Day two of the Public Economics Conference focused on the themes of digital inclusion and digital dividends, with panellists and presenters sharing insights on how to make technology accessible to everyone and the need for regulatory frameworks crucial for establishing a ‘digital government’.
Sessions touched on how to evaluate and develop policies that encourage technology adoption while promoting inclusivity and accessibility in communities. The day saw government departments sharing case studies and ended with a review of the effects of digitisation on labour markets and employment.
The first session of the day kicked off with a presentation by Alison Gillwald: Executive Director, Research ICT Africa (RIA) and adjunct professor at University of Cape Town’s Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance and unpacked digital inclusion and digital inequality.
Alison’s presentation “Measuring, assessing and redressing digital inequality and data injustice on the continent: The need for nationally representative demand side survey on digital access and use and individual, household and informal sector for evidence-based policy” focused on the topic of the digital inequality paradox.
She said: “Policies have fallen short in fostering equitable digital inclusion. We see that structural inequalities are reflected in the extent and use of technologies.”
She highlighted the need for nationally representative demand-side data on ICT access and use in order to develop policy effectively. She highlighted data pricing as a barrier to access. She said: “Data is too high for our citizens. Most citizens in Africa can’t afford GSM services.”
She also highlighted that low levels of education is a barrier to online access but we see that 71% of people now have a smartphone but for the vast majority of people these aren’t being used for much more than WhatsApp, so this is not true digital access.
Her presentation was followed by a panel discussion which tackled the topic of establishing an enhanced evidence base for equitable and inclusive digital economy and society and unpacked if government strategies are considering key complexities.
Panellists discussed questions like if South Africa has adequate digital public statistics to inform policy, using data as public good as well as what evidence we need to answer complex policy questions? As well as if there are any multisector strategies in place to redress digital inequality?
Ashwell Jenneker, Deputy Director General, Stats SA & co-chair of UN expert group on big data said:
“If you think about policy needs, you have demands and then you have the supply of data. When look at SDG, we only respond to 72% of SDGS, so we need to look at the data ecosystem. There is administrative data, big data or alternative data. [We are looking at] what policy prescripts are, to know where the gaps are and where should we invest limited resources.”
Nonkqubela Jordan-Dyani: Director General, Department of Communications and Digital Technologies said: “We are at the heart of connecting every single citizen. We’ve achieved many things, first was national broadband policy. The population is 99% covered however we need meaningful connectivity with devices, affordable access to data and digital skills. Access from e-Government strategy need to ensure and enable government to talk to citizens and business. We also have a digital economy masterplan this multisectoral approach is a big gamechanger to help ensure inclusive participation for growth, job creation, SMME empowerment.”
Jabu Mtsweni: National Policy Data Observatory explained: “We generate a lot of data both in the public and private sector. But there is an issue of co-ordination from service providers and this was evident during the pandemic. If we co-ordinate we can make data-driven decisions. So data collection is important. In issues of service delivery, when disasters happen like the KZN floods, data is siloed and this limits the speed of response.”
The panel finished with Paul Plantinga, Digital Strategies & Engagement, Human Sciences Research Council he touched on indigenous languages use in large language models, “we need more data sets with different languages from across the country, so we need to build data pipelines to enable AI. SABC has incredibly valuable language data..”
The next session was an expert talk by Melanie Garson from Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and University College London and her presentation was titled “State of compute access: How to bridge the new digital divide, considering the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”. She focused on compute access (the computational resources required for artificial intelligence systems to perform tasks).
She said: “Compute is the modern agent of change but access to compute is a bottleneck in AI, this is another inequality in the system that will be opened up. Access to compute is the basis of the next digital divide and countries without compute may be cut off from progress.”
She pointed to the Tony Blair Institutes Compute Index to monitor country level compute use. “We see a stark compute divide but [the index shows us] where countries are, what levers they have, where countries are in their journey and where should invest to accelerate compute journey.”
She said: “The Index is about identifying where leaders of government must invest. What are a country’s strengths within the compute ecosystem? This is where the resource infrastructure is and how this can link to a regional digital transformation strategy.”
She shared recommendations for emerging countries including reviewing compute capacity, creating a consortium or regional framework (consider joint super-computing initiatives), target R&D investment and improve their security.
Kathy Nicolaou: Long Term Advisor, GTAC launched the topic of ‘interoperability for what’. Kathy highlighted how data is used in government to improve operational efficiencies, inform research and inform policy and lastly to improve client centric service delivery.
She outlined the digital stack approach which includes three layers: data and hardware (as the foundation), shared infrastructure (how use data to service an individual) and the top layer is the services layer (beneficiary layer). She touched on how SASSA used this approach to develop the SRD grant system. She touched on the benefits of event driven architecture, she said: “This allows you to access data across all govt departments, so departments have to maintain and clean their own data but you allow each ministry to access the data. The most important thing with this is to get right the data standards and harmonisation of systems.”
She finished by highlighting that: “We’re starting to look at a digital stack for South Africa and using interoperability to link social development and jobs to create an integrated social support system.”
This was followed by a panel discussion on using big data analytics and building digital infrastructure to connect governments and citizens, taxpayers, users of services.
Una Rautenbach: Intergovernmental Relations, National Treasury talked about the local government database and reporting system. “This systems contains financial, non-financial and documents for all 270 municipalities. We have more than 2000 registered users. We want to make sure the data is credible, we don’t want people to come to the wrong conclusions. This data is used by government departments to inform policy decisions and allocation of equitable share of budget. We also provide information to the public to enhance public consultation performance and we present it in an easy to use way.”
Sello Ndhlovu:, Senior Manager, Enterprise Information Management, Companies and Intellectual Property Commission shared the CIPC’s journey from being an organisation “that collected documents to an organisation that collected data”. He outlined that the CIPC aims to serve citizens and has moved away from being seen as a register and as a regulator.
“We needed to shift focus to service citizens and that needs us to be effective and efficient. We need to stop the process of collecting documents, that’s a challenge and its tedious for citizens. We simplified the process and stopped processing documents and started processing data. Now there is big demand for this data. We have worked on our integration – how simplify the process, we are proud of our one-stop-shop where someone can start a company through CIPC, with SARS, UIF, commercial banks.”
Moipone Shabalala from the South African Social Security Agency shared their experience with the introduction of the SRD grant. She said: “Our services were office based, people had to queue to get paid but we transformed through the SRD grant, we were forced by lockdown to change the way we service our grants. We followed a simple process, we asked how do we make sure our digital platforms are usable and scalable for the community? With the SRD platform, we used an ‘API first’ principle. We used 100% external data to drive this grant, that is at the core of the administration of this grant. We did this to save time and cost to deliver this system.”
Also on the panel was Intikhab Shaik, Head of Technology & Solutions, South African Revenue Service. He shared the SARS vision “to be a smart modern SARS with integrity that is trusted.” He outlined SARS objectives to provide clarity and certainty and make it easy for taxpayers to live up to their obligations and for those that don’t comply we want to make it hard and costly.
“When people use interoperability they think IT, that’s a misnomer. We have to realise people are our greatest asset. Anything you design you should think from the users perspective. There is no interoperability without policy, make sure that your business processes support the technology to enable it. Auto assessments – we receive 300 million pieces of data from banks, insurers, medical aid – we managed to integrate all that data and risk assess it. We managed to pay R10 billion in refunds so this puts money back into the economy.”
He closed by saying: “While there is an increase in AI there mustn’t be a decrease in real intelligence.”
The session after lunch kicked off with a presentation by Michelle Harding: Programme Manager, Department of Science and Technology. Her presentation “Digital Integration in Support of an Enabling Ecosystem Environment”. Her presentation focused on the entrepreneurship ecosystem and the lessons learnt through the DSI’s Innovation Bridge Portal. She shared that the Innovation Bridge is a dashboard of entrepreneurial resources across multiple ecosystems to “provide access to quality, relevant information at the right time.”
The panellists discussed how to ensure efficiency through digital data-driven interventions and they interrogated where we are in the journey to offer holistic ecosystem support.
Amanda Lotheringen: Senior Manager Copyright and Intellectual Property Enforcement, Companies and Intellectual Property Commission. “We realised early on that the Innovation Bridge is creating a biosphere of support and we ourselves have experienced the benefits of utilising the system. We excited to stand behind this project.”
Darlene Menzies: CEO, Finfind referenced a USAID study that found that funding literacy, finance readiness and a ready pipeline for equity or debt where the major challenges that entrepreneurs faced. “The providers and seekers couldn’t find each other. What we didn’t realise at the beginning is that we were building data, the opportunity is really an eco-system within an eco-system. There are lots of viable SMEs going out of business because they don’t have access to these vital services.”
Smita Kuriakose from the World Bank and partner on the project said: “We have partnered with DSI, undertaking a survey. We want to know what the existing fragmentation is and how, through policy, can an entrepreneur be served better. We want to use data and build a more interactive system where an entrepreneur can get all the information at a one-stop shop.”
Next up was a review of the rationale and justification of e-Learning Programmes in the Western Cape Education Department and the Gauteng Education Department.
Zanele Chauke from Gauteng Treasury shared a presentation on the rationale for the elearning platforms which include challenges with overcrowding and poor learner-teacher ratios. She highlighted that in Gauteng 26% of schools have an ICT deployment package, she shared that the programme started with schools in urban areas but the risk of this approach is it could exasperate existing inequalities.
This was followed by a presentation by Shaheed Arnold & Nicolette Van Wyk from Western Cape Treasury. Shaheed shared that the WC has made significant headway with broadband rollout, with 84% of schools equipped with broadband. He also showed that LAN connectivity is highest in quintile 2 – 4 schools. He also highlighted that in the expenditure analysis management fees increased at 48% per year but overall expenditure has declined as more schools are connected.
The next session unpacked digital skills and labour market adaptation covering topics of how digital literacy impacts the labour market and the broader economy, reviewing what is happening in the training and capacity building state to address unemployment.
Kuben Nair, Technology Director from Harambee said: “We live in a broken system, when GDP grows it comes with job growth but not for youth. Our labour market is exclusionary of young people by design. That’s why we have the worst unemployment for youth in the world. To employers youth seem to not have value. But they do have value, how do we make those young people visible to the economy? We have to use technology to help employers see the skills that young people have.”
He outlined Harambee’s inclusive hiring process and how they worked with government using innovative technology to digitise their matching tools and data and build an online platform for young people to find opportunities near them. He also said: “We have a broken skilling system – we incentivise skilling providers to train people to get certificates not jobs. We pay for outputs not outcomes. We must be more demand led.”
Ruth Castel-Branco: Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, University of the Witwatersrand joined the panel discussion and she highlighted: “South Africa has always been at the forefront on how to extend labour protection to workers. We have a broad definition and this allows it to adapt to a changing environment. We need to develop collective bargaining platforms of workers, platforms are unwilling to share data but we need to capture better the digital worker. The standard role of employers has been outsourced as these new employers have refused to take on that responsibility.”
The final session looked at defining AI and then interrogated the ethical and AI security issues. Prof Uche Mbanaso: Executive Director, Centre for Cyberspace Studies, Nasarawa State University, Nigeria presented on ethical concerns like partial discriminatory, creativity and ownership, privacy, security and safety, autonomous weapons, transparency and accountability, social manipulation and job displacement.
This was followed by a presentation from Thato Toko from SENTECH. He looked at the regulation of AI and the National AI Policy Framework and the need to regulate due to the impact of AI on geopolitics. The framework is grounded in the SA Constitution and aligns with the National Development Plan and is risk based and principle based. The key pillars of the framework are human-centric, ethical development and use of general purpose AI.
You can download all the presentations here. If you missed any sessions catch up on YouTube.