August 2, 2004
By Thomas Thale
DRIVEN by the Joburg Innovation and Knowledge Exchange (JIKE), the City of Johannesburg has embarked on a major drive to encourage and reward innovative projects within its departments and entities.
JIKE has been working with the Centre for Public Service Innovation (CPSI) to quantify and recognise innovation in the context of the city, said Kubeshni Govender-Jones, Director of JIKE.
Describing the relationship with CPSI, a Section 21 company set up by government to recognise and encourage innovation in public service, Govender-Jones said: "We have natural synergies. The only difference is that they deal with the public sector in general, whilst we are limited to the Joburg municipality."
Such has been the success of the innovation campaign that one of the projects identified as being innovative has now received international recognition.
Pikitup's 'Project 100 spots', developed to clean up illegal dumps in Soweto, has been shortlisted in the Commonwealth Association for Public Administration and Management (CAPAM) International Innovation Awards. The project has made it to the last 10 of the 157 projects entered around the world. The winning project will be announced at the CAPAM Conference to be held in Singapore in October.
In order to define criteria required for the award, the city adopted a single definition of innovation and invited city departments and Utilities, Agencies and Corporatised (UACs) entities to present new, more efficient ways they had developed to conduct their operations and improve customer service.
"We held a workshop with different stakeholders and experts on innovation at which, after much debate, we came up with a definition," explained Govender-Jones.
As a result, the City defines innovation as "a new, and substantially improved product, process, service knowledge or technology which is sustainable and that generates improved service delivery efficiency and quality of life".
Innovation includes projects that use new technology, epitomise leadership, are sustainable and replicable, said Govender-Jones, and JIKE has compiled a profile of the city's 10 most innovative projects in a publication called 'Joburg Innovations'.
According to Govender-Jones, city departments and UACs have responded with enthusiasm to the campaign. "The response was overwhelming. We received 21 responses and 10 of those were shortlisted."
In addition to Pikitup's 100 Spots campaign, the profiled projects, five of which have been submitted for the CPSI Innovation Awards, are: The Joburg Performance Management System, The Integrated Information Management System used by the Joburg Metro Police Department, the Monitoring and Evaluation Framework (CMU), Fleet Outsourcing Project (CMU), the Medium Term Expenditure Framework, the Municipal Bond, Pikitup's Medical Waste Collection and Disposal, Joburg Water's Project Gcina'manzi and the official Joburg website, www.joburg.org.za.
The success of the Joburg innovation and knowledge management work has also attracted the interest of other municipalities. According to Govender-Jones, JIKE has had engagements with the Mangaung Municipality, the City of Cape Town, the Construction Industry Development Board and the National Ports Authority. "We are the only municipality looking at innovation in this way. Our role is to share and exchange knowledge."
To move the process forward, the city has now included innovation as part of the annual mayoral award system and city officials have promised to come up with ever new and more efficient ways of serving ratepayers.
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