In an exclusive interview with Asia Business Outlook, John Bosco Arends walks us through shift from traditional approaches of governmental operations to a digital one:

With decades of expertise in the public and private sector, John Bosco Arends has been instrumental in driving the government transformation, strategy and delivery agenda to make smart government, economic, service and citizen transformation a reality. John Bosco Arends is the chairperson of the chartered CIO Council (Middle East and Africa) and also an adviser to the Minister of Labor as an ICT advisor (Department of Employment and Labor). John is the first Chartered CIO Certification in the country.

What have you learnt from your experience delivering ICT services in a digitally transitioning public sector, and how have you handled various public and private sectors?
When we look at digital transformation, specifically the public sector in South Africa, we're looking at digital transformation as not just an enabler of the public sector, but also the driver of our value chain transformation through the support ICTs to deliver on those value chains. So, I have developed important parameters for the public sector around digital transformation that will allow us to integrate each department, entity or ministry through the creation of a shared services platform that will enable enterprise wide performance management, citizen centric service delivery through smart city objectives and provide a secure environment, and drive a well governed environment. From a value chain transformation area, we focus on how we manage Human Capital Management and deal with citizen centricity, accountability, integrity, and creating a continuous learning development space.

The South African Government has a performance management framework that not only guides government delivery, but also provides guidelines on seamlessly carrying out operations. ICT should typically focus on areas, which covers service transformation, economic transformation, citizen transformation and future city or Smart City transformation. Along with the public sector, we also had to cater for inclusion of private sector partners that actually work in the government space. We focused on building an information ecosystem; a comprehensive digital environment.

ICT typically deals in four focus areas, which covers service transformation, economic transformation, citizen transformation and future city or Smart City transformation.

There are two core elements that you always need to consider in your digital journey: one deals with business value and other with feasibility. So, on business value, we help them to come up with a finance model that will help them to optimize benefit in terms of cost, how they can monetize the data, how they can do cost efficiencies, how it can assist them to generate revenue, how they can do protect the assets, or ways to get access to funds or funding models. We also deal with portfolio and project management in how we deal with KPI development. Strategic focus actions should be creating a social sustainability model where citizens from all walks of life, irrespective of class or creed can be included into the digital journey. From a feasibility perspective, we look at the data availability, security in terms of the infrastructure and how we can integrate technologies and create sustainability around that.

Further to talent availability, the organizational change management of the organization are crucial whilst we deal with issues of culture change, leadership, transparency, accountability, management, and analyze our ROI. The last element is the external data. So most of the public sector entities have to deal with regulatory compliance as they are part of a broader governance, risk and compliance ecosystem. How we deal with transactions and the transparency of the data is all imperative to output and outcome acceptance. Our stakeholders include representation from Presidents, Ministers, Premiers, Mayors and MMCs which makes provision for players in the private sector, hence keeping everyone informed from a single version of the truth in this environment is important.

What are the advantages of establishing and implementing business intelligence competency centers in national, provincial, and local governments?
As there are a lot of data driven operations, business intelligence for us is one of the key elements towards establishing a collaborative government. The competency of a BICC, must offer data outcomes in all forms and deal with data governance, Master Data and Quality Management, whilst dealing elements of policy enablement. BICCs allows us to create capacity, across all of these competencies and elements and provide focus on the national, provincial and local governments. In South Africa, we've got different stakeholders in terms of national and provincial governments.

So from a BICC perspective, we not only have to determine roles and responsibilities for itself, but also include the participation for the different stakeholders we have. In the South African, we don't have a single common system in place, so we had to establish interoperability and integration methods for us to enable our BICC which became a critical capability for establishing a robust BICC which will help in carrying out day to day operations as well as offer mandatory reporting requirements for government. We must be able to replicate data from local, provincial to both national and the presidential levels. This will enable us to provide different spheres of government to drive their works according to their respective mandates.

"BICC also helps in improving aspects like workforce management, or how to deal with our spatial capability."

Give us an outline of business intelligence analysis for enhanced public service delivery. & Key success elements for integrating Business Intelligence in public sector businesses.
One of the first blocks is to integrate different architecture platforms. We have to ensure that applications can work in tandem with each other with a consistent flow of data. We have to make sure that all our citizens’ data is managed in a manner that will allow us to integrate and build a strong BICC competence. In the City of Johannesburg, business intelligence is used to improve collaboration amongst all stakeholders. It has to provide us with a single view of the citizen. It must provide us with a monitoring and evaluation mechanism, supported by common client information, to ensure that a performance management view of the city or its entities and sectorial stakeholders in government we deal with to monitor and evaluate the performance of the government.

Further it should allow the development of capabilities around service delivery and drive opportunities around the monetization of these. The BICC must help in improving workforce management’s ability to deal with service across our spatial divide. The reporting outcomes as generated will further enable integrated development and planning where common data can then be shared and used to establish centers of excellence in offering services. In South Africa, most of the government entities have implemented the “DAMA” data management framework which is used as a governance framework with strict SOPs in place to provide them with information at all times of the year which can then be consolidated for the Presidency to be able to reporting to parliament on how we are doing as a Govt.

Tell us how a digital-first nation one can be.
When we talk about the right skills to steer digital transformation, the lack of proper IT skills and competencies is always a challenge. So what we have done now in the CIO Council I chair, who is in partnership with the Institute of Chartered IT professionals, our professional body, we have developed digital career path growth for ICT professionals through which I became one of the first in the Middle East and Africa region to obtain a designation as a chartered CIO. We've also created a digital platform which we will launch soon. In South Africa, we've got students at levels till that goes up to the12th grade, who study IT subjects which helps in making them future ready.

We offer a professional certification that is now recognized by “SAQA” South African Qualifications Authority and complies with the National Qualification Framework “NQF” levels for student who completed grade 12 including college and university qualification levels. We partnered with “UJ” the University of Johannesburg to provide university qualifications and jointly have ICITP, our professional body requirements. We then issue joint qualifications certified by both the university and the professional body. This will provide students a alternative paths towards their future career growth opportunities.