The ceremony was held in San Francisco, US, and the municipality was chosen from dozens of global nominations.
Innovation World is Software AG’s Annual Global Technology Conference, which gives global recognition to customers, such as the city of Ekurhuleni, that significantly optimise their enterprise structure through the innovative use of Software AG technology.
According to metro spokesperson Sam Modiba, Ekurhuleni was announced as the winner due to its highly-improved customer-facing processes.
“The municipality consists of 20 customer care centres (CCCs) and various service departments.
“By leveraging on the web Methods and ARIS solutions provided by Software AG, service delivery was optimized throughout different departments, including energy, water and sanitation, corporate and legal, city planning, and health and social services,” says Modibe.
Modibe adds that prior to the automation solution, Ekurhuleni’s Indigent Management process spanned way over three months before qualifying applicants were approved.
“This process has been drastically reduced and applicants’ waiting time decreased by up to 70 days. Now it takes 21 days for approval with 1 500 applications being processed per month across all the CCCs,” he says.
City manager Khaya Ngema says the recognition at a global level is an indication that the city is moving in the right direction in its Digital City strategy, which, among other things, seeks to ensure that there is a continuous re-engineering of business processes to optimise service delivery.
“It is imperative for us to ensure we enhance our customers’ experience when they are interacting with us. The 2013 Global Award for ICT Innovation highlights our commitment in streamlining internal processes to achieve efficiency as a municipality,” explains Ngema.
Modibe says the Digital City is one of the municipality’s nine flagship projects that are part of the Growth and Development Strategy 2055.
“It is an overarching strategy to take the growth and development of the city forward by modernising and capacitating the municipality.”
