Charged with overseeing the strategic direction of Joburg’s conversion to an innovative and digitally enhanced municipality, Monique Denise Griffith is responsible for guiding our transition to a smart city.
“My role often entails developing strategies and policy frameworks that set the stage for transition. It’s an overly exciting space, but it can get quite stressful trying to keep up with all the demands of the office,” says Griffith.
Her job also involves engaging other departments that have co-dependencies with the Smart City Office (SCO) to ensure the rollout of a smart city programme is efficient and successful.
“Whilst we’re developing the strategy and approach to becoming a smart city, it is incumbent upon each department and municipal entity to shift us toward this goal. It is a citywide effort to identify challenges, redundancies, or inefficiencies and to find innovative and technological ways to become a more efficient and productive City,” she says.
Joburg’s smart city programme traverses all four quadrants of the metro. Griffith says its successful implementation requires the engagement of external stakeholders with technical expertise, including universities, businesses, organs of state and other organisations that can support the initiative.
Her position in the SCO has been challenging because humans are innately hesitant to change. Couple that with the institutional culture of the organisation, and it becomes daunting to alter minds and operations towards a smart city.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has not only forced a shift in mindsets but has made process re-engineering an absolute necessity.”
She says although the idea of a smart city should be pursued, bridging the digital divide is still a far cry. “Not only do we need a war on potholes and gender-based violence, but we also need guerrilla warfare to attack the digital divide that will leave too many of our residents behind,” she says.
To enable Joburg to become a smart city, the municipality requires a proliferation of access to tech devices, low-cost data, and reliable broadband infrastructure.
“We did not weather this storm well during the hard lockdown, despite our excellent performance with regards to behavioural change required to keep our infection rates down – because we did not lay the 4IR roadway needed,” she says.
Griffith is a proponent of the work from home principle but says the lack of adequate information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure hampers efforts towards the success of this goal.
“We have lower-level employees who have laptops but cannot or should not go to the office. We have mid and upper management who do not have sufficient access to data to stay connected the whole month. We also have residents who are forced into packed taxis to get to work that could be done from home. The City also has children that cannot be educated because they lack the devices, data, and broadband access required.”
She’s however, proud that Joburg is being transformed towards the 4IR.
“We have made significant gains in transforming the organisation to be more futureproof. We are doing more meetings online and making faster decisions. The hope is that this organisational change will significantly benefit lower-level staff and residents.”
Griffith notes that the SCO is making significant strides in developing 10 catalytic programmes that seek to accelerate the transition to a smarter, futureproof City:
• Prolific broadband infrastructure that is affordable and accessible to all residents
• Partnerships with skills training organisations to generate a significant pool of a 4IR talented workforce for jobs in the digital economy
• Widespread device and data distribution programmes that enable the digital divide between socioeconomic groups to be bridged (Universal Access)
• Prolific, citywide IT security systems to secure the City’s people, infrastructure, and buildings
• A Co-Production Innovation Pipeline
• A unified data and information portal
• Poor communities lack the green infrastructure to provide an alternative source of energy for their households to electrify their households and access data-driven services
• A programme for providing access to digital services
• A smart integrated nodal economy, services, and spaces to develop more liveable and economically vibrant areas in townships and informal settlements, with a special focus on those on the periphery and
• Smart mobility enables building greater efficiencies, capabilities, and cost-effectiveness in mobility networks.
However, she says each of these requires a department or entity to spearhead.
Born in the Bronx, New York, Griffith was raised in a town four minutes outside of New York called Teaneck, New Jersey — a model community of diversity, thought to be the first US city to willingly integrate its entire school system. “I grew up in a family that loved to travel with a military dad, a mother that could balance a budget, work, home, kids, and community like none other, and a beautiful, straight-A, Ivy League older sister. She also had a supportive, loving community of neighbours, representing everyone under the rainbow.”
She studied at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree. She then went to the University of Maryland’s School of Law in Baltimore, Maryland to receive a Juris Doctorate. “I went back to New York to practice law for several years before moving to Johannesburg.”
Griffith holds a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS).
“I was an entrepreneur, and I know how it feels to chase money that you have worked for and need to pay bills. I’ve made those calls to landlords, and bill collectors. I know the anxiety of not knowing where the next contract is coming from and having to reach out every day to a network to find that opportunity. I know how it feels to have someone invest in your time and talent just by agreeing to give you a chance with a small contract. I also know work hours aren’t from 8–4 or 9–5, but from ‘start to get-the-job-done’. That was the first 10 years of living in Joburg. I started from small until I built up to bigger, more regular contracts with large organisations.”
She began working in the City in 2007 as the Director of Sector Support in the Department of Economic Development. She was then seconded to the Ombudsman’s office to pilot the Joburg Film Office. She was transferred from the Economic Development department in March 2019, having started her career in South Africa as a consultant. She says she anticipated her move to a lower post in the Smart City Office as an opportunity to have a greater, more immediate impact on the City and its residents.
Griffith is extremely passionate about the development of young people. “While other departments tend to seek service providers that are well established, our mandate is to find the diamonds in the rough to support them via the City’s infrastructure, relationships, and information, in the hope that their ideas can take root. If not in the CoJ then to find partnerships and investors who are interested in supporting their innovations.”
Her greatest desire is to create pathways for young adults and entrepreneurs to find expression for their business ideas.
“We can’t always import solutions from international businesses that have been entrenched for decades. We must be the testbed for young people to shape the future of this City. If I can get just five new, local and youth developed innovations discovered and rooted in our operations within the next year or two, I will feel accomplished. I’ll be even more ecstatic if I multiply that number several times over,” she notes.
In her spare time, Griffith hangs out with her 7-year-old son at their home in Parkhurst, Region B, with whom she builds Legos, plays Minecraft video games, and watches YouTube channels. She also loves to jog, ride a bicycle, and take long walks in the City’s green parks. “I usually zoom or WhatsApp video friends and family to stay connected.”
Written by Sascha-Lee Joseph
11/03/2022