Mobile operator Vodacom has assisted government in reducing some of its operational expenditure by about 56% in participating national and provincial public institutions over the last two years through the company’s mobile communication services transversal (RT15) communications contract.

The savings were achieved among participating national and provincial government departments, including the Department of Public Works and public-sector health institutions, with efficiencies having improved through digitalisation and communication services.

To arrive at the 56% saving figure, Vodacom calculated the difference in billing (what government would have paid Vodacom) across the participating departments from 2016 to date and what would have been spent without cost-saving measures in place.

The contract, which was awarded in 2016 and will run up to 2020, required Vodacom to provide communication devices and services to high-spending government departments, such as Public Works and Health.

In 2016, the National Treasury issued an instruction that State expenditure be cut by R25-billion in three years, mainly by curtailing nonbusiness-related spend.

The first objective of the RT15 contract saw Vodacom cut communication costs by leveraging the power of volume as government, reducing individual contracts that the departments were concluding with mobile operating companies.

The 56% savings exceeded the initial 40% target set over four years of the contract from over 400 000 lines of most national and provincial government departments.

With regard to the second objective of the RT15 contract, which entailed digitalising government, Vodacom business chief sales officer Mickey Mashale said during a media briefing in November that the State could “leapfrog” and deliver high-quality services to their constituents through the use of technology.

She noted that Vodacom and government had made progress in the public-sector space in South Africa in moving up the value stack. “We have managed to connect remote community health workers to patients and have helped identify 160 000 potential health risks across four provinces.”

Vodacom has further helped primary healthcare clinics to eliminate medical stock shortages through medicine monitoring measures.

Additionally, Vodacom has partnered with the property management organisation contracted by government to help digitalise the way it operates building operations, enabling power savings, preventive maintenance and the increased life span of assets.

Vodacom has, in Phase 1 of the project to improve public-sector buildings, upgraded more than 300 buildings in terms of maintenance monitoring systems.

The company also developed a smart citizen app called ‘My Ekurhuleni App’ in collaboration with the Ekurhuleni local government to provide a platform for residents to get feedback from officials on service delivery issues, or to report incidents.

Vodacom will be rolling out Tech Zones that will operate as mini Vodacom shops in previously disadvantaged communities across all nine provinces, which will help create job opportunities (for example, for store owners) and bring communication equipment and services to the unconnected communities.

The company is also in the process of developing an app in collaboration with the South African Police Service to enable anonymous crime reporting and a system that tracks the progress of an incident report.

The app will also enable complete data gathering around reported incidents and will act as a database for the police to gather digital data around incidents that include, for example, videos taken by witnesses, that would normally only have been posted on social media.