Dr Nkosi Kumalo, General Manager - Product and Capability, MTN Business

The pace of change in the public sector has traditionally been slower than in the private sector, but the past few years have fasttracked digitisation within South Africa’s citizen-facing organisations.

It seems 2020 was a watershed year for technology in the public sector. With the mass shift to digital delivery models forced by the Covid-19 pandemic, it immediately became clear which organisations were lagging in digital adoption, and which were better prepared. Regardless of whether their organisations proved themselves technology leaders or laggards, public sector CIOs not only accepted the challenge, they fundamentally redefined the relationship between constituents, technology, and the business.