My Smart City boosts service delivery in Cape Town

The My Smart City team in Cape Town is reporting improved turnaround times for the resolution of reported service delivery issues logged onto its platform in Cape Town. 

My Smart City has reported a four-fold improvement in resolving service delivery issues like water outages, broken traffic lights, potholes, and power outages from inception until the current day. This insight proves that My Smart City is making great strides in streamlining service delivery issues being wrestled with by citizens.

My Smart City is a free citizen’s platform that allows city residents to engage service providers within a city. The platform has been available in Cape Town for five months and is also being used successfully in Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni. 

CEO of Acumen Software, Joao Zoio, says: “The My Smart City support team has been on the virtual frontline of assisting with service delivery issues in our major cities and we have heard first-hand, the frustrations faced by South African citizens when logging service delivery issues. From trying to identify the correct municipal channels, to engaging on long calls with officials, these challenges have been made worse by the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Despite these disruptions and delays to service delivery caused by the pandemic, data extracted from the My Smart City platform shows a significant improvement in fault logging procedures and turnaround times Cape Town and other Cities.

“Our teams have seen positive results through collaborating effectively with Cape Town’s Municipal support teams and fault reporting channels. This has enabled the My Smart City dispatch centre to be more efficient in dealing with issues reported by citizens,” says Zoio.

The City of Cape Town’s municipality is geared up to engage with the private sector through its Open Data Portal and through their standard application program interface (API) which allows private organisations to integrate into their Customer Relations Management (CRM) system. 

“The City of Cape Town’s team has supported and assisted with the integration of the My Smart City platform through their standard API.  The interface allows citizens to log issues on their mobile device and the issues are then immediately sent to the City of Cape Town’s system via the interface. This has alleviated the need for human intervention and has sped up call logging times,” says Zoio.

All pending faults are expedited by the My Smart City dispatch centre team ensuring that nothing slips through the cracks. The dispatch centre reviews issues that have reached a certain age and provides citizens with support by escalating and prioritising these aging reported issues.

My Smart City users in Cape Town have found the platform to be extremely beneficial and have expressed their gratitude for having access to a channel that is easy to use and is accessible wherever they may be. One resident has written in to say, “This app really looks awesome and (is) very informative, which can be used as a good tool for us in assisting the community. Well done to the team involved and importantly to you for actually keeping in touch and reporting back.”

My Smart City had one user in Cape Town who had consistently reported her broken streetlights for six months prior to logging her issue with My Smart City. Before using the app, the resident’s fault was being closed with no resolution and she had been desperate to have the issue resolved as she felt unsafe and anxious about becoming a potential victim of crime. She had even tried liaising with her local ward councillor and still had no resolution. The My Smart City team were able to ensure that her query finally received the attention it needed. As soon as the technicians were outside of her home to fix the streetlights, she contacted the My Smart City team on the spot to relay her thanks.  

“The integration of the My Smart City platform into the City of Cape Town’s systems highlights the benefit to citizens when municipalities and businesses work together and collaborate with the goal of improving the lives of their citizens,” says Zoio. 

If we are going to recover from Covid-19, we as private citizens have to get involved in the running of our cities to ensure that the city truly works for us. My Smart City is the citizen platform that creates the environment for citizens to stand together and effect change in their cities. Download the My Smart City App from the Google Play Store or the Apple App store.