THOUGHT LEADERSHIP DIGITAL SKILLS

LEARNERSHIPS MUST PRIORITISE DIGITAL SKILLS

Rajan Naidoo, director of EduPower Skills Academy, writes that giving young South Africans access to critical digital skills delivers social and business value

South Africa may have produced Mark Shuttleworth and Elon Musk, some of the brightest digital minds in the world today, but the vast majority of our school leavers will matriculate without ever switching on a computer. This is a massive injustice as digital skills are a massive injustice as digital skills are essential to employability and essential to employability and have the potential to move have the potential to move the needle on South Africa’s devastating youth unemployment.

Our school Rajan education system does Naidoo not provide large-scale access to hardware and software, so many young software, so many young people have never even encountered a computer. But the encountered a computer. But the majority of nonphysical skilled jobs majority of nonphysical skilled jobs require some level of digital skills, so require some level of digital skills, so first-time job seekers with no computer experience are highly unlikely to be successful in their job search.

Instead, they will become a statistic in South Africa’s youth unemployment rate, which was recorded as 65.5 per cent for the first quarter of 2022 in Stats SA’s latest Quarterly Labour Force Survey. This means that two in every three youngsters won’t find a job – but even basic digital skills could be the difference between disappointment and opportunity.

EMPLOYABILITY

Digital skills can be the tools needed to mitigate poverty, unemployment and inequality as they improve employability and enable livelihood opportunities. More advanced digital skills such as software development can unlock exciting development can unlock exciting opportunities to actively participate opportunities to actively participate in the emerging and competitive in the emerging and competitive digital economy. digital economy. As educators and training providers, it falls on us to assist young people to develop the skills sets relevant to market needs. Through learnerships, I needs. Through learnerships, I am con dent we can empower am con dent we can empower enough young South Africans enough young South Africans with economically desirable and with economically desirable and sustainable skills so that they have the sustainable skills so that they have the tools to improve their circumstances and tools to improve their circumstances and impact the unemployment rate. impact the unemployment rate.

LEARNERSHIPS

To ensure that learners are given every opportunity, companies funding learnerships for unemployed youth must double-check that digital skills are front and centre in the programme and that the skills taught are put into practice throughout the duration of the learnership.

It’s one thing having a room full of computers, but for learners to become con dent with this technology, they have to work at it every day. When they rst enrol at EduPower, around 30 per cent of our learners have never worked on a computer before and around 80 per cent have no experience working in MS Word or Excel. By the time they graduate though, they will be pro cient in both these packages.

To achieve this, regardless of the learnership registered for, learners are all introduced to digital skills from the get-go as part of the academy’s work-readiness programme. Run in tandem with the learnership, the programme’s purpose is to bridge the digital skills gap and dramatically improve the learner’s employability.

Digital skills can be the tools needed to mitigate poverty, unemployment and inequality as they improve employability and enable livelihood opportunities.

HIGHER-LEVEL IT QUALIFICATIONS

The academy’s IT-focused learnerships take this a step further as using a computer is core to the learnership. There are higher-level IT learnerships where special digital skills such as digital languages and programming are taught. These learnerships are increasing in popularity, and the number of learners enrolling is growing as companies use their skills development budgets to e ectively build and deliver capabilities for their future digital requirements.

This ongoing collaboration with our clients is vital in making an impact on the challenges faced by the country and its unemployed youth. By partnering with like-minded organisations to drive access to education and equip the South Africans that need it the most with the skills they need to compete in the digital economy of today and the future, we are creating real sustainable value that is delivering social and business value. ▪

FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY AND REVENUE ENHANCEMENT: WHERE TO BEGIN?

Muncipalities are labouring under the burden of nonpayment for services and increased costs. So how do they increase revenue, decrease costs and become nancially sustainable? TGIS o ers some solutions

Most municipalities face financial sustainability challenges. This has been exacerbated by the global economic decline resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Business liquidations have resulted, jobs have been lost, and many households are unable to settle municipal accounts.

Eskom’s demands that municipalities pay their long-accumulated electricity debt have placed further pressure on South African municipalities’ costs, causing service delivery to decline. Protests are evidence of a frustrated public wanting to see improvements in service delivery and job opportunities.

SIMPLISTIC SOLUTION OVERVIEW

The logical solution to this financial dilemma is to increase revenue and decrease costs. But, how is the big question.

Traditional revenue streams relating to service delivery are well defined. Before looking for new streams, municipalities should manage the existing streams effectively.

Financial sustainability requires economic growth that enables residents to pay for services. Economic growth relies on business investment, and business investment is attracted by reliable service delivery. Disinvestment is a consequence of unreliable service delivery.

SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS

None of these are simple or quick to fix. Many previous efforts have been isolated, fragmented and sometimes superficially focused on symptoms rather than causes. These have been unsustainable and had little enduring impact.

Creating and managing sustainable solutions requires seamlessly integrated systems, capacitated staff, and reliable data foundations.

An IMIS integration model showing land and infrastructure spatial data at its core. FOUNDATIONS FOR REVENUE ENHANCEMENT

The land parcel – a farm, an erf with a dwelling housing a family, or a structure housing a business or other activity – is the point of service delivery and, therefore, the foundation for management. It is also the foundation for revenue, be it rates (via the valuation role) or metered services (via infrastructure).

Land parcels, then, are the starting point to achieving the most important constitutional mandate of a municipality: sustainable service delivery through adequate, reliable infrastructure.

LAND PARCELS The problem

Land parcels include formally registered parcels (farm, erf, sectional unit), as well as informal parcels in traditional settlements and squatter settlements.

Unfortunately, the cadastral and deeds data from the o cial sources both have signi cant levels of missing and erroneous information. Without a thorough, professional data cleaning and data capture process, losses of between 5 and 15 per cent of potential revenue are likely.

Where to begin

TGIS has found the following approach to be e ective: 1. Rigorous cleaning of both Surveyor-General (SG) and deeds data. 2. A system that can properly house this data. 3. Ensure access to needed data. 4. Monthly data maintenance. 5. Linked applications (land use, zoning, building, indigence, and so forth).

Competent service provider

Appoint a service provider with professional land surveyors and geographic information system (GIS) practitioners, who are registered with the South African Geomatics Council to clean and maintain this data.

Service providers should also have experience in cleaning and maintaining municipal cadastral data in a GIS.

Johann Engelbrecht, a former CEO of TGIS, says: “Since the early 2000s, TGIS has been cleaning cadastral data and making it available across municipalities with the Integrated Management Information System (IMIS). We have cleaned data for some sixty

IMIS 6 showing properties not in nances.

Creating and managing sustainable solutions requires seamlessly integrated systems, capacitated sta , and reliable data foundations.

municipalities for the IMIS system or valuation rolls and currently maintain more than thirty municipalities’ data in the IMIS system.”

INFRASTRUCTURE AND SERVICE METERS The problem

An incomplete infrastructure inventory means that maintenance cannot be planned, budgeted for, or properly executed, resulting in service delivery failures.

Incomplete or faulty infrastructure asset registers are among the most common causes for quali ed or disclaimed audit opinions by the Auditor-General.

Perhaps the most serious problem is that master plans for the service branches will also be based on poor data, resulting in planned infrastructure not matching development requirements and potential loss of business investment.

Where to begin

Survey all infrastructure so that its location is known. 1. Create a database of componentised assets according to generally recognised accounting practice. 2. Ensure that the survey (map) and the database are housed in a GIS. 3. Utilise an asset management system that records all changes and keeps a complete history to preserve an accountability audit trail. 4. Ensure the asset management system is capable of seamless municipal Standard

Chart of Accounts (mSCOA) compliant integration with: a. the financial system b. documents and records management c. workflow d. customer care. 5. Ensure the asset management system enables maintenance scheduling and maintains a complete history of visits, actions, condition, and data changes. 6. Ensure the asset management system integrates with 3D-mobile mapping and any eld technologies (data loggers or tablets). 7. Get it in the cloud to enable collaboration and ensure data replication for disaster recovery.

Competent service provider: top ten municipalities with clean audits

Jo Engelbrecht, senior manager of the built environment at TGIS, says: “We are very proud of the advances we have made with our asset register and asset maintenance solutions. In 2021, this won us the Team Award from the South African Asset Management Association.

“Two top ten municipalities, Steve Tshwete Local Municipality and Saldanha Bay Local Municipality, have used the TGIS asset register solution and received clean audits, with Saldanha Bay running a complete, mSCOAcompliant, seamless process.

“This integrated all aspects from infrastructure eld surveys, through document control to unbundling and nancial system take-on, with reciprocal work process ows, approvals, and data updates in both systems,” Englebrecht explains.

“The audit outcome is just the cherry on the top that recognises good management. Our solution sets the foundation for e ective and sustainable service delivery. After all, that’s what municipalities are about, isn’t it?” he adds.

Infrastructure rapid data gathering

“We are proud to have been the rst company in South Africa to acquire an IPS2 3D mobile mapping system,” Engelbrecht says. “This has enabled us to capture data in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of sending many teams into the eld to capture data.

“Additional advantages are that we can determine land use for town planning compliance, can see structures for informing valuation, and o ce or virtual meetings can now have an excellent view of ‘the eld’ through the images, where everyone sees the same thing.”

IMIS 7 showing customer care linked to a land parcel.

PlanetGIS showing point cloud and components with clipped images. PlanetGIS showing o ce-to- eld guidance.

“Since the early 2000s, TGIS has been cleaning cadastral data and making it available across municipalities with the integrated management information system.” – Johann Engelbrecht

VALUATION ROLL

“The valuation roll is only as good or complete as the cadastral data it is built on,” says Fanie Smith, data manager at TGIS. “Our background and experience with SG and deeds data make us the perfect partner for any municipality to get this important foundation of revenue generation right.

“We don’t do valuations, but we ensure that the valuers can focus on their work, con dent in the knowledge that the roll is built on a sure cadastral foundation and that the 3D mobile mapping images give a clear picture of structures in most instances, signi cantly reducing the time the valuer spends in the eld and the expenses involved,” he explains.

LAND USE MANAGEMENT – ZONING AND LAND USE

“We don’t believe zoning and land use should lie just as a coloured area on a paper plan. The plan is wrong almost as soon as you print it because the next change makes it ‘out of date’,” explains Smith.

“We capture and maintain it all in the GIS in IMIS on top of the cleaned cadastre. Municipal sta then simply process received applications in IMIS and the data is automatically maintained. Easy!” he says.

BUILDING CONTROL

“Our build control process in IMIS is very e ective,” says Christine Hanekom, senior manager of IMIS and Solutions Development. “We circulate applications digitally in the IMIS work ow to all municipal role players at the same time. This cuts out much of the time involved in the manual process, where paper copies move physically from one desk to the next.”

IMIS can receive submissions digitally via a web interface or in hard copy. Hard copies are scanned into digital format.

All digital building plans and documents are linked to the land parcel, making retrieval quick and easy for o cials.

OTHER DATA

To ensure electricity revenue is not lost, all aspects of Eskom supply and utilisation of municipal infrastructure must be investigated. This requires linking land parcels, infrastructure, and service meter mapping to documents. mSCOA defines indigence as a financial system issue. Again, it is firstly a land parcel issue. Claim assessment requires data showing: 1. Which land parcel? 2. Which service meters? 3. Is there a DSTV dish or improvements indicating income, not indigence?

FINANCES

“Revenue enhancement” sounds like it should start with nances.

Often, this is where revenue actions are started and focused, but are mostly ine ective. Once land, infrastructure and service meter data are in place, debtor book clean-up and debt collection are e ective.

THE INTEGRATED MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM

The IMIS, operating with embedded PlanetGIS functionality, integrated with eld technologies (3D mobile mapping, cloud-linked data loggers and tablets), provides the technology and systems base for e ective revenue enhancement and sustainable service delivery.

TGIS has the appropriate quali cations, registrations, skills and experience to implement and transfer skills to help municipal o cials achieve competence with revenue enhancement data capture and management. ▪

➔ Scan this QR code to go directly to the TGIS website.

For more information:

012 991 3624 info@tgis.co.za www.tgis.co.za

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