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Alex Pryor, Head of Digital Innovation at EOH, Neil van Wyngaard, solution architect at iOCO Digital, a proudly EOH company, and Nicole Adriaans, business executive: data and analytics at iOCO, provide some insight and practical examples.

Alex Pryor: ChatGPT continues to make headlines because it is the first mass adoption of an AI technology driven by a natural language processing (NLP) engine. The platform has had the quickest uptake by 100 million users compared to other new AI technologies. ChatGPT brings AI to individuals across society, whereas we previously needed corporate investment to take advantage of machine learning technology.

ChatGPT can be very useful, but because it has been trained on the internet and not only on reviewed sources like Wikipedia and scientific articles, you also currently need to verify all the information it provides you with. However, it becomes very useful when you integrate your application programme interfaces with ChatGPT. For example, you take the NLP engine, and you train it on a very specific data set, like a Governance Risk and Compliance (GRC) data set.

Since the public launch of ChatGPT, Open AI has launched GPT4, which is described as a powerful general, multi-modal technology. Google and a host of other tech giants and start-ups are also making substantial investments in AI tools. This strengthens the view that the next version of ChatGPT or Open AI will be capable of doing a lot more, much faster, and more accurately.

Business applications of ChatGPT

At this point, ChatGPT can be applied in the workplace to improve productivity. For example, a marketer writing an article could use it to brainstorm ideas on a topic and quickly gather information for an interesting piece. They could engineer their prompts so that the tool gives them unique ways to generate content and even suggests writing styles and formats.

Businesses can use ChatGPT alongside automation to conduct repetitive casework more smartly and productively. While Microsoft is incorporating AI into Teams to enhance features like minute-taking, AI can be added to chatbots to make them a lot smarter, if they are trained on the correct data sets.

What’s exciting about this type of generative AI is that it leverages AI algorithms that enable the use of existing content like text, audio files and images to create new, plausible content. It allows computers to abstract the underlying pattern related to the input and use that to generate similar content.

Businesses considering using ChatGPT, or any emerging technology, must understand its pros and cons. When using ChatGPT, the best approach is to pick one use case in a business and try it out. But it’s not a good idea to put anything mission-critical on it for now. It must be deployed where a business has manual, repetitive tasks, and be injected into creative spaces to support the work, but not to take over any processes. The result might be that some tasks are completed faster than they used to be.

ChatGPT has brought the possibilities of AI into the public arena and fired up the imagination of many. It offers us the opportunity to do the manual and repetitive tasks associated with business far more quickly, saving costs and improving efficiencies. However, ChatGPT is just one technology in a vast pool of available AI resources, and specialist AI models and programmes must be used for specialist tasks and industries.

Neil van Wyngaard:

Efficient execution of repetitive tasks

Specialist AI can be applied in the business world where people are doing repetitive tasks that have clearly defined rules. A good example of how specialist AI is being used to benefit local financial institutions is a “document-understanding solution”, one EOH has developed for a bank and home loan lender. This AI tool quickly and efficiently compares the personal and income information that loan applicants supply to the institutions with the data on their various verification documents. It highlights any discrepancies between the two sets of information, makes the necessary corrections and even identifies potential cases of fraud.

The AI automation tool makes the processing and verification of the applicants’ information extremely efficient – it evaluates a single application in seconds while the manual processing of applications could

involve a team of 40 people who process several applications over a few days. The obvious benefit of the tool is that it enables organisations to complete a much higher volume of transactions per day.

ALSO READ: ChatGPT won’t take my job but it might take my therapist’s

Businesses across retail, financial, manufacturing and other sectors are increasingly adopting AI automation tools such as procure-to-pay, an EOH solution that manages the process of receiving and processing vendor invoices from start to end. We have built bots that pick up emails with invoices, open up the accounting system, and process invoices. The system is proving very popular, with companies across sectors showing more and more interest.

Businesses that want to experiment with AI or use it to solve a business problem must first establish if there is an existing AI tool on the market that could address their needs. In a greenfield scenario where a company wants to build its own AI, they could make the investment worthwhile by selling it to other organisations.

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So what technologies will play a role in helping IT execs achieve these outcomes?

For Ziaad Suleman, chief commercial officer at EOH, focus should be on the traditional and the new. When he talks about traditional technologies, he is referring to those that are already being used today, like Infrastructure-as-a-Service, data, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, automation, blockchain and cloud. But this doesn’t mean that these technologies are old hat, says Suleman, particularly because many of them are still in their infancy from an adoption perspective. ‘New technologies’, on the other hand, highlight the possibilities of tomorrow. These innovations include ubiquitous 5G, the metaverse, and Web 3.0. He mentions the traditional and the new because he believes it’s so important for IT professionals to create a bridge between these two ‘eras’ so that businesses can leverage current day technology, while preparing themselves for the technology of tomorrow. “What we’re increasingly seeing is the convergence of different technologies, with various innovations coming together to provide efficiencies and deliver optimised solutions to problems.” This is what digital transformation is all about.

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The Commission further mentions the contracts between EOH and the City of Johannesburg, whereby EOH is referenced by the Commission as a “unique case” as it is the only company, mentioned in the proceedings, that proactively approached the State Capture Commission to publicly disclose legacy wrongdoing within its ranks. Judge Zondo also specifically acknowledges EOH CEO Stephen van Coller’s notable assistance during the inquiry.

The report applauds EOH for explaining what it had already done, and what it proposed to do to make reparation for the legacy wrongdoing as well as to prevent any future wrongdoing. The report further compliments the Group on the attitude that it had taken to the Commission describing it as a positive extension of the attitude that EOH had widely adopted in all its dealings with all the regulatory and law enforcement authorities.

It is a proud moment for all of us at EOH to receive this accolade from the Chief Justice. EOH remains committed to transparency, underpinned by ethical corporate citizenship. We will continue to strongly advocate the critical importance of standing up for what is right to support the efforts to rid our country from a legacy of state capture and corruption and to create a positive future for all South Africans.

As EOH closes this final chapter on its past the Group would like to, once again, thank all its people, clients, suppliers, shareholders, board and leadership for their unwavering support over the last three years.

You can also read the State Capture Commission Report Part IV Vol I here.

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“Both public service and technological innovation should ultimately result in tangible improvements in people’s lives.  In fact, digital transformation in the public sector could make a significant contribution to socio-economic development both nationally and regionally, an opportunity that has been acknowledged in Kwazulu-Natal’s Digital Transformation Strategy (2020 -2025),” says Tsepa Ramoriting, EOH Group Executive, iOCO Technology.

An obstacle to effective digital-oriented public service is the decline in technical skills in the public sector. This, says Ramoriting, is something that EOH can help address. “The market for 4IR skills is more competitive, diverse and expansive than ever before and many talented professionals working in government are often headhunted by financial and other institutions.   We are well positioned to guide learning, development and recruitment for the public sector by structuring integrated learnership programmes, implementing learning and development platforms, recruiting and building competent teams, and through executive search,” he explains.

EOH has developed a comprehensive, end-to-end approach to working efficiently and cost-effectively with the public sector, from advisory and strategic planning through implementation and the management and measurement of solutions.

“When we look at how to assist the public sector, we do so from a functional point of view, always taking the end user and optimisation into account. We distinguish between spheres of government – municipal, provincial and national – in terms of how they operate, their mandates and the services they offer to the citizenry, in order to determine how technology can best serve them,” says Ramoriting.

According to Ramoriting, EOH has a particular strength in data-driven technology, infrastructure and people solutions that can help connect citizens digitally to services and information, enable connectivity and network access, unlock efficiencies, optimise revenue and costs and ultimately improve service delivery.

“Harmony between software and physical systems is increasingly becoming the backbone of modern infrastructure. NEXTEC, an EOH company, enables intelligent buildings, cities and countries by seamlessly integrating physical systems with digital technologies to create intelligent, resilient and robust ecosystems, connecting people and physical infrastructure to data, information, processes, places, resources and one another.

“As a fully-fledged, independent turnkey provider of ICT capabilities, skills and technology, we are well placed to enable government entities to effectively achieve their objectives,” he concludes.

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The shift is driven by clear needs within the industry, primarily the need to improve safety and reduce risk. Alongside this reduction  in risk, technology serves to enhance productivity and efficiency. The ability of miners to enhance safety and productivity relies to a significant extent on one quality: knowledge.

Knowledge is safety

Knowledge – of environments, of risk, and of humans’ relationship to risk – has always been a precious commodity in the industry. The expression “canary in a coal mine” originates from an early and rudimentary form of air-quality measurement technology. Canaries, which are more sensitive to dangerous gases than humans, would be carried into mines. If the canary passed out or died it was an indication that humans, too, were inhaling dangerous gases, and should leave the area immediately.

Mining remains an exceptionally dangerous activity. Large machinery, massive weights, high energies and often remote operations pose a vast array of potential threats. The more information we have about mining environments, operations, equipment and risk, the more safely and productively we can work. In a high-consequence area such as a mine-site, knowing exactly where your people, vehicles, equipment and zones of danger are, and their condition, allows you to effectively manage risk and consequence.

We have come a long way from carrying a bird in a cage down a mineshaft. Today we can closely monitor the position and relationship between hundreds of pieces of equipment, thousands of humans, and various zones of risk or potential danger. People are equipped with wearables – smart watches, tags, or backpacks – which broadcast their location, monitor them for signs of danger, fatigue or injury, and allow them to instantly request assistance.

Vehicles are equipped with collision avoidance systems that instantly broadcast an alert if they are likely to cross paths with or come too close to people or objects. Mine zones are equipped with multi-modal sensors that analyse atmospheric chemicals, noise and potential energy, for example, in order to constantly update risks and threats. Sensors also allow for surveillance and the reduction in theft.

We saw the potential of these systems during the coronavirus pandemic, when wearable tags allowed mines to implement systems for contact tracing that were more effective than simple temperature screenings, for example, because they didn’t depend on infected people displaying symptoms. Wearable systems also allow employees to rapidly alert supervisors if they are harassed or threatened by other employees, as well as if they are in danger.

We are rapidly approaching the ultimate goal of operational planning in which every variable with a potential effect on safety and productivity – and their relationships – are analysable in real time.

It all begins with connectivity

None of this would have been possible without breakthroughs in the reliability and effectiveness of connectivity on mining sites. Mining often takes place in remote areas, in the midst of inhospitable terrain. Mining sites are characterised by noise, dust, extremes in temperature, extreme weather events, magnetic fields, and direct lines of sight obscured by millions of tonnes of rock and ore. On top of this, it’s not sufficient for connectivity to work under these conditions sometimes. A second’s delay in the transmission of a signal can mean the difference between life and death.

Advances in connectivity (born in some instances from military and first-responder applications) have incorporated both specific technologies – mesh technology; LoRaWAn protocols; global positioning systems; BlueTooth location engines; etc. – and interprotocol communication that allows these technologies to interact with and support one another to create an unbroken, robust connectivity network that extends across the entire zone of operations, including deep underground.

Generating data

Once we have dependable, effective connectivity established, the next step is to generate useable data. Sensors can monitor dust, noise or CO2 levels, for example. Cameras and microphones can transmit visual and auditory data. Heart rate monitors can transmit data on human health.

But the power of data begins to emerge when it is analysed in real-time by advanced software. Machine learning and AIs can examine data and begin to make predictions about the future. Microphones installed on conveyor belts can identify bearings that are due to be replaced. Slope-monitoring systems can generate alerts if slopes appear unstable. And human-wearable sensors can identify fatigue before it creates safety issues.

The future

The future of technology in mining will be driven by AIs, allowing for ever quicker and more sophisticated data analysis, and an ever-increasing ability to accurately model likely future scenarios.

AIs will also allow robotics to become more autonomous, reducing the oversight role that humans will need to play. We are still many years, if not decades, away from truly autonomous robots in mines, but even robots that are dependent on human controllers have obvious applications in terms of examining dangerous areas or performing dangerous tasks, and are being rapidly adopted throughout the industry.

The evolving human role

Robots are not about to put people out of work, but the nature of work in mining will inevitably change. Technology will reduce human exposure to risk. Dangerous, unpleasant, or unhealthy work will increasingly be done by controlled or autonomous systems. People will increasingly take on supervisory roles. This will require attention from miners in terms of training and talent management. The result will be that humans will be engaged in more stimulating, rewarding and healthier work.

Since the earliest days of mining, an overriding question has been “how do we ensure the safety of people within these exceptional, high-risk environments”? The answer has proven to be real-time knowledge, underpinned by robust connectivity and analysed by intelligent software systems. It’s a tremendously exciting area of technological development, and it has tangible benefits for mining companies and their stakeholders. The result is a mine that serves its employees, reduces risk, and enhances productivity.

Link to original article…

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Both public service and technological innovation should ultimately result in tangible improvements in people’s lives, whether at the point of daily service delivery or whether larger projects for the greater long-term good are involved. If there is good-faith commitment to this idea from both the public and private sectors, then our potential for the development and continuous improvement of civic service is without limit.

We have seen – both locally and internationally – compelling examples of the benefits of digitising public-sector and adjacent institutions. Perhaps the most well known in South Africa is the digital transformation of our revenue service.

Over the past decade, the SA Revenue Service has implemented a host of innovative digital solutions that transformed the user experience, enhanced its ability to collect revenue, and capacitated its staff. It has almost eliminated the use of paper, speeded up its processes significantly and strengthened its control of risk.

Revenue collection ensures tax compliance and ultimately results in an improved fiscus which is deployed back into the country through capital projects that serve our communities.

Enhancing the citizen experience

When we look at how to assist the public sector, it is important that we do so from a functional point of view, always taking the end user and optimisation into account. It is helpful to distinguish between spheres of government – municipal, provincial and national – in terms of how they operate, their mandates and the services they offer to the citizenry, in order to determine how technology can best serve them. There are obvious opportunities to capacitate public servants, by for example, allowing them to report on revenue and spending more easily and accurately.

You can also empower citizens, for example, by introducing a fault-reporting mechanism that allows them to easily report potholes, power disruptions and other challenges faced daily within the community.

Data optimisation

There are also opportunities for improvements in the way disparate systems connect to one another and seamlessly share data. It makes sense to look at the health, social security, finance and other clusters to find ways in which integration and interoperability of systems can result in efficiencies and a simplified interaction with the state.

I recently travelled to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and the experience was educational. I filled out a single form electronically before departure and took a selfie, both of which I sent to the travel agent. Upon arrival in Dubai, I looked into a camera which performed an automated verification against the selfie I had previously sent and that was it. When I left, I did the same thing. I did not have to provide information more than once and it was accessible and verifiable across the various touchpoints.

Once you have experienced a simple, joined-up technology platform it becomes very hard to justify an inefficient status quo. In South Africa there are obvious examples of data sitting in silos and structures existing simply to transfer that data manually onward in its journey to where it is ultimately needed. These structures are perfectly suited to automation, which will have significant benefits in terms of cost, accuracy and speed.

Consider someone who has just bought a home and wants to go through the deeds registration process. Today, deeds registration does not integrate with the relevant municipal infrastructure and systems – the systems that are on the end-to-end critical fulfilment workflow are not automatically reconciled. They don’t even speak the same language! As a consequence, you have third party service providers who move paper and other physical assets around and translate the language between systems. This is an unjustifiable inefficiency.

The end goal – a single citizen platform that encompasses everything from updating a driver’s license to receiving a social grant, registering a business and applying for a visa – is still some distance from becoming feasible. But we can make steady, incremental progress towards this goal without leaving behind the implementers, the people. Often these automated systems fail as the implementers are disruptive due to their fear of job security.

This fear may well be mitigated through change management, cultural engagement and collaboration, assurances around job security through the re-skilling and upskilling for varied roles which provide for a better user experience and greater scaled output.

Enhancing public-private partnerships

One major obstacle to the union of state and technology is the fact that our framework for public-private partnerships (PPPs) needs to be updated to suit the unique requirements of at-scale digital projects. The existing legislative PPP framework is intended to accommodate large-scale physical-infrastructure projects.

Another obstacle to effective digital-oriented PPPs is the decline in technical skills in the public sector. The IT landscape is exceptionally competitive. Many talented professionals working in government are often headhunted by financial and other institutions.

In my opinion the best way forward is to drive an outcomes-based model in which risk, capacity and expertise are shared between public and private parties. The private sector would provide funding, there would be agreed-upon expectations of performance and expected delivery outcomes, as well as structures for the protection of intellectual property. The latter is a contentious yet important point.

There is a tension between transparency in bid and tender processes and the protection of competitive advantage that is so crucial to this industry.

Another tension lies between efficiencies and economies of scale, and the desire to involve a range of small, medium and micro enterprises in large-scale projects, to effectively “trickle down” or “share out” the opportunity.

These tensions can certainly be resolved through communication and consultation, and I do not believe there are any insurmountable obstacles to a constructive PPP model fit for the fourth and fifth industrial revolutions and conceived in the spirit of the National Development Plan 2030.

It’s about the greater good

Let me conclude by reiterating my opening point, that digital transformation always needs to be viewed in the context of the end consumer – our citizens.

We have recently been involved in a project for the Namibian Social Services Commission. Its Executive Officer Milka Mugunda led the initial conversation by defining success as “when the beneficiaries of our services are able to seamlessly interact with us in a way that suits them”.

She didn’t begin with what would be convenient in terms of their existing capacity. By beginning with the preferred experience of the end user, she effectively gave the project licence to begin from the ground up and examine which underlying systems could provide the flexibility that beneficiaries might require. It was a more involved, complex and expensive process than simply creating a new website as a surface-level touchpoint. But it lays the groundwork for a truly citizen-led experience.

We need to continue to have courageous and open conversations if we are going to remove the impediments that still exist within government, capacitate our civil servants and create a more engaged, educated and empowered citizenry. They are conversations worth having and which we, as EOH, would welcome.

We see our work with the public sector – and I speak here broadly of the IT sector – as crucial not just to our businesses, but to improving the lives of our fellow citizens and the creation of an optimistic future for everyone.

Ramoriting is the EOH group executive, iOCO Technology.

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Doing business with another party has always involved trust. Much like depending on a handshake to seal a deal seems antiquated in the modern business landscape, the digital realm is forcing change to the age-old physical act of putting pen to paper in order to sign a contract.

Instead, the electronic signature, or e-signature, has gained ground as a convenient but also safe alternative to the traditionally signed contract. Importantly, e-signatures also have a role to play in combatting fraud, which could hold the potential to save South African companies millions of rands.

More than just a digital signature

A common misconception regarding e-signatures is that it is software that simply helps sign documents using a digital image of your signature. This is much the same as describing a smartphone as a device you use to make calls.

In fact, the e-signature process is a highly efficient way to track the path of a document or contract from beginning to end. Because the entire process is managed digitally through unique eSignature software, every action that is taken with this document can be traced. This includes the person who sent it, the time delivered to the inbox, when it was opened, how long the person viewed a page, when it was signed and when it was sent back. For anyone who has had to deal with an extended contracting process, this ability comes as a godsend, seeing that e-signatures allow for a full audit trail of the process, maintaining the ever-important chain of custody.

Moreover, document integrity remains intact, since the e-signature process notifies parties when documents have been tampered with or altered in any way by deactivating a green verified check mark. This puts an end to fraudsters tampering with contracts by converting a PDF back to a regular document in order to edit details, then back to a PDF which looks the same but is cleverly altered.

The ability to verify document integrity protects both the organisation and the individual from a repudiation point of view and is yet another crucial element in combatting pernicious contract fraud.

It is important to note that by using a specialist e-signature solution – whether through the use of a proprietary app, plugins or desktop software – documents are encrypted with only the intended recipient being able to access and sign. This helps address one of common trends in financial fraud, where criminals hack email to intercept invoices, then notify the company that banking details have been changed, providing fraudulent banking details instead.

Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde?

E-signatures also solve another problem – that of identity certainty. With any type of signed contract, how do you know that the signature received represents the client? Was the document not perhaps intercepted and signed fraudulently? This is a considerable problem in South Africa, with the Insurance Crime Bureau reporting a massive 337% increase in impersonation fraud during 2020.

One of the most common cases of impersonation fraud involves criminals who manage to steal personal identity information and open accounts in that name, which leaves the real identity holder with massive bills once the fraud is detected. By working through an e-signature solution, this can be nullified, since it precludes the involvement of any unauthorised person in the contracting process.

Some e-signature solutions go even further in addressing identity verification by layering multiple controls. When a contract needs to be signed, a digital identity verification process can be triggered, where all the necessary information to authenticate the user is gathered. This could include biometrics (face or fingerprints), multifactor authentication (SMS or USSD), ID document verification (digital onboarding) and communication through user-controlled devices (a RICA registered device, for example).

Not all e-signatures created equal

Unfortunately, not all e-signature solutions are created equal, especially when it comes to compliance. South Africa has unique requirements regarding the validity of eSignatures, as stipulated in the South African Electronic Communications and Transactions Act [No. 25 of 2002]. Certain international solutions do not have the capacity to deal with every local regulation and can be found wanting when presented as evidence.

Moreover, local companies also have to comply with the recent Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), and some too with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Seeing that e-signature solutions often deal with personal verification information, companies need to ensure that the solution used manages the consent and privacy required by POPIA, in both a secure and compliant manner.

While trust is indeed earned, fraudulent interference in the contracting process has led to many companies struggling to place confidence in this well-established way of doing business. However, the best e-signature solutions now offer clients the ability to track a contract from start to finish. They do so not only by keeping track of chain of custody and ensuring document integrity, but also with the ability to verify identity. Ultimately, e-signatures bring trust back to the digital age.

By Carrie Peter

 

If you are interested in understanding how

electronic signatures are more than just a digital signature

complete the form for a chat with Carrie Peter

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