Poor administration leads to ineffective service delivery and long queues.

The spirit of Batho Pele - a government drive to put the interests of the people first - is the drive behind a joint research study between the SERA Alliance partners, CSIR and the University of Pretoria (UP). The two institutions are working on a plan to eradicate poor service delivery to South Africa's citizens through the efficient use of technology in government.

"Government's Batho Pele initiative is being undermined by poor administration and this is unconstitutional," says Dr Jackie Phahlamohlaka, Systems Modelling Manager at the CSIR. "In terms of South Africa's Promotion of Administrative Justice Act - PAJA (Act 3 of 2000), South Africans have a constitutional right to lawful, reasonable and procedurally fair administrative action, and to the right to be given reasons for administrative action."

The researchers presented a paper, "CITTE2006", reporting on three simulations exercises performed as part of a series of field research with the objective to implement the PAJA. The act sets out procedures that government officials must follow before and after taking a decision. The procedure applies to all organs of the state and thus arguably also to higher education institutions.

According to Phahlamohlaka, two research projects were initiated in 2003 in association with the Department of Informatics at UP. The projects are conducted within the informatics research discipline, specifically within decision theory and group decision-support systems.

"Our aim is to show people that technology can help in these processes. In an exploratory study such as this where you want to demonstrate the value of technology, there can't be a better way than through simulation," he says. He adds that his research group models and simulates complex systems at systems-of-systems level in order to demonstrate technological possibilities and capabilities to clients.

The first project is titled 'Enabling access to human rights through thought processes and web-based group support systems (GSS) tools'. The aim of the project is to explore innovative ways in which web-based GSS tools could enable access to human rights by ordinary South African citizens and to explore efficient forms of engagement between citizens, government administrators and managers as required by the PAJA.

The second project is titled 'Web-based collaboration and thinklets' and aims to identify and harness opportunities for sustained collaboration and interaction by communities who would use web-based GSS tools within the e-government context in South Africa. For this project, collaboration engineering through the notion of a thinklet and participation in their creation and packaging was adopted. The main research question is "What features are needed in web-based collaboration tools and how should interfaces be designed to enable citizens to interact effectively with government and public bodies in South Africa? "

The projects have been successfully linked and funded by the National Research Foundation, with several post-graduate students and co-investigators researching different topics. The study has received support from participants, municipalities and organisations from four provinces, namely Northwest, Mpumalanga, Limpopo and Gauteng.

Source: CSIR