March 9, 2007
By Lucky Sindane
A SINGLE unified computerised financial system, which will make it easier for the City to manage revenue, is on the cards.
Johannesburg Executive Mayor Amos Masondo said the City would introduce the system in his State of the City address, delivered at the opening of the council on Thursday, 8 March.
Speaking about revenue, Masondo said one of the key challenges the City faced was the ability to collect all revenue due to it.
"In the past few years we have tended to focus our attention on cleaning data, collecting from those in arrears and ensuring that billing is accurate.
"We are now taking this matter to a different level by seeking to increase our revenue by a reasonable percentage and ensuring, amongst others, that those outside of our database are properly captured and made to meet their obligations."
In the 2005/6 financial year, revenue collection averaged 87.8 percent.
By 2008 the City would roll out Programme Phakama to establish an integrated revenue management value chain across Johannesburg; it would also implement a single information technology system to support the value chains and ensure completeness of revenue and maximise collection.
"To ensure that Johannesburg remains a city with the stable and growing revenue streams we need to ensure ongoing accurate billing, invoicing and distribution of statements, effective credit management, improved turnaround times on clearances, refunds and reduced levels of corruption. We are currently implementing the City's customer relations management policy and service monitoring capacity," Masondo said.
"We acknowledge that our data are not entirely accurate and that we are not billing all customers who need to be billed. We are also confident that the data purification initiatives being undertaken will definitely improve our billing processes. This data cleansing will deal with incorrect addresses and meter information as well as the completeness of revenue."
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