Decision support systems for the Letsemeng Local Municipality

ENGLISH ABSTRACT:Municipalities in South Africa, especially rural ones, have been struggling to deliver servicesto communities to the extent that government placed those worse-off under ProjectConsolidate. The implementation of Project Consolidate indicate that the capability ofmunicipalities to deliver services to their communities faced several challenges. Mostchallenges are attributed to skills, processes, procedures and resources. During the dawn ofdemocracy municipalities were merged into manageable demarcated areas for efficiency,effectiveness and inclusive governance to improve service delivery. The study primarilylooks into whether DSS are implemented in Letsemeng Local Municipality and what thebenefits are for service delivery to the community.The study was conducted in Letsemeng Local Municipality because it is representative ofrural municipalities facing similar changes. It focuses on the administrative and politicalcapability to transform Letsemeng Local Municipality into an effective service deliveryvehicle. Administrative capability primarily concentrates on the ability of procedure, systemsand management skills to manage a transformed municipal institution within the newdemocratic dispensation, while political capability concentrates on the role of politicians(councillors) on support and facilitation to meet the needs of the community. Taking thesefactors into consideration the role of DSS and IKM in successful service delivery wasinvestigated through interviewing key managers (municipal, financial, technical andcorporate managers) and analysing support documentation used by the municipality. It wasdiscovered that the performance of Letsemeng Local Municipality is affected by the lack ofDSS to support management and politicians, absence of appropriate IKM application forcontinuous service improvement, high turnover of staff leaving mostly unskilled and lessexperienced and to a lesser extent political interference. It was also concluded that theimplementation of DSS and IKM cannot on its own improve service delivery, butimprovement might be achieved if accompanied by Letsemeng Local Municipality BPR(Business Process Re-engineering).