The Gauteng provincial government has established a new department to improve service delivery, modernise the public service and stimulate the province’s knowledge-based economy.

The Department of e-Government was mandated to implement the e-government strategy of the Gauteng city region (GCR), which sought to consolidate back-end systems and processes to enable better front-line service delivery.

In this regard, the department was finalising the architecture for a common platform enabling all GCR entities to provide online and digitised services to the public, saving time and money.

As part of its efforts to meet the 30-day payment deadline, government also launched an online self-service invoicing system, which allowed service providers to submit their invoices directly to the Gauteng Treasury.

The e-Government department would oversee the roll-out of the Gauteng Broadband Network (GBN), which would connect all government buildings and various public service access points, including Thusong Centres, urban renewal zones and targeted economic zones.

The establishment of the department concluded the restructuring process to ensure that government departments were aligned to implement the programme of action.

The Department of Finance, which was previously responsible for the functions of procurement, payments, forensic auditing, transversal human resources management and information and communications technology (ICT) was disestablished.

The new department would perform the ICT functions, while the rest of the functions were transferred to other departments.

The Department of e-Government would report to Finance MEC Barbara Creecy and Boy Ngobeni, the current head of the provincial Education department, who would tstep in as head of the new department on October 1.