Digital utility maturity assessments of South Africa's water boards in support of the 4th industrial revolution

Abstract

One of the great challenges of digital development is tailoring the abundant varieties of digital technology to the unique demands of individual utilities. It is important to identify the digital maturity of an organisation to provide appropriate solutions. By ‘ground-truthing’ in this way, each organisation can pursue a digital strategy that suits its readiness to adopt new technologies, as well as its long-and short-term objectives. Doing this enables utilities to use data, consolidate and open new possibilities that benefit both the utility as well as other organisations more effectively. Over the years, South Africa’s water utilities have adopted various solutions and tools to support their operations, including Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, and others such as Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS), Geographic information system (GIS), etc. They are aware that the data currently being collected is not all being analysed and used to its full benefit.

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