The City of Johannesburg celebrated its employees’ innovative excellence through the Smart City Employee Innovation Award recognition ceremony at the Joburg Theatre on 28 March 2024. Hosted by Executive Mayor Cllr Kabelo Gwamanda and Member of the Mayoral Committee (MMC) for Group Corporate and Shared Services Cllr Loyiso Masuku, in collaboration with Wits University, the event marked an initiative by the City of Johannesburg’s Smart City office in the City Manager’s Office. This event aimed to recognise innovations from employees that reduce costs, promote Smart City initiatives, enhance service delivery, and contribute to workplace efficiencies within the City. Mayor Gwamanda expressed pride in hosting such initiatives, stating: “The City is proud to host initiatives that represent growth and opportunity to improve services within the City. I am very proud of all participants and their contributions. It means I am not the only one defending the City. There is other practical work being done by employees in the City behind the scenes.

“Initiatives like these give us an opportunity to regain the name of our City. We need to create an environment in the City that is conducive with partners that are coming with critical resources required to take the City forward.”

MMC Masuku encouraged a workplace culture where suggestions and ideas matter. 

She expressed pride in the 36 entries and stressed the need to extend innovative solutions to communities for better municipal operations.

Monique Griffith, the head of Innovation Partnerships at the municipality’s Smart City office, highlighted the envisioned results of innovation challenges, aiming to develop an innovation management system that streamlines and renews the City’s operations.

“It has allowed the best employee ideas to come to the surface and be piloted within their departments or the City as a whole. It also allows highly productive and dedicated employees to be recognized and rewarded,” said Griffith.

The awards were divided into different categories: Recognition Awards and New Ideas. 

Tumelo Komape was awarded the Recognition Awards for implementing a cloud-based solution and using the Zoho platform to automate City’s queries traffic.

In the New Ideas category, winners included Lesego Mlambo for creating an African 3D Map Maze exhibition, Linda Nkosi for devising a process to use KPIs and KPAs from all units to track performance and rotation for staff, and Lindani Skhakhane and Lindo Dlamini for creating an intelligent resource management app for the City’s libraries.

Mark Harris, the CEO of Wits Tshimologong Precinct, congratulated the winners, emphasising the city’s ambition to become the recognised innovative city in Africa.

Written by Sascha-Lee Joseph

02/04/2024

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