E-participation in municipalities: A boon or a bane?
Municipalities are responsible for delivering services that directly shape local communities’ quality of life. Municipal performance in this regard directly shapes whether local communities can inhale fresh air, have access to affordable, potable water, have booming local economies and live in safe and clean neighbourhoods.
Despite being imbued with constitutional powers and functions to function optimally, many of the 257 municipalities have made slow progress in socio-economically transforming local communities within their jurisdictions. Challenges such as poor revenue collection, neglected infrastructure, poor project management persist. These challenges, amongst others, have seemingly become too big to be solved by traditional means. Resultantly, local communities have become increasingly disgruntled and disconnected from municipalities that are supposed to serve them. This demonstrates the domino-effect of governance failures, contributing to democratic backsliding in which participatory democracy is undermined. At the same time, it reveals that the answer to enhancing participatory democracy in municipalities may be to reverse the problem by addressing persistent governance failures and delivering services in order to rebuild confidence within local communities.
The structural reforms currently on the table to overhaul municipalities suggest that innovative approaches are needed to respond to these longstanding challenges. This also applies to how municipalities enable meaningful public participation in municipal affairs. To this end, digital transformation has been put forward as another strategic priority to improve public participation in municipalities.
The purpose of this article is to unpack what is meant by the term “digital transformation” and to elucidate how this may alter governance within municipalities. In particular, this article focuses on the value of digital transformation initiatives to achieve inclusive governance and citizen-centred service delivery in local communities, as well as its shortcomings.
What is digital transformation?
Digital transformation refers to the process of digitising governance processes by adopting digital technologies, automating processes and procuring smart infrastructure to, amongst others, streamline operations, strengthen monitoring and oversight, and enhance service delivery and public participation. Digital transformation applications aim to innovate existing services or roll out new services and ways of exercising powers and performing functions to promote inclusion, operational efficiency, and socio-economic development. Examples of digital innovations in the public sector include the launch of digital national senior certificates, smart identity documents and passports, digital case management systems, and digital transactions for settling municipal bills, to name a few.
Using digital technologies to respond to the public participation challenges in municipalities
In the context of facilitating meaningful public participation in municipalities, the primary aim of digital applications is to bring municipalities closer to local communities. This is achieved by bridging the gap created by physical distance and finding smarter ways to connect and stay engaged with local communities. To be useful, such digital applications must be capable of responding to an existing demand. In the case of public participation, there is general consensus, for instance, that many ward councillors have been ineffective in serving as a channel to communicate the needs of local communities to municipal councils. To respond to this challenge, the City of Cape Town, for example, adopted a digital technology, which allows local communities to bypass ward councillors and submit service delivery requests directly to the relevant departments for swift action. Resultantly, local communities are able to cooperate with the City by taking charge of service delivery within their communities, while easing their frustrations due to unresponsive ward councillors. Moreover, insofar as it relates to the aspect of communicating service delivery requests to the municipality, this digital innovation had the effect of reducing local communities’ dependence on ward councillors to communicate this information to municipalities for action. This puts into perspective how digital innovations can transform governance structures by automating routine tasks, forcing key role players to continuously evolve in order to remain relevant.
Challenges facing municipalities in realising digital public participation initiatives
Successfully transforming how local communities participate in municipal affairs will depend not only on municipalities having the appropriate digital infrastructure, but also on local communities having the means to make use of the digital services that is available at their disposal. To this end, municipalities that struggle to get the basics right due to poor internal controls, inadequate revenue and human constraints, may find it difficult to implement digital participatory systems. Given the novelty of these systems, it is anticipated that administrative staff may require specialised digital skills to create an enabling environment for e-participation in municipalities. To the extent that only certain municipalities, particularly metros and other high-capacity or ‘secondary cities’ may have the capacity to realise these initiatives, digital transformation may have the unintended consequence of contributing to the growing problem of unequal access to sustainable services. Moreover, municipalities found to have persistent weak internal controls may find it challenging to safeguard confidential data, thereby increasing the risk for cybercrimes. This is so while local communities with access to e-participation services may be constrained by digital illiteracy or lack of internet access to use digital participatory services, a situation which is more likely to impact poor and vulnerable communities. Moreover, the case of Corruption Watch (RF) NPC v Speaker of the National Assembly and Others [2025] ZACC 15, further illustrates how digital participation processes may be procedurally flawed and not always contribute to meaningful public participation. In this matter, the Constitutional Court invalidated the appointments of the Commissioners to the Commission for Gender Equality, on the basis that Parliament failed to facilitate reasonable public involvement. The reason for the Court’s finding premised on the fact that the online participation process Parliament adopted was inadequate, given that the online form, amongst other things, was limited to 2000 characters (i.e., 500 words) nor were the CVs of the candidates available online. The Court went on to say that “[d]igital information systems and online platforms to facilitate public involvement are, undoubtedly, innovations which ought to be encouraged. However, … such innovation ought to be approached with caution where it is the exclusive mode of participation.” That is to say, while digital participation platforms are welcome, there is now an added responsibility on Parliament to ensure that such platforms do not inhibit meaningful public participation in legislative and other processes. This applies equally to municipal councils.
The way forward
Digital transformation and e-participation in particular are innovative means to bring municipalities closer to the people, especially in a context where large ward boundaries coupled with growing local populations continue to put municipalities out of reach from local communities. Creating an enabling environment to implement digital transformation initiatives will depend on having the requisite digital public infrastructure and skills, which may be lacking in municipalities with financial and human capital constraints. To enhance their capacity in this regard, municipalities can explore how inter-municipal cooperation can enable them to develop this capacity by relying on the knowledge, skills, experience and, where possible, financial support of other municipalities. Importantly, as envisaged by the judgment discussed above, digital innovations cannot come at the expense of the rights of local communities. Internal controls must be put in place to ensure that digital innovations can withstand judicial scrutiny. The judgment also illustrates that there may be a need for provincial governments and the South African Local Government Association to support municipalities in implementing digital transformation initiatives, whilst ensuring respect for the rule of law.
