The KwaZulu-Natal Acting MEC for Economic Development and Tourism, Ms Ina Cronje, delivered a keynote address this morning 6 July 2009, at the 2009 KwaZulu-Natal technology breakfast meeting hosted by the Local Government Business Network in association with the Durban Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Corporate Sector. This high-level information sharing breakfast meeting intended to provide an opportunity for both public and the private sector to review and contribute to the future of technology in KwaZulu-Natal and its implementation in the more focused local government sphere. There were discussions seeking to find innovative technology and introduce 'Government' solutions that will take KwaZulu-Natal province and local government successfully towards 2010 and beyond.
I am honoured to have been invited to participate in this important endeavour by The Local Government Business Network. This breakfast meeting themed 'Service Delivery through Mobility' mobilises us in more ways than one to serve our province and its citizens through commitment and excellence. I want to, at the outset congratulate The Local Business Network for spearheading this campaign and hope that we all pull our resources and synergise our efforts to make KwaZulu-Natal a 'Digital Giant' in our fast shrinking, 'e-everything' world brought about by the information and communications technology (ICT) revolution and our efforts to transform into an information society.
Information society refers to a form of social and economic development where the acquisition, storage, processing, assessment, transmission and diffusion of information lead to generation of knowledge and fulfilment of the needs of individuals and firms. That way it plays an important role in economic activity, the generation of wealth and the quality of life of citizens. It denotes a society, where the majority of values created by mankind are contained in information.
Most of the information stored by the society is maintained, transformed and transmitted in a universal digital form. By using a data exchange network, all members of society have access to information. Furthermore, in the information society, all the routine mental work is entrusted to machines.
Information society development accelerates the development of a knowledge-based economy. In its economic dimension, the development of an Information Society increases the ICT uptake in all economic sectors. It contributes to the increase of productivity in enterprises, as well as their capability to develop innovative products and services, and improve thereby the competitiveness of the economy. On the other hand, its development seeks to create necessary pre-conditions for greater competitiveness and internationalisation of the ICT sector.
Information society development produces a citizen-centred, transparent and efficient public administration. It achieves a situation, where the public sector functions efficiently while collecting, using and maintaining data necessary for ensuring the provision of public goods in a common and systematic manner. Public sector business processes will be transparent and easy to understand; public services for citizens and entrepreneurs will be accessible via electronic channels that are widely used and take into account user needs.
A vital pre-requisite for developing an information society and knowledge economy is the provision of broadband infrastructure and services. The provision of broadband in KwaZulu-Natal will assist to grow the small, medium and micro enterprises (SMME) industry and improve foreign direct investment in our economy. It will enable the provision of e-government, e-health, e-education services and many others to the homes of citizens. The research community will benefit immensely from an enabling broadband infrastructure that permits the transfer of large datasets especially in collaborative research.
In order for our province to optimally harness the benefits of broadband, competition is vital. We need to ensure the absence of monopoly by one particular party. While broadband can be deployed via more than one technology and approach, we need to acknowledge and embrace the capabilities and impact of mobile broadband and mobile technologies on our society.
There is a growing recognition of the importance of mobile technology for economic and social development. Mobile broadband is fast becoming an essential tool for business users seeking to boost efficiency in competitive markets and is increasingly, being recognised as technology that can enable policy makers to reshape their vision of universal service.
While much discussion on information infrastructure is devoted to the new services that can be delivered to business premises and homes, the value of mobile broadband largely rests on its ability to empower users outside these locations. Mobile broadband is not only proving its worth in an increasing range of business and public sector applications, but more recently for personal communication users in areas as diverse as convenience in social relations, personal security and public safety. Mobile broadband networks can be used to extend universal service to areas not served by fixed networks.
The demand by mobile users for faster data services is growing, with mobile broadband services a high priority for users in KwaZulu-Natal and also around the world. Evolved 3GSM technologies, are demonstrating in practice the high downlink and uplink data speeds, low latency and spectral efficiency that result in service benefits to consumers and enterprise users alike. We do not pretend that there is only one technology solution available to meet the high-speed data demands of mobile users. Alternative access technologies, may offer solutions to form part of an operator's portfolio of product offerings. However, it is vital that a balanced and market based–methodology is used to determine which solutions become commercially available.
The modernisation of government administrations within the context of e-government must move towards the utilisation of mobile applications and technologies. With these efforts, complete new ways of realising e-government activities will occur, often as a complementary, rather than a substitute, under the paradigms of "mobile government" or m-government as we will call it. m-Government is a development that our provincial governments need to latch on for first class, real-time service delivery.
m-Government applications are complementary to e-Government applications. At the same time they have their own unique features and attributes. The leaders of policy for e-Government planning should take mobile technologies into consideration in order to extend the horizon of online governmental services and maximise the obtainable benefits from these services at the early stages of planning and system design.
In order to utilise the mobile platform we as KwaZulu-Natal need to ensure that there is a pipeline of appropriate skills to develop the required mobile applications. KwaZulu-Natal Department of Economic Development and Tourism (KZN DEDT) is leading the way in this regard as we have established software engineering centres throughout the province that offer software engineering skills in the mobile applications platform as part of the curriculum.
Mobile devices are nowadays considered as a promising new educational technology, and much of the enthusiasm that was attached to the web-based tools has been extended to the arrival of the mobile devices or handheld computers. Interaction and collaboration in the e-learning space can be organized and mediated with very mobile technologies and mobile applications. Web-based learning environments such as networked learning environments, knowledge spaces, and discussion forums can now be accessed through mobile platforms.
Mobile technology can support collaborative activities in several ways viz by strengthening the organisation of the learning material and information, supporting communication among group members, and helping the co-ordination between the learning activities and enabling the provision of services within the education sector from department to department, department to school, school to school, department to citizen and school to citizen.
Designing mobile technology and mobilised software for education and collaboration calls for linking multiple perspectives and expertise from different disciplines. It is an area where technological expertise should meet, for instance, psychological, philosophical, and pedagogical expertise. Only by combining multiple points of view can one expect to provide mobile technology and applications that are suitable for educational purposes.
The use of mobile technology in healthcare is on the increase, there is a steady shift towards acceptance of health care applications targeted to mobiles. Currently healthcare systems around the globe are experiencing a multitude of challenges. In addition to the obvious problem of cost of providing healthcare, there are also other challenges such as prevalence of life-style related conditions, identifying tools for empowering patients with information for better decision making, providing tools for self-care, and creating applications for managing health conditions.
Mobile technology devices can provide seamless and secure access to health care services via the internet enabled mobile devices and this will hopefully reduce some of the cost of providing healthcare if the right applications are correctly implemented. Mobile Health or, m-Health as we will call it, contains three important components. The first component is the availability of a reliable mobile or wireless architecture; the second component is the integration of medical sensor or wearable devices for monitoring; the final component is a robust application and services infrastructure.
Typically m-Health relates to custom designed applications and systems such as telemedicine, telehealth, e-health and biomedical sensing systems. With the rapid advances in Information Communication Technology, nanotechnology, bio monitoring, mobile networks, pervasive computing, wearable systems, and drug delivery approaches, the boundaries of m-Health are shifting and there is the expectation that with appropriate technology choice we could transform the healthcare sector to generally link their systems with mobile devices.
m-Health aims to make healthcare accessible to anyone, anytime, and anywhere by eliminating constraints such as time and location. In addition it increases both the coverage and quality of healthcare. Mobile and wireless concepts in healthcare are typically related to bio-monitoring and home monitoring. Bio monitoring using mobile networks includes physiological monitoring of parameters such as heart rate, electrocardiogram (ECG), electroencephalogram monitoring (EEG), blood pressure and other physiological signals. We need to ensure that the trend to incorporate mobile technology becomes more prevalent across almost the whole of KwaZulu-Natal healthcare thus performing a variety of data acquisition tasks.
Using mobile technology, our patient records can be accessed by health-care professionals from any given location by connection to the institution's internal network. Physicians can now have ubiquitous access to patient history, laboratory results, pharmaceutical data, insurance information and medical resources. These mobile healthcare applications improve the quality of patient care. Mobile technology can also be used in home healthcare, for example, to fight diabetes through effective monitoring.
Mobile phone applications could help community health workers provide early warning of disease, provide real time monitoring of conditions, reinforcing effective treatment, and reinforce healthier behaviour in culturally appropriate ways. In order to ensure that we harness the benefits of mobile technologies and applications for the vital area of e-health we need to ensure that it is affordable to the masses and rely less on imported technologies and solutions. It is pleasing to note that the KZN ICTE Cluster, an initiative of the Department of Economic Development, and the Department of Health have begun working together to make this a reality.
A growing number of businesses, especially those with mobile workforces, are investigating the many benefits of mobile Customer Relations Management tools (CRMs). Simply put, mobile CRM means your mobile workers have access to you company CRM system, no matter where they are. This gives businesses a powerful new advantage, as it enables them to increase the productivity of their mobile workers, streamline business operations and boost customer satisfaction. With today’s advanced browser-based mobile devices plus high speed wireless Internet, mobile workers can do much more than just send email and text messages. This is about access to real data, and the ability to manipulate it in real time, as well as the ability to conduct transactions remotely.
Despite its rapid growth rate so far, only a small percentage of companies are using mobile CRM currently and many of those only on a limited basis. The good news is that the early adopters are reporting great success with mobile CRM. Therefore it appears to be a market segment that is poised for explosive growth over the next few years.
With mobile CRM, changes and updates made in the field can take effect in real time or near real time on the servers at the central office. This "virtualisation" of the company network means business information can be seamlessly shared across all channels. With mobile CRM, workers can share documents and have full access to their company’s CRM or ERP system while they’re in the field, at home, or travelling. Plus, depending on the software being used, management can get centralised, web-based "dashboard" views of business activity and do real time analysis of the information which is coming from every end point, including the mobile devices. In most cases, mobile workers don’t have to perform additional operations or follow up work upon returning to the office: It's just as if they had their office personal computer (PC) or laptop with them the whole time.
It is obvious that the mobile broadband market is enormous and growing at a tremendous rate. There is no doubt that mobile broadband is on its way to becoming a huge success and millions of people, government and other organisations will start using the mobile platform as an integral component of their communication culture. We anticipate mobile broadband canabalising a large chunk of other broadband technologies market due to its global benefits.
It is thus important that politicians, policy makers and decision makers in KwaZulu-Natal perceive mobile broadband and mobile technologies as important tools to fight poverty and improve service delivery. Tools that can help society become more efficient and greatly benefit the environment. Mobile broadband is here now, let us use it to better our lives and those that we serve.
Issued by: Department of Economic Development and Tourism, KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government
6 July 2009
