Towards the implementation of the South African National e-Government Strategy and Roadmap Framework in selected municipalities in the Eastern Cape Province

Abstract

The discourse underpinning e-governance and digitisation to position governments for online systems remains evermore critical. This requires contributions to transformative tools that are essential for facilitating systems integration, training, and political and administrative support services. The South African National e-Government Strategy and Roadmap Framework (SANESR, 2017) established a plan to modernise public services through digital transformation and unified information systems and electronic platforms for citizen engagement. The implementation of digital government initiatives remains difficult for rural and peri urban municipalities throughout South Africa. The study assesses SANESR's effectiveness in the OR Tambo District Municipality (ORTDM), which consists of 5 local municipalities (King Sabata Dalindyebo Local Municipality, Nyandeni, Port Saint Johns Local Municipality, Mhlontlo Local Municipality, and Ingquza Hill Local Municipality (formerly Ngquza Hill) by evaluating how officials experience, understand, and utilise the strategy in their administrative work and service delivery tasks. The research addresses current problems affecting South African municipalities, focusing on King Sabata Dalindyebo Local Municipality, Nyandeni, Port Saint Johns Local Municipality, including insufficient digital development, disconnected systems, inadequate ICT infrastructure, and low user acceptance of digital solutions. The research employs the Logical Framework Approach (LOGFRAME), the SERVQUAL Model, and the Theory of Change to examine municipal e-government implementation from multiple theoretical perspectives, evaluating system inputs and processes, outputs, service quality, and transformation pathways. The research design included semi-structured interviews with 25 participants and surveys administered to 68 municipal staff members. The researcher adopted thematic analysis for the qualitative data, while the quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics and reliability tests. The main research findings show that officials demonstrated variable understanding of the application of SANESR, despite their formal training for digital transformation processes. In some instances, the municipality utilises e-Portals such as Promun, PayDay, Electronic Support Service (ESS), Municipal e-tender portals or procurement platforms, and Electronic Document Management Systems (EDMS); however, these systems operate independently of citizen-accessible platforms. The study recommends the ENEGO-TRANSFORM Model as a customised framework to enhance digital governance operations in ORTDM. There is also a need to indicate that ORTDM needs to enhance its ICT infrastructure by integrating systems with public interfaces and providing digital tool training for officials and citizens to establish e-services that fulfil SANESR targets and support local development needs.