Hariprasad Viswanathan, VFS Global

There’s a stereotypical trope about the state of citizen-facing public sector front offices; I’m sure you’ve heard it before and possibly even thought it yourself when faced with the prospect of having to visit one. The basic premise involves long queues, with a game of musical chairs until you finally get to the front, where you are faced with archaic, paper-based processes that can be a lottery of having the right documents with you to submit, and if not, can the entrepreneurial hawkers outside help with a quick photocopy or passport picture? If they can’t, you’ll have to take more time off work to come back another day.

But there’s one pocket of South Africa’s public sector where, rather unusually, it has outsourced some of its front-of-house activities and, in so doing, is tackling some of these issues, thanks in part to technology that’s improving efficiencies.