GOVERNMENT departments would do well to exploit the improved efficiencies and return on investment that can be achieved through public-private sector partnerships.

For example, many of the departments are struggling to collect debts, including areas such as hospitals, councils and traffic departments, says Jay Pather, CEO of Izazi.

"This problem could be solved by a partnership with a company that is good at debt collection."

The back-office administration could still be done by government employees, but the private-sector partner could do the debt collecting.

This is an example of the global trend of business process outsourcing, says Pather.

He says another area of opportunity for public-private sector partnerships is that a multitude of old and new systems are in existence in departments across all tiers of government, and many of these do not talk to each other. Before it can achieve e-government and allow individuals and businesses to access services online, government will need a single view of the customer across all departments.

This is an opportunity for systems integration companies to help to integrate all the old and new systems and business processes, says Pather.

Integration will enable members of the public to enter their details once and access any service across all government departments.

It will also assist government to create greater efficiencies, says Pather.

"For example, if a patient at a hospital says he cannot afford to pay for treatment, the staff could link into the Sars database and check his income status to ensure he is telling the truth."

There are many isolated initiatives going on in government in an attempt to solve integration and consolidation problems, an example being the Gauteng shared services centre.

But government needs to put a framework in place to coordinate all these islands of activity, says Pather.

He says private-sector companies can play a role in counselling government to solve problems such as these.

"Government needs the right champion to co-ordinate all these initiatives and provide a framework of guidelines for the various departments to prioritise projects, and this is not happening yet," he says.

There is a need to take a step back and look at the burning issues and lay down a master plan prioritising projects on the basis of what needs to be tackled first, says Pather.

He says Izazi assists government departments and organisations to design this type of framework, evaluate technologies and start the transformation process.

The company recently assisted the City of Johannesburg, the Industrial Development Corporation and Postbank to select and implement enabling technologies to support existing business processes.

Nov 05 2003 07:11:01:000AM  Business Day 1st Edition