Communications minister Solly Malatsi on Monday launched government’s digital transformation road map, a document aimed at directing the digital reforms envisaged under phase 2 of Operational Vulindlela, the economic reform initiative led through President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office.
Speaking at a launch event in Johannesburg, Malatsi said government’s digitisation efforts are aimed at changing the way citizens interact with state services, describing the typical experience as inconvenient and indicative of deeper structural problems in the way public services are designed and delivered.
“Innovation without coordination cannot deliver real change. With this road map, we are shifting from the fragmented past towards a unified, people-first, whole-of-government approach. The road map is not just a plan to use technology to improve the way we do things. It is a transformative vision to entirely reform the way that citizens can interact with government,” said Malatsi.
Breaking down silos across government services is one of the digital transformation road map’s key objectives. According to Khule Duma, project management director in the office of the presidency, fragmentation in government leads to citizens duplicating effort when interacting with the state for various types of applications. Not only is time and effort wasted in this way, but for many of the poorest South Africans, it results in the unnecessary wastage of whatever limited funds they have at their disposal, he said.
Another important goal of the reforms is bolstering the state’s capacity to create and deploy digital solutions. This will involve adding the required skills and expertise across government, supported by a still-to-be-established digital services unit to oversee the digital function across government.
Leverage
Duma said this approach does not imply government aims to build all its technology on its own, but rather that its ability to oversee and set appropriate standards should be strengthened. The private sector, however, will also have a role to play.
“We have a sophisticated private sector with sophisticated banking and telecommunications infrastructure. We must figure out how we leverage that sophistication to ensure we drive this work as quickly as possible,” said Duma.
He added that although it is easy to criticise South Africa’s position in digital government services next to countries such as Brazil and India, there are a number of positives, including high levels of mobile network coverage, that form a solid base for digital transformation to take place.
Where South Africa still has a lot of work to do, he said, is in driving the down the cost of data so that connectivity is more affordable across the board.
“We understand that bringing down the cost of data is critically important. A lot of our colleagues in India have repeatedly told us that our cost of data is still four times that of India, where it is the cheapest in the world,” said Duma.
In February, President Cyril Ramaphosa said in his state of the nation address that digital reforms at home affairs — which is introducing digital IDs, among other developments — are central to government’s plans regarding the digitisation of citizen services.
Complementing the IDs is a digital wallet where citizens will be able to safely keep authenticated digital versions of important documents including driver’s licences and education certificates.
Home affairs in April signed a pact with the South African Revenue Service, aimed at allowing the former to leverage the digital advances the latter has made in recent years.
Speaking at the digital road map launch on Monday, Sars commissioner Edward Kieswetter warned that government must be clear about what it wants to digitise and why to avoid scenarios where poorly selected digitised services lead to “accelerated inefficiencies”.
‘Disintermediate’
“We need to be clear so that we don’t digitise services looking backwards. For example, we don’t want to improve our queuing services, we want to disintermediate the need for queues,” he said.
“With Sars for example, if we wanted to improve our filing system, we would be defining the problem incorrectly – nobody wants to file – they require a return once or twice a year. We are saying how do we disintermediate, not digitise, the need to submit a return in the first place?” said Kieswetter. – © 2025 NewsCentral Media
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