Mabuyane’s vision drives the Eastern Cape Covid-19 response

A data-driven project management unit is at the centre of the Eastern Cape government’s management of responses to the Covid-19 pandemic.

But, says project specialist Dr Sybert Liebenberg, it doesn’t mean government has a crystal ball to determine the extent of the outbreak and how it must respond, though the number of infected people who subsequently recover is a good measure of what will come.

The Khawuleza project management office in the office of the premier (OTP) is being used to monitor testing for the virus, identify clusters of outbreaks and the resourcing of responses.

Premier Oscar Mabuyane first raised the vision of a data-driven project management capability in his office during the 2020 state of the province address (Sopa).

Then, Mabuyane was concerned about projects perennially falling “in the cracks” and wanted the ability to “package and drive all priority infrastructure projects in our province”, along with the department of public works and driven by the Eastern Cape Socio-economic Consultative Council.

This council is responsible for the data centre which collects and standardises all the information required by political and administration heads to make decisions.

Liebenberg says the province daily updates its geographic information system (GIS) which reflects the key intelligence required and sourced from across the province to deal with the outbreak.

Government leaders are able to obtain a daily overview of the extent of the outbreak and the success of containment or treatment measures.

“We needed to understand patients — who are they, where are they, are they self-contained or spreading the disease?” Liebenberg said.

“We knew this would spread and we would have to manage the extent of the disaster.

“GIS allows us to locate data points — whether it is a patient, a service being delivered, an event. We can see it on the map as a cluster of events or services — or vulnerability points, which then allows you to focus resources to that area.

“In any disaster, there is always a shortage of data. In the current situation, there is also a lot of fake news and data so one has to be very selective with what info one chooses.”

The data being mined was a combination of information already available to government — like knowing the number of beds and staff in each hospital.

“There’s a lot of things we don’t know and so we are learning a lot to see where new data is required.

“It’s like fixing a car while driving it — you must deal with current data and project future problems that might occur.”

Making technical data accessible and easy to understand was also important.

The OTP has received support from provincial universities, where academics have provided research and modelling experience.

Liebenberg said the Covid-19 response was providing a rigorous test for the Khawuleza programme.