Automate or perish: municipal operating system must deliver

IF THERE was ever a time for local governments to automate and deploy technologies to enable service delivery, it is now.

South Africa has just completed one part of enabling service delivery, in the form of appointing leaders. The key part, which involves operations, will be the hardest to execute.

In the same way that Covid-19 accelerated adoption of technology, service delivery challenges should accelerate the development of technologies within municipalities. This is even more important when societies are anticipating challenges related to indecision over internal leadership conflicts that might lead to poor operations and service delivery.

The critical part of local government that will be left to run operations will be the middle management who are professionals, such as engineers and accountants.

The sad reality is that some municipalities lack this critical layer of management that enables service delivery. A municipal professional once indicated that there was a local government entity that had half the engineers of the whole country combined. Today, that municipality is considered as one of the few that delivers service delivery, although to just some members of society.

If parts of the country have a potential to be impacted by leadership challenges and absent middle management and professionals, what will happen to service delivery? Is this not the right time to think about automating some functions within local governments?Municipalities should start thinking about automating some tasks that are

repetitive and critical for society.

According to The Guardian, Leeds University is leading a £4.2 million (about R90m) project to create a fleet of robot repair workers that can spot infrastructure problems before they become disruptive, among them drones that climb on lampposts to change bulbs, automated machines that fix potholes without digging up half the road, and robots that live in utility pipes and patch cracks.

The idea here is to assign repetitive tasks to robots and let humans to the

more complex work.

Some councils in other parts of the world are also beginning to apply robotic process automation, which mimics human interaction with computer systems, to repetitive tasks such as signing people up to some repetitive administration tasks.

Again, this would allow the machines to do the boring data entry tasks, which they generally perform faster and more accurately than human beings. And human beings use their time to improve front-line services that cannot be done by robots.

In waste removal, there are now automated side-loaders (ASLs) that come equipped with fully digital platforms with remote diagnostics, real-time global positioning, full customer service data integration, 360-degree cameras, proof of service tools, and a full complement of safety equipment which makes vehicle operators’ jobs safer and more productive than ever before.

These are just some of the examples of automating some municipal functions in a way that would enable efficiency while assigning people to jobs that are more complex.

To make some of the services possible, there will be a need for government operating systems to be created and tailored specifically for local government services.

Ultimately, this could also lead to better service delivery. Society should be cushioned from leadership conflicts that may come with a potential to impact on service delivery, by ensuring that there are systems in place to deliver what people really need. When humans are distracted by leadership issues and withheld by lack of skills, technology should be deployed to ensure that things get done.

There are elements of governments that should function like machines, especially when other cogs in the system are failing or dealing with challenges. There are just some things that should never be compromised because of differences between leaders. Water services cannot wait for human beings to get along in the same way that refusal removal cannot wait for people to get along.

Technology has a way of just working when humans can’t and we should allow it to help us where we can’t.

Making this possible may take time as automation works, if there was a working manual process in place to be automated. Some municipalities may not even have manual processes to start with.

Organisations, such as the South African Local Government Association may need to intervene by making the process of developing a government operating system that can be shared. This should allow South Africa to have functioning local governments whether leaders are there or not.