Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Calls for tech collaboration after the launch of City app
THERE have been mixed reactions following the launch of the City’s load-shedding app.
The new app allows users to get real-time information on load shedding in their area, log electricity service requests, and get information for city customers on where they can buy prepaid electricity.
Load shedding has been with the country since 2008 and the City said it has plans to end load shedding in the metro. There is already a widely used app, EskomSePush, that serves the whole country and was developed by a Cape Town company.
“The City should have partnered with EskomSePush instead of spending taxpayers’ money rebuilding something that already exists,” said the tech founder and chief executive of DigsConnect, Alexandria Procter, when responding to the announcement.
“You could have supported the local tech ecosystem. But instead, you do this. How much is the development team costing for this? Really shoddy.”
The City said there was a bigger picture for its load-shedding app. They are developing a City app that will contain myriad functions and services for customers.
“The load-shedding app is temporary and will become a component of the bigger City app. We decided to start with the load-shedding functionality in an effort to assist customers as much as possible. It is also being used to test our ability ahead of the development of the full City app.”
Unlike other municipalities, the City of Cape Town said it protects its customers from load shedding by lowering the levels. For example, if the country was on stage 4, City customers would be told they were on stage 3.
Dan Wells from EskomSePush said they were happy the municipality was moving with the digital times, “but it’s a bummer for us”.
“EskomSePush was made in Cape Town. Most of our users are in Cape Town. We have never received funding and built the app in our spare time (while having full-time jobs). We’ve also never received any support from the City of Cape Town, we’ve tried to reach out to various people with no support.”
Wells said running a business on ad revenue was hard and it sucked their own municipality was now their competition.
“But maybe we can work together on the next version? No official reply yet from the City of Cape Town. If we collaborate we can solve much bigger problems, using our seven years of experience in running this application.”
Speaking on whether it was a
The load-shedding app is temporary and will become a component of the bigger City app. We decided to start with the load-shedding functionality in an effort to assist customers as much as possible.
CITY OF CAPE TOWN
good idea that the municipality launched the app, Wells said: “We think municipal fault tracking is a good idea.
“We get a lot of complaints during non-load-shedding times saying the EskomSePush app has the wrong schedule when it’s actually an unplanned local outage. Actually, we were thinking of going in the same direction with our ‘community’ inside the app. Our main question is why not collaborate?”
Civic organisation group Stop CoCT founder Sandra Dickson said there was a lot many did not know about the recently launched app.
“Any idea what it cost the City of Cape Town to develop their app? And yes, the City should have put out on a fair tender where everyone had a chance to get the tender to design the app, the EskomsePush people included.”
She added that people were continuously guessing on the WhatsApp groups she was on about load shedding schedules. “One cannot plan as CoCT schedules are much, much too complicated.”
The City did not respond to questions about the cost and tender for the app: how much the app will cost and if they issued a tender for it.