National Treasury awards Vodacom with new mobile communication services contract
“Through the previous contract, we successfully delivered significant financial benefits in costs savings, expedited and streamlined procurement of services and ushered unprecedented digitalisation of government departments, agencies, state-owned entities and municipalities, said chief officer for Vodacom Business, William Mzimba.
The RT15 served as a platform for Vodacom Business to support the government and amplify their productivity while increasing efficiency. To achieve the expected results, Vodacom Business provided IT and business solutions and increased the number of mobile lines available to them.
Mzimba adds: “In particular, our partnership with the government resulted in the improved delivery of education using digital technologies during Covid-19 lockdowns, enhanced citizen engagement and revenue assurance in municipalities through smart metering technologies and IoT solutions for smart asset management and fleet management.”
Enhancing communication between government and citizens
Digitisation does not only relate to things, but to processes and people. Digital services and platforms such as the Citizen Engagement Platform have proved to be powerful tools in the public sector’s quest to improve and manage service delivery. The platform is designed to automate, enrich and streamline interactions between citizens, government contact centres, field workers and senior officials.
Vodacom launched the MySAPS app launched to reportedly enable better communication between citizens and the South African Police Service.
The app allows citizens to search for the nearest police station, submit a tip-off and call the crime stop number. The introduction of the app highlights how technology can be used to support national police efforts and connect communities in a collective effort in the fight against crime. Since the launch of the app in 2019, the SAPS has received 6,700 tip-offs from community members.
In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the mobile app was further enhanced when the department introduced a new feature to help increase public education and awareness on Covid-19, but more importantly provide a self-screening feature option for patients.
Improved administration
Within the Buffalo City Metro Municipality (BCMM), legacy infrastructure posed challenges for the municipality regarding water and electricity revenue collection. Manual processes of meter reading and incorrect tariffing were some of the many challenges for a municipality of that size. Vodacom Business’s Smart Electricity Metering solution vastly improved revenue collection within the area, supported bill verification from bulk suppliers such as Eskom and supplied and installed 63,000 meters over a period of three years.
Vodacom Business further helped primary healthcare clinics to eliminate medical stock shortages through medicine monitoring measures. By implementing a Stock Visibility Solution (SVS), the Department of Health (DoH) was able to monitor critical supply chains and compare centrally purchased volumes of medicine that are available on the shelves of dispensaries.
The DoH was also able to monitor stock levels of critical vaccines across the 4 100 clinics across the country. Real-time access to stock level information from medicine dispensaries allows low-stock clinics to be pro-actively replenished and out-of-stock facilities to receive priority attention, ensuring that citizens can access the healthcare they require without delays.
Implementing technology within education
The Gauteng Education Department was using a legacy school admissions system that was plagued with technical issues, resulting in slow admission processing. For the admissions system to operate efficiently and handle the volume of applications, Vodacom needed to upgrade the system and install functionalities that aligned with the legal prescripts.
Six weeks after the project began, Vodacom Business managed to redevelop the e-admission system to include the latest technologies and provide the best user experience. The system was hosted on Microsoft Azure within the Vodacom Datacenter. Since then, the admissions system has received over 255,000 applications and processed over 1 000 applications per minute during peak times.
Within the Eastern Cape, Vodacom Business aimed to deliver ICT-enabled teaching and learning. Through the contract, the Eastern Cape Department of Education received laptops for all foundation phase teachers, tablets for all school principals and digital solutions which enabled the department to better manage the learning process throughout the province.
