fi services. The value that residents enjoy and the establishment of a city where connectivity is available to everyone have placed the City of Tshwane on a global stage and ensures that it is poised for the long-term benefits of increased GDP, productivity and efficiencies that result from being digitally included.

Doing business in and with the City will be cheaper through the new Tshwane Wi-Fi Voice app. This is a mobile application that allows users to call each other and the City’s customer care line at no cost when connected to the Tshwane free Wi-Fi service. This app also allows affordable calls between users and the City’s customer care line over any other data connection.

Wi-Fi Chat is a web-based platform that allows the City to push messages to users and receive real-time comments and feedback from users. It also serves as a new service delivery mechanism for users to log queries and complaints to the City, thus increasing the number of ways to communicate with the City.

Wi-Fi Drive-in is a video-on-demand service enabled at specific Tshwane free W-iFi locations that allows users to watch a selection of the latest Hollywood blockbusters on their personal devices.

To find your nearest Wi-Fi hotspot or more information about the new Wi-Fi products, visit www.tshwane.gov.za.

Tshwane free W-iFi locations that allows users to watch a selection of the latest Hollywood blockbusters on their personal devices.


FREE

Wi-Fi

The City of Tshwane is on a quest for ‘Wi-Fi everywhere’ through ensuring free Wi-Fi sites in 1 km grids in urban areas and 5 km grids in non-urban areas. There is currently a total of 673 free Wi-Fi sites in Tshwane, making it the largest government-funded public-space free Wi-Fi deployment in Africa.

Awards will be presented in the following categories:

1. Innovative Solutions Reducing the Cost of Delivering Services.This new category celebrates the efforts of public servants to improve the quality and/or speed of services at lower costs and/or simplifying processes to reduce cost.

2. Innovative use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for Effective Service Delivery. This category celebrates the innovative use of ICTs to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery. The emphasis is on the interface with citizens.

3. Innovative Service Delivery Institutions.This category celebrates institutions and teams delivering services to citizens who find innovative solutions to persistent challenges in schools, hospitals, clinics, courts, police stations and similar institutions.

4. Innovative Enhancements of Internal Systems of Government.This category awards internal institutional innovations that improve back-office systems and processes, both ICT and non-ICT.

From the category winners, the adjudicators will select the Public Sector Innovator of the Year.

Category winners and the Innovator of the Year receive trophies and certificates and a monetary contribution towards the expansion or replication of the project. All finalists receive a two-day training course on public sector innovation. Finalists will be invited to the Awards Ceremony.

Verification and Adjudication:• All entries received before or on the closing date of 12 August 2016 will be acknowledged and allocated a reference number.

• Short-listed entries will be verified. Verification may include email and telephonic interviews with project managers and referees, and/or site visits. Should there be material differences between the verification findings and information in a submission, adjudicators retain the right to disqualify or re-rank such an entry.

• Verified projects will be judged by a panel of adjudicators.

• The adjudicators retain the right to move an entry to a category they deem more appropriate.

• The adjudicators’ decisions are final and no correspondence will be entered into.

Submit entries via:

For more information, contact Mmabatho Mashaba or Khaliphile Zwane on 012 683 2800/2814/2841

E-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]

Post:Postnet Highveld, Suite 404, Private bag X111, Centurion, 0046

Hand delivery:

Floor 1, Block ACorporate 66 Office ParkCorner Lenchen Av and Von Willich StreetCenturion

83VOL. 6 ISSUE 2 2016

empowers, entertains, educates

www.tshwane.gov.zawww.tshwane.gov.za

Free Wi-Fi a reality for Tshwane residents

Delivering more than 2,5 TB of data every day, with peaks of close to 3 TB per day, the service enables 250 MB of data per day for every connected device as well as unlimited access to the Tobetsa content portal where information related to education, jobs, eTshwane, Wi-Fi TV and sports can be enjoyed without any data restrictions.

It is the City’s vision to connect its residents to the digital economy through Wi-Fi services. The value that residents enjoy and the establishment of a city where connectivity is available to everyone have placed the City of Tshwane on a global stage and ensures that it is poised for the long-term benefits of increased GDP, productivity and efficiencies that result from being digitally included.

Doing business in and with the City will be cheaper through the new Tshwane Wi-Fi Voice app. This is a mobile application that allows users to call each other and the City’s customer care line at no cost when connected to the Tshwane free Wi-Fi service. This app also allows affordable calls between users and the City’s customer care line over any other data connection.

Wi-Fi Chat is a web-based platform that allows the City to push messages to users and receive real-time comments and feedback from users. It also serves as a new service delivery mechanism for users to log queries and complaints to the City, thus increasing the number of ways to communicate with the City.

Wi-Fi Drive-in is a video-on-demand service enabled at specific Tshwane free W-iFi locations that allows users to watch a selection of the latest Hollywood blockbusters on their personal devices.


Tshwane free W-iFi locations that allows users to watch a selection of the latest Hollywood blockbusters on their personal devices.


FREE

Wi-Fi

The City of Tshwane is on a quest for ‘Wi-Fi everywhere’ through ensuring free Wi-Fi sites in 1 km grids in urban areas and 5 km grids in non-urban areas. There is currently a total of 673 free Wi-Fi sites in Tshwane, making it the largest government-funded public-space free Wi-Fi deployment in Africa.

THE CPSI SUPPORTS THE AU AGENDA

2063

http://www.au.int

THE FUTURE WE WANT - CPSI · 2016-04-28 · 6.1 Mobile Technology for Community Health in Ghana (MOTECH Ghana) 6.2 Find My School 6.3 DevTrac 6.4 MRI Agro 7. REVIEWS 7.1 Why Nations

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