When most candidates (head of party lists) win municipal elections, they already have an opinion about everything in the world of Municipal management. What works, what doesn’t work, what will satisfy the needs of the municipal residents and improve their quality of life, what will not satisfy the needs of the municipal residents, how to go from A to B.
Most of them are wrong! There are several type of things that work, that satisfy the needs of the municipal residents and improve their quality of life or that take the municipality from A to B. But most of them “close the doors of their minds” to solutions based on new and intelligent technologies before some of these ideas get closer to their minds.
A leader (head of party list) “in this new age of new and intelligent technologies and data-driven and/or data-informed decision making” must be able to think in terms of systems and know how to lead systems, have the ability to understand the variability of work in the planning and problem solving in a municipality, to understand how we learn, develop, improve and lead true learning and improvement, to understand the municipal citizens and why they behave in a certain way, to understand the interdependence and interaction between systems, learning and human behavior. Knowing how everyone affects the others, give vision, meaning, direction and focus to the management of the municipality in an era in which the use of technologies is increasingly unavoidable for the good of municipal residents and the society.
– Based on the current scenario and trends, this “leader” will need to be able to anticipate, creating opportunities and paving the way for “the adoption of the most recent advances and revolutionary breakthroughs in new and intelligent technologies” in the municipality where he is playing the role of a leader – where we have an increasing number of young people who are digital natives (they have been using the internet for more than five years) and increasing numbers of connected municipal residents, adopting electronic means for communication and transactions (financial and non-financial).
The current gradual decentralization process in progress in Mozambique may give the local initiatives a broader action space and the new leadership in the municipalities will be able to take advantage of recent significant advances and revolutionary breakthroughs in new and intelligent technologies to achieve successes in meeting the needs of the municipal citizens, in improving their quality of life, in the development of municipalities and society in general.
The assumptions of “closed Minds” are no more than prejudices, that is, conclusions based on preconceived judgments, instead of being based on actual facts:
As regards to the modernization of management of the municipalities in Mozambique in general, the leaders (head of party lists) in the upcoming municipal elections to be held in October 2018 in Mozambique should not think that…
It is not possible, with the help of the recent advances and revolutionary breakthroughs in technologies, to transform a municipality that is in penury, through good management, with transparency, and a good leadership and with well-functioning municipal systems, into an “intelligent municipality” endowed with technological infrastructure, that seeks coordinated actions that facilitate the access of the municipal residents to services and to knowledge.
As regards to the digital and financial inclusion of the municipal residents, the leaders (head of party lists) should not continue to believe that…
It is not possible the adoption and mainstreaming of electronic payment of municipal taxes and fees in Mozambican municipalities;
The national level projects that will promote the adoption of connected electronic devices, namely the project of electronic fiscal devices of the Mozambican Revenue Authority, that will be kick started in 2019, and the strategy and the activities to promote financial inclusion by the Central Bank 2016-2022 , being implemented and promoted at a national level, should be seen, in this new era of new and intelligent technologies as an opportunity to be capitalized by the municipalities to embrace the digital transformation to better reap the benefits of using the potential of agencyless banking, the adoption and mainstreaming of mobile money in Mozambique that is already happening, the increasing massification of the use of electronic payment instruments.
The fact that the majority of the population in Mozambique is young (80%), many of them digital natives (using the Internet, electronic channels and platforms for more than five years) and increasingly more people adopting mobile devices and mobile money, constitutes an opportunity for municipalities to be closer to the municipal residents and to help them become aware that public services have costs and must be sustainable to be delivered with quality, and therefore, if municipal taxes and fees due to the Municipality, are not paid by all residents, the weight of sustainability will fall only on a part of the residents.
Municipalities that will embrace the recent advances and revolutionary breakthroughs in new and intelligent technologies will significantly increase their effectiveness by increasing and exploiting their own tax bases to ensure adequate revenue growth under the legislation governing intergovernmental fiscal relations. In the logic of fiscal decentralization, a municipality depends in terms of resources on transfers from the central government, as well as on leveraging on and using its own tax base. Either source is necessary for the exercise of the local government functions, despite the recognition that each one represents its own logic in terms of management, legitimation and accountability.
The modernization of management of the municipality with new and intelligent technologies will contribute to increase the degree of utilization of the tax base in the Mozambican municipalities, given that it will improve the business environment and will bring more economic agents from the informal into the formal sector.
The Mozambican municipalities are considered, in general terms and in the aggregated database, as institutions, that employ many people, have high current expenditures (fuels, consumables) and produce few services – digital transformation can bring new perspectives and opportunities for greater efficiency, effectiveness and new sources of revenue that are not now possible.
As regards to the solution of the problems of the water supply and sanitation sectors in Mozambican municipalities, the leaders (head of party lists) should not continue to believe that…
It is not possible to modernize the management of water supply and sanitation services in municipalities in Mozambique, to build new systems with modernized management with the help of new and intelligent technologies (industrial Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence) and know-how of Mozambican technicians and state-of-the-art technologies for our context, for detecting and locating water leaks, introducing automated meter reading in the municipalities and introducing facilities for smaller payments towards bill and short-term billing cycles and pay-by-phone/pay-by-voice solutions, making payments for water and sanitation more accessible and appropriate to low-income municipal residents, with irregular or erratic incomes, and to reduce or end water poverty in the municipalities;
As regards to the adoption of integrated digital platforms in the Mozambican municipalities, the leaders (head of party lists) should not continue to believe that…
It is not possible in Mozambique to have an Intelligent Platform that will facilitate the implementation of an operational command and control center of a municipality to support effective and coordinated operational and political decision making in both the routine management of the municipality and in the emergency situations.
The possibility of adopting integrated platforms to ensure the intelligent management of the municipality where managers of various municipal and external services can work in a preventive, integrated, coordinated and cooperative way based on multisectoral information, in a Mozambican municipality, large or small, is much easier now thanks to advances in technology.
In the challenges of managing primary health and education services in Mozambican municipalities, the leaders (head of party lists) should not continue to believe that…
It is not possible to introduce ICTs into education as a pedagogical tool and to digitize health in municipalities that will take over the management of primary health and education services. Those who need to be informed about medical consultations, examinations, service queues and medication in the public network health facilities in the municipality will be assisted by technology without having to go to a health unit and the parent or guardian who needs to follow up and track their kid’s performance in the primary education services managed by the municipality will also have the aid of technology without having to go to school (using mobile devices or on the internet).
As regards to the performance of Mozambican municipalities regarding the collection and management of municipal solid waste, the leaders (head of party lists) should not continue to believe that…
It is not possible to use Information and Communication Technologies for Urban Solid Waste Collection Optimization (intelligent waste collection, which will include the use of various types of sensors that will allow greater efficiency in the routes and great cost savings and add-on managed Cloud/Edge IoT-based services that will bring about additional revenues to the municipality);
In some municipalities in Mozambique, after the upcoming October 10 elections, taking advantage of the recent advances and revolutionary breakthroughs in new and intelligent technologies for the benefit of the municipal residents and giving young Mozambicans the opportunity to develop and implement creative and innovative solutions to tackle the challenges municipalities face, will be relatively easy, depending on the political and managerial willingness and the leadership of the respective municipalities. Young Mozambicans are ready for the challenges – all they need is only good leaders and the opportunity to give their contribution.
Most municipalities in Mozambique are in penury, with no strong economic and tax base, and today the success of local governance depends highly on the will of the central government.
The adoption of the recent advances and revolutionary breakthroughs in new and intelligent technologies to overcome the challenges that municipalities face: reduction of transfers from the central government, decreasing revenues due to the economic crisis, expenses with personnel that grow significantly because several municipalities will gradually have to undertake to deliver on the municipal public transportation services, municipal water and sanitation, municipal solid waste collection, primary health and education services in the municipality, and this will require the increase of expenses that are “difficult to cut “- the modernization of management of the municipality with new and intelligent technologies can change this scenario of management of municipalities and bring about new sources of revenues that are not possible right now!
The municipal package lists a series of services that fall under the responsibility of the municipalities to deliver on.
Many Mozambican municipalities do not have the human, material and financial capacity to deliver on these services. Adopting recent advances and breakthroughs in new technologies can help overcome this challenge!
New technologies increase the transparency of public management, strengthen municipalities and create new links between local governments, the private sector and civil society.
The challenges of “technical and organizational capacity to take over” the management of primary health and education services, urban public transport, water supply and sanitation and the intelligent collection of solid waste in municipalities would be a motivation for the leaders (head of party lists) “to think seriously about the “Modernization of Municipal Management” with the use of new and intelligent technologies.
“The secrets for good municipal management: social control, planning, transparency and accountability of the public servants of the administration that are the basis of the administration of municipalities that stand out for managing the budget very well” is now much facilitated thanks to the latest advances in technologies, that allow faster collection of fine-grained data at lower costs and big data processing and analytics and other AI-enriched solutions for data driven and/or data-informed decision making.
Artificial intelligence applied to municipal management, in essence, is nothing more than algorithms applied to the problems and data in the silos of several sectors of the municipality and data generated by the municipal residents.
What if the leaders could consciously open their minds to “solutions based on new ideas in? Be open and welcoming to the contribution and involvement of Mozambican youth? How could they solve the problems that seem to have no solution in Mozambican municipalities?