Contribution of Unified Billing System in Facilitating Public Service Delivery: the Case of Selected Lehulu Centers in Addis Ababa
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Date
2014-09
Authors
Sertsu, Rahel
Journal Title
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Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The Unified Billing System (UBS) project, as part of E-Gov initiatives, is one of the
major interventions by the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology
(MCIT), Ethiopia, to unify the bill payment of various utilities for the convenience
and benefit of citizens. It focuses on enhancing the quality of Service available to
the citizen through re-defining the way citizens pay their utility bills which was
introduced based on public-private partnership between the Ministry of
Information and Communication and a private company named Kifiya Financial
Technology. With this premise, this paper is an attempt to understand the
contribution of UBS and its various challenges and bottlenecks that are being faced
in making this system sustainable. The system is able to reduce the burden the
government face financially and in deploying the essential expertise, it has also
created an opportunity to improve government service delivery to citizens, and
within government agencies by creating more transparency, greater convenience,
less corruption, revenue growth and cost reduction. It has also created job
opportunities to the young unemployed. It is however, noteworthy that these
perceived benefits to the citizens from this project can only be accrued when Lehulu
centres met the expectation of citizens and accelerate the service delivery. The
study also reveals that there was lack of coordination at the government’s end in
terms of having no structured framework for complaint handling and no risk
mitigation plan in place for a project of this dimension. Moreover, as the system is
not yet synchronized, citizens are charged more than their regular bill. This is of
utmost importance in order to upgrade UBS as a key actor to enhance public
service delivery. The study calls for an improved enabling environment for citizens
like UBS to improve integrated Public Service Delivery.
Keywords:
Public Service Delivery, E-Government, Integrated Service
Delivery, UBS-Lehulu
Description
Keywords
Public service delivery, E-Government, Integrated service delivery, UBS-Lehulu