14 April 2005 Press Release BACKGROUNDER TO EXECUTIVE MAYOR'S PRESS CONFERENCE ON 14 APRIL 2005 JOBURG COUNCIL TO CONSIDER NEW REVENUE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM The Council of the City of Johannesburg is to consider adopting a for a new revenue management system for the City. The system has been developed in response to the inefficiencies in the current system that has caused widespread dissatisfaction among customers about their bills. The strategy is essentially a paradigm shift in the thinking of the whole revenue management value chain. In the short-term we have been making immediate but incremental administrative improvements to the revenue operations. These include Applying credit control filters (to reduce the risk of incorrectly applying credit control action); Improving the management and issuing of Clearance Certificates (by installing tools to capture clearance applications into a well-managed register, electronically assigning them to staff members, tracking progress of all applications, and to measuring the productivity of staff members) Improving response times for query resolution (the establishment of back offices in the various revenue functions) Improving work processes within the Rates and Taxes unit (particularly relating to land transfers and opening and closing of accounts; these have been tightened and supervision and management of these processes has been improved); Large scale projects to address mismatches in various databases have been initiated and are continuing, with a full customer census currently being contemplated to ensure high data quality standards. These measure have had an impact. Cash collections are running slightly ahead of the pro-rata target. Since August 2005, more queries have been resolved than have been submitted, so that the backlog has fallen from almost 50 000 to less than 25 000. But increasingly, it has become clear that the incremental administrative improvements are not sufficient … "rather like putting band aids on a significant wound." So we have contemplated a paradigm shift in terms of the solutions to the problem, and it is the fruit of this thinking that the Council will consider in its meeting on 21 April (next week). The Specific proposals that the Council will consider are: Establishing a single revenue value chain across the entire City, including its municipal entities like Joburg Water, City Power and PikitUp; Establishing a single customer interface value chain across the entire City, including its municipal entities; Creating a single software application to support both of these value chains; Establishing a new municipal entity (in terms of a new by-law) that will be a key value chain partner with a contract business relationship with the other municipal entities and departments of the City. If the Council approves these recommendations, then the City Manager will be leading a team to implement these strategies by November 2006. This involves building business competencies (like addressing processes, people, systems and work culture) throughout the value chain. Once the strategy has been implemented, data integrity will be assured, and service delivery will be dramatically improved. The various administrative challenges faced by the City's Revenue Department will then be a thing of the past. A high-level programme management team will be put in place to guide implementation of the new Revenue Management System strategy. Applications for funding for the implementation and support in terms of skills and other resources for the new revenue strategy have been made to the provincial Department of Local Government as part of the national government's municipal support programme Project Consolidate. ENDS For more information please contact: Mandy Jean Woods Director: Marketing and Communications Department of Revenue City of Johannesburg Phone: 407 7356 Fax: 403 7738 Cell: 082 553 4211 (Please send sms if urgent) Email: mandyw@joburg.org.za