Acumen Software, with an impeccable reputation for delivering software solutions for service delivery organisations, has launched the first phase of its My Smart City citizen’s platform for City of Johannesburg and City of Cape Town residents.
The platform is available on Android, iOS, and on the web at www.mysmart.city. My Smart City is set to revolutionise the way in which citizens, businesses, community groups and public sector service providers communicate, and collaborate within their wards. The one-stop-shop for city residents aims to sign up four million registered users by bringing citizens and public service providers together through technology. And it isn’t costing citizens or their cities a cent. Acumen Software has secured private equity investment from Capitec-backed Imvelo Ventures and Sappi-funded Andzani Ventures, which has been used to fund the development and launch of the platform. Johannesburg and Cape Town are the first two cities with access to Phase One of the free mobile and desktop-based platform that allows citizens to report potholes, monitor power or water outages, communicate with local municipal officials, raise a petition, and much more. In time, residents will be able to source private services, manage crowd-funding initiatives and gain access to community social and sporting events. “My Smart City is giving South Africans a voice to see the resolution of service delivery issues and to allow them to view issues and log incidents, prioritise them and connect the right service providers to resolve them. We believe that the platform has the potential to UBER-ise service delivery by putting the power in the hands of citizens who use the platform. In time, the platform will also create jobs for thousands of citizens and private contractors,” says CEO of Acumen Software, Joao Zoio. Acumen Software’s My Smart City platform has already been integrated into the City of Cape Town’s call management system and intends connecting to all municipal systems to enable the automation of information flows from citizens.Where the My Smart City platform has not been granted access to interface with municipal systems, Acumen Software’s dispatch centre team will become the conduit between citizens and their municipalities to ensure that citizen’s issues are appropriately logged and tracked.
Powered by Forcelink Acumen Software has a strong track record in several South African cities through its Mobile Field Service ERP Management SaaS Solution, Forcelink. Forcelink is used by the City of Cape Town to manage the MyCiTi Bus infrastructure as well as by the City of Johannesburg’s City Power to manage outages and maintenance work on their electricity network. My Smart City is also powered by Forcelink, which has over 100 customers and over 120,000 registered users. “With the My Smart City platform we are leveraging our Forcelink B2B Mobile Field Services ERP Solution backbone to offer the public a B2C communal platform. The platform will allow citizens, city officials, councillors, and service providers to engage in a safe and controlled environment, with the sole purpose of improving services in the city,” says COO Kennedy Mogotsi. Forcelink has extensive APls (Application Programming Interface) to easily interface with other systems such as ERPs, CRMs, Accounting systems, Project Management, equipment monitoring with SCADA, IoT, etc. Forcelink has a certified standard interface with SAP. “My Smart City is an extension to Forcelink, which is a well-established software platform that was created because we saw a desperate need in the South African market for a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) Mobile Field Services ERP Management Solution that could scale from SMMEs to large multi-nationals. Being a SaaS solution means that My Smart City is backed by a system that offers real benefits that non-digital solutions just cannot offer,” explains Mogotsi. My Smart City is calling on all Johannesburg and Cape Town residents to register and create profiles on the platform and to invite family, friends and neighbours to join them in becoming active citizens with strong voices. The more subscribers the platform has, the greater the power of citizens to affect change and improvements in their city.
