OVERVIEW
community engagement. The five SAP strategy pillars that seek to integrate technology with the aforementioned are analytics, applications, mobile and cloud technology and databases. Looking at case studies, local examples of best practices and proposed strategies were discussed in an attempt to highlight solutions that can be implemented to address the issues governments face with regard to urbanisation. City of Cape Town CIO, Andre Stelzner elaborated on the topic of promoting social and economic value in modern urban environments. When speaking on the issues the city has experienced, he focussed on transformation as a central point that needs to be addressed. He highlighted some of the technical difficulties the city has
faced in this regard: “The lack of standardised policies and procedures, old order IT systems, out-dated back office systems that are functionally inadequate and not properly integrated—these systems hinder the ability of municipalities to improve governance, be responsive to changing citizen needs and render services.” Looking at urbanisation in another South African city, the City of Johannesburg’s Department of Social Development’s Jak Koseff spoke on a variety of issues that are being looked at in their municipality, including youth unemployment and the way it links to education. He says according to a 2011 City of Johannesburg report: “Only a small number of those without post high-school qualifications make it into formal employment, and those with qualifications are far more likely to be part of the labour force than those who do not. For example, across all age groups, 56% of those with matric or equivalent qualifications are employed, compared to 31% of those who left school in Standard 8. At the other end of the scale, 88% of those with honours degrees are employed, as compared to 78% of those who hold bachelor degrees.” Koseff suggested approaches to this problem by synthesizing the National Development Plan and World Bank data. On the supply side of the labour market, the city can connect the dots between the private sector, the key educational institutions and the basic education system such that schooling and skills training are expressly linked to market need. He concluded by saying that the city can act as a social change agent with technology as an enabler.
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SOUTH AFRICAN BUSINESS 2016