Exactly. Being able to send all that data is all well and good, assuming you’re not out in the gramadoelas. I remember a trip I made to Fouriesburg. Vodacom just plain doesn’t work there (the nearest mast is actually in Lesotho, so you have to pay roaming rates) and MTN is present but sucks. Most of the locals were using ADSL at home.
So you first have to have the infrastructure to get the data to the municipality.
Then you have to have software to make sense of it all.
Johannesburg does actually have time of day billing, but you need a special meter (surprise) at your cost (surprise) and there are extra admin fees (by now you should not be surprised).
The problem with the utilities, frankly, is that you have elected councillors who may be very diligent and keen on serving their community but don’t necessarily know about about anything making decisions on IT systems.
SAP infamously screwed a very advantageous (for SAP) deal out of the City of Johannesburg. I’ve seen SAP operate. They start off with some outrageous figure just to find out exactly how lucky they are and how stupid you are. They don’t get offended with you if you cut the meeting short and tell them they need to sharpen their pencils because those figures look a bit odd. But COJ, convinced that nobody gets fired for buying SAP, voted on it very quickly.
But not all City entities have SAP. There is a famous breakdown in communications between Roads and Water. This is important because if Water come and dig up your street to fix a leak then they have to hand over to Roads who should come out and do the restoration of the road surface.
But there’s two different systems at play. I hope SAP didn’t tell the councillors that it is impossible to bridge this gap (because it isn’t so, and I know because I did that job and went on the SAP training), but that’s what the councillors and the Mayor and his lackeys all believe.
So what happens is that all the details of holes dug by Water get captured into a spreadsheet, which gets emailed to Roads, who (assuming it hits the right mailbox) have to print the spreadsheet out and capture everything manually. Which is slow and error prone.
Clearly the City doesn’t believe in getting some actual IT experts in. Not to have a vote (they can’t), but just to explain the facts of life. It’s all left up to people who are there because where you live most folks like that party. I don’t want to disrespect these people, I believe they are hardworking and (mostly) honest, but they weren’t elected for their technical expertise.