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Freitag, 29.03.2024
eGovernment Forschung seit 2001 | eGovernment Research since 2001
The City of Johannesburg (COJ) yesterday launched a revenue and billing roadmap that seeks to fill all the gaps and correct all the flaws with its problematic systems over a period of 19 months.

“The normalisation of the city's billing situation is and has been a priority of government over the past months. The mayoral committee has identified this as one of the key issues to be resolved as we move towards achieving our vision of being a world-class African city,” said member of the mayoral committee (MMC) for finance Geoffrey Makhubo.

He explains that the twin priority objectives of the roadmap are to improve accuracy and integrity of the billing data, and improve the experience of customers when they try to utilise the call centres, electronic communication or face-to-face contact with COJ employees.

Realistic timeframe

City manager Trevor Fowler said other objectives include eradicating property change-of-ownership backlogs and ensuring better responsiveness from the city.

“A timeframe of 19 months is realistic for the implementation of a complete customer- and citizen-friendly model, and service standards.” He says the final systems will be in place by the end of June 2013.

However, Democratic Alliance shadow MMC for finance Patrick Atkinson says the immediate concern with the roadmap is that 19 months is too long and the city doesn't have the financial sustainability to take that long to resolve the issues.

The roadmap will see a “step-change” for Johannesburg and will result in “an integrated system which clearly serves the needs of our citizens and meets the expectations of our customers, ratepayers and stakeholders, including the suppliers of bulk services,” said Fowler.

Phakama extension

Fowler said the city consulted independent experts in the fields of IT, risk management, process improvement, operational efficiency, and skills development and training in preparing the roadmap.

He added that during the consultations, several gaps were identified in the revenue system.

These include that the quality of meter reading should be improved, customers still receive incorrect bills, turnaround time on query resolution still lags, and customer information remains inconsistent and is located on various databases.

“We acknowledge these deficiencies and realise that they mainly impact the balances that have accrued on customer accounts. To address these accrued balances, a team of skilled people has been put together and supported by appropriate data mining and management tools.”

Smart solutions

The first deadline for the roadmap is 28 February, by which time the COJ says billing accuracy will be improved through data interrogation and improved meter reading accuracy.

It adds that there will be an improved customer interface, backlog in property valuations will be cleared, customer queries largely resolved and significant progress will be made in resolving change of ownership queries.

By 30 June, customer data will be consistent with the reality on the ground, IT infrastructure and hardware will be upgraded, and the credit management function will have been enhanced to be more customer-responsive.

At the end of 2012, the Joburg call centre will provide a reliable service, accuracy of billing will be maintained, and service level agreements between the city and municipal-owned entities will be reviewed, amended and monitored.

The city says the final elements of the step-change process will be in place by the end of June 2013.

A review and alignment of the city's revenue model based on the future needs of Joburg will be ready, there will be a reduction in non-technical losses of electricity through the installation of bulk meters, and customers will have access to e-services and smart meters.

There will also be the installation of new-generation meters and technology to meet the needs of customers, pre-payment meters for low-volume customers, smart meters for high-volume customers, and the installation of remote metering systems throughout the city.

Fowler explains that smart meters will remove the occurrence of estimated meter readings and will be much more accurate.

Wish list

“There are a whole lot of nice things they say they'll have done by the deadlines, but exactly how they're going to do it we don't know,” says Atkinson.

“There's very little information and too many promises, just like before.”

The Joburg Advocacy Group has similar concerns, according to founding member Lee Cahill. She says the major problem is that this is yet another wish list of objectives, which isn't backed up by a solid, measurable implementation plan.

She adds that, despite new complaints, the city claims to be resolving the billing crisis, but won't release any stats for independent verification.

Outsource please

“The bottom line is that we have very little confidence that the accuracy of billing can be improved using the current system. This is not because we believe the system to be fundamentally flawed, but because the city has proved itself unable to manage it.”

Cahill says the only viable solution is to decentralise and outsource billing to competent, independent providers that can meet measurable key result areas.

“The city has shown that it simply can't be trusted to get it right, or to manage a crisis of this magnitude effectively. The function of managing services needs to be taken out of the hands of politicians and outsourced to reliable service providers.”

Migration fail

The protracted billing crisis was caused by post-implementation issues with migration from disparate legacy systems to SAP, through Project Phakama.

Johannesburg started implementing Phakama towards the end of 2009 and wrapped up migration in the middle of last year. However, the move resulted in thousands of residents complaining about grossly inflated bills and a lack of help from the call centre.

“We must emphasise that the cash position of the city has improved significantly in the first quarter of the current financial year – 2011/12. The number of accurately billed customers has increased significantly and we have achieved a 102% collection level for old debt during this period,” said Fowler.

The roadmap builds on the foundation laid by Programme Phakama in 2006.

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Autor(en)/Author(s): Farzana Rasool

Quelle/Source: ITWeb, 23.11.2011

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