Municipal Service Delivery
Challenge
There are 257 municipalities across South Africa, each responsible for maintaining a certain level of service delivery and answering to citizens who have concerns or complaints about day to day functionality when it comes to fundamental services such as water, electricity and sanitation. When there is an overwhelming need for certain services to be attended to, citizens are unable to have their calls answered and voice heard when they try to get through to their particular municipality, leaving them feeling frustrated.
Response
GovChat formulated a response to this dilemma in order to assist municipalities with this capacity, by directly enabling municipal reporting for all 257 municipalities in South Africa. Citizens are able to use their mobile phones or computers to log a report ranging from a water leak through to a faulty or even illegal electricity connection, as well as track the response. Ward councillors from each municipality are able to view instances and aggregated reports in order to prioritise action.
Results
The result of this direct digitised reporting on municipal issues allows for the much more efficient and effective submission or requests and response from municipalities, with less frustration on the part of citizens. Non-actioned service requests are also automatically escalated to municipal management, ensuring that all service requests are acknowledged and acted upon. To date, over 4,000 municipal service deliver related reports have been received and processed via GovChat.