Let's Talk Batho Pele

Let’s Talk digital is a mobile app and web platform developed in SA to assist and improve the communication between local government and its constituency i.r.o reporting service delivery challenges, vandalism & theft of public assets as well as engaging in the development and implementation of municipal by-laws and policies. 

Moepi CEO/Chief innovator young tech-entrepreneur from Soweto, designed the app after undertaking research over 56 month with a rural local municipality in the Free State Province of South Africa.

Saya-Setona (Pty) LTD developed an Application called Let's Talk Batho Pele App: The App was designed to facilitate good governance through establishing channels for two-way communication between citizens and officials. Municipalities are the closest form of government to the people – Let’s Talk bridges the gap between elected officials within the local government sphere with their respective constituencies. The effective and efficient role of the citizens in the political discourse of the country is of paramount importance for people to believe in the idea of a social contract, its institutions and rules. The solution thus also provides during times of crises a platform built on trust and commitment to response.

The App was developed against the backdrop of two key democratic facets: accountability and transparency – accountability is the realization and acknowledgement that citizens, through the ballot, are the ones the authorise politicians to assume public offices, as such, they must be accountable to them; transparency meaning the knowledge of what government officials are doing and how money is being spent amongst others. This is even more important during pandemics and other crises an ideal communication platform for enabling Response initiatives and using the data-gathering abilities, also as Identification tool.

The solution primarily serves citizens, especially those who are marginalised and most vulnerable, by giving them a voice during times of crises.  It further serves officials and decision-makers but creates communication opportunities, analyses data and reports and provides geographical views.

The solution which we will implement is the Let’s Talk App Batho Pele Project: Putting the Citizen at the Centre of Governance. The project, which uses technology to improve communication between citizen and government, and provides a platform for citizen generated data regarding service delivery issues, will be implemented in the Local Municipalities disaster management and public safety service directorate.  Based on the current use case described below, the App will be used to expand the public good to when it is most needed, times of crises.The purpose of these Directions is to facilitate the availability and use of Let’s Talk App digital technology to combat the spread of COVID 19 in South Africa. City of Joburg EMS is required to receive and disseminate 24hrs public information related to the national effort to combat the spread of COVID 19 in all local languages. The core objective is to save lives and property once the disaster or accidents have happened. EMS has 43 dispatchers working in four hours shifts 24 hours control centre. Critical components in this directorate are emergency medical services (ambulances and paramedics), firefighting and rescue programmers. Calls are categorised and dispatched to relevant department according to the priority.

As a disaster management communication tool, the App will primarily ensure that the correct information reaches the correct recipients at the correct time, thus being preventative and mitigatory in nature.  As such it contributes to the minimisation of loss of lives, injuries and loss or damage to property and to enable the restoration of essential services as quickly as possible.

 It further allows for pre-incident training and preparedness geared towards training the public to avoid all emergencies and disasters, and cope with them when they happen.

Secondary impacts would relate to reducing response times, ensuring equity in response (thus not neglecting marginalised communities) and consolidate localised data.

Five other provincial governments are utilising the model and the services of Let's Talk App to act as a broker between government, civil society and citizen. Test citizen satisfaction scores against previous year and demonstrate increase in belief in democracy. 

Increase in participation of citizens using the platform and reporting positive feedback  Increase in citizens in provincial governments utilising the platform. Continued engagement across active provincial civil society networks sharing data across different provinces to contribute to the national picture 

Saya-Setona (Pty) LTD hosts a national ‘Data Dialogue’ for government and civil society organisations on how citizen generated data has been contributing to policy and programmes 

1. Outcome 1:Citizens and communities feel empowered, connected with their government and engaged constructively in public service delivery emergency and public health communication Indicators: Citizen Satisfaction score increases a year after the project is launched and positive feedback is received from Let’s Talk App users.

2. Outcome 2: Officials (e.g. EMS Chief Office and Divisional Chief, Directors Station Commander and P.I.E.R Officers) and elected leaders utilizes citizen generated data as part of its decision making and feels connected constructively to the needs of citizens for health and safety emergency delivery services. Indicators: An online Let’s Talk dashboard subscribed per admin users and ran by stakeholders and partners with action orientated commentary on how they utilized the data information for data virtualization, automation, quality and data strategy.

Outcome 3: Reduce the response time to an incident report from current to determined level.
Indicators: A functioning civil society network established in the province with an ongoing solution focused dialogue with the government facilitated by the linked local authority and Saya-Setona (Pty) LTD if the process in stakeholders and local municipality is not already in place.

The pilot project demonstrated that citizens are eager to use such an application.  Barriers thus relate to resources (which will be addressed by this application) and the buy in of local officials.

In order to scale the solution, additional cloud-based storage will be required as well as BI capacity to generate the required reports.

SALGA
CPSI
IBM SA
UNDP SA

The funding will be used for accelerating scaling.  Given the decentralised nature of public administration, negotiations are required at local level.  Removing the financial aspects of implementation, allows for swift higher level decision-making and thus allowing for sustained momentum.  It can also guarantee the on-boarding of the required capacity.

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