Traditional authorities face serious challenges in delivering services to the citizens under their authority. In the Vhembe District Municipality, which is found in the Northern Province called Limpopo, recent studies have indicated that service delivery (the delivery of basic services) often lacks. SA government started with egovernment in 2001 but undermined that most of its population is still locked up in rural setup. To date, digital transformation has been introduced strongly with new processes to improve service delivery to various sectors of business, especially the local government. The Existing studies indicate that digitlisation could be a platform that facilitates the delivery of services to rural communities by using collected data and technological advances to monitor the components and steps of the process flows applied by the tribal authorities and reengineer the process flows to achieve optimal performance. This core objective is also hinged on an observed dearth of adequate studies within rural communities. Past and contemporary studies on digitising and rural communities have focused primarily on exploring entrepreneurship, agriculture, broadband technology, digital connectivity, as well as digital adoption, digital skills, smart cities, infrastructure, and healthcare development. Yet, findings suggest that to improve the rural community’s quality of life, new digital technologies should be introduced to improve local administration systems and processes to administer basic services. The trajectory of digital technology in improving the efficient administration of basic services. This study will investigate digital transformation’s role in addressing challenges faced by Vhembe Tribal Authority in its quest to achieve optimal performance as it administers basic services. The questionnaire containing unstructured questions will be administered to the Tribal Chiefs in the Vhembe District. This questionnaire will aim to identify the pain points in the delivery of basic services. In view of the above, the proposed study seeks to examine which and how digital technologies can transform the administration of basic services in rural areas, first on the part of local government and second on the local consumer in relation to the quality of services received, thirdly the Vhembe District Municipality. Further unstructured questions in the questionnaire will seek to identify the status quo for the current manual processes used to administer basic services by the Tribal Chiefs. The field results will be analysed to determine the gaps and the role that digital transformation could play in addressing challenges faced by Tribal Authorities as they administer basic services for the communities.

Authors: Sylvia A. Siphugu, Tankiso Moloi

Published in: Ireland International Conference on Education (IICE-2023)

• Date of Conference: 11-13 April 2023
• DOI: 10.20533/IICE.2023.0019
• ISBN: 978-1-913572-51-8
• Conference Location: Dún Laoghaire, Ireland