> Glen Hollands

The Project for Conflict Resolution looks at Eastern Cape municipal websites and their potential to promote good local governance. Glenn Hollands assisted with the final research report and this article.

Let’s face it; municipal websites are not the most popular form of internet browsing. Public enthusiasm for the Mayor’s rambling state of the municipality speech or three year old annual reports is understandably limited. Grandiose undertakings to “…enrich our communities and rid ourselves from the chains…” and to “…walk tall towards deepened democracy and sustained development” may be politically resonant but they grow tedious in a context of politically chaotic councils and rapidly declining municipal services. Faced with a deeply fractured local government system, the very last thing that citizens wish to browse are web pages offering political and bureaucratic hyperbole massaged into a misconceived public relations campaign.

Between 2009 and 2011 about 85% of the province’s municipalities demonstrated the capability to maintain functional websites. In general, the websites reflected the resources and relative capacity of the host municipality.

It must also be acknowledged that the best websites do not fix water mains, collect garbage or keep the power on. So what role, if any can municipal websites play in improving governance and is there anything more to this than hype? The E-Governance Institute at Rutgers University in the United States is widely known for its Digital Governance in Municipalities Worldwide Survey conducted regularly since 2003. Researchers Marc Holzer and Saeng-Tae Kim (2007) are particularly interested in municipal websites as Information Communication and Technology (ICT) tools for better service and public accountability. Apart from seeing potential for efficiency and public convenience, Holzer and Kim look for:

• Online feedback to individual agencies / departments or elected representatives
• Online information updates on municipal governance
• Online polls on specific issues
• The opportunity to participate in or view the results of customer satisfaction surveys online
• Feedback on municipal performance or publish the results of performance reviews online.
• Online bulletin boards or chat rooms for gathering public input on municipal issues
• Structured online discussions on particular issues or institutional matters

A similar approach is reflected in a mid-2011 snapshot survey of all municipal websites across the Eastern Cape by the Project for Conflict Resolution and Development (PCRD) - a Port Elizabeth based NGO. The PCRD survey suggests that despite the shortfalls already noted, municipal websites have considerable potential to advance democracy, accountability and effective government - and some are taking up the challenge in interesting ways. The big picture needs to be borne in mind. Between 2009 and 2011 about 85% of the province’s municipalities demonstrated the capability to maintain functional websites. In general, the websites reflected the resources and relative capacity of the host municipality. The Nelson Mandela Metro website for example was adjudged to be of high quality, as was the Buffalo City Local Municipality (now a metro). Among the districts, Amathole, Cacadu, and Chris Hani were also of good quality.2

Putting key information in the public domain is an important function of municipal websites and Section 21 B of the Municipal Systems Act requires that a municipality that is able to establish a website, must place on it, Integrated Development Plans (IDPs), Annual Reports, notices of meetings, municipal by-laws and codes, plus resolutions and policies on service fees and tariffs. Virtually no municipalities were fully compliant with this provision but nearly 80% of those with functioning websites had current IDPs available and 74% had current budgets. By-laws (listings and / or electronic access) and key policies were only available in slightly more than half of the municipalities. So, while full compliance would be ideal, the prioritisation of IDPs and budgets appears to be a genuine effort to place some of the most important information before the public.

In one area of public accountability and reporting, Eastern Cape municipal websites fared badly. The Annual Report of a municipality is a key source of information on municipal spending, performance and other matters. It must include the report of the Auditor General on the municipality for the past financial year. Important accountability provisions set out in the Municipal Systems Act and the Municipal Finance Management Act highlight the importance of the Annual Report. Despite this, only 34% of municipalities managed to upload a current version of this document to their site. Surprisingly it was one of the more remote and rural districts that did well in this regard - the Ukhahlamba District, now Joe Gqabi and all four of its local municipalities had current Annual Reports on their respective websites.

Do you know who leads your council and what authority / responsibility top officials and politicians wield? Websites offer the opportunity to describe the institutional set up of the municipality, who is in power and how such authority is exercised. This typically takes the form of a municipal organogram or decision-making flowchart and has to be developed for administrative purposes anyway. Only about 13% of the municipalities included this information on their site. Surprisingly four of these were poorly capacitated rural municipalities.

Information Communication Technology (ICT) experts tend to talk about things like e-governance. All this really means is that ICTs can be used by government to serve the public more effectively and that, ideally, information exchange between government and citizens is a two way process i.e. government does not just give you information it wants you to have, it also provides for your feedback and maybe even allows you to search for things that YOU consider important. International research suggests that properly designed and maintained websites are potentially an excellent vehicle for this form of exchange. At the time of the survey only four websites provided this level of interactivity – Nelson Mandela Metro, Amathole District Municipality, Buffalo City Local Municipality and surprisingly the very rural Umzimkhulu Local Municipality. Websites can play a modest role in combatting corruption. Due to the prevalence of corruption and fraud in municipal supply chain management, the advertising of all municipal tenders on the website is a partial but important assurance of fairness in briefing contractors and ensuring transparent financial governance.

Due to the prevalence of corruption and fraud in municipal supply chain management, the advertising of all municipal tenders on the website is a partial but important assurance of fairness in briefing contractors and ensuring transparent financial governance.

The majority of municipalities (60%) did place tenders and calls for proposals on their website but very few went the extra mile to list who had previously been successful in getting municipal contracts.

Municipal websites in the Eastern Cape are generally well-designed and navigable, suggesting that technical support is available. Technical problems such as broken links and cumbersome downloads probably result from poor site maintenance rather than original design flaws. Websites ideally communicate important facets of their owners so uniformity is not a goal. However, it does not appear that basic lessons in design and format are being learnt and adopted. Several sites appear to have been incomplete / under construction for more than a year.

Does any of this really matter - are websites not the tools and playthings of the relatively affluent that are least vulnerable to failures in municipal governance? While the take up of such opportunities by the poor is obviously limited, recent trends in mobile ICT usage suggests exclusive access to the internet by the privileged is changing as is the economic profile of the average person using mobile technologies. In 2009 81.4% of Eastern Cape households had access to cell phones and while broadband connections for households nationally were still low (4.7% in 2010), it had increased more than 10 times since 2005. 3 Furthermore through NGOs and other partnerships, sometimes referred to as “infomediaries”, organisations representing disadvantaged communities are becoming more regular internet users.4

2 A checklist covering criteria like provision of key information, governance, public convenience, aesthetics and utility / functionality was the primary research tool for visiting and assessing all local and district municipal websites within a limited period during May 2011
3 AMPS, 2009 Household, BMI-T 2010
4 See for example SALGA and GIZ (2011) The Potential to Utilize Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to Promote Inclusion, Public Participation and Accountability in Local Governance. Prepared by the Project for Conflict Resolution and Development (PCRD), Mbumba Development Services and eKhaya ICT