© Kamla-Raj 2016 J Communication, 7(2): 246-251 (2016) Electronic Governance Tools as Support Systems for the Public Service in South Africa Tafadzwa Clementine Maramura 1 and D. R. Thakhathi 2 University of Fort Hare, Department of Public Administration, Private Bag, X1314, Alice, 5700, Republic of South Africa E-mail: 1 < tmaramura@gmail.com>, 2 <rthakhathi@ufh.ac.za> KEYWORDS Communication. Innovation. Public Management. Service Delivery. Technology ABSTRACT This paper uses a secondary study approach to examine electronic governance tools and their contribution to the South African public service. The primary objective of the paper was to explore on the experiences of electronic-governance as support systems on service delivery in the public service. Through the secondary study approach, the paper reveals that electronic governance is one of the primary means of supporting social and economic development. The paper concludes that for electronic governance to be a sturdy support system it should take into account the needs of society, the developmental goals of government as well as the empowerment of citizenry in the public service. INTRODUCTION The power of technology is undoubtedly taking over traditional methods of carrying out tasks either in the private sector or public sector within developing nations because people are looking for better and faster means of service provision. The vision of e-governance is to as- certain the optimization of public services so that the government can achieve its goals of governing through efficient delivery of public services (Pardo et al. 2016). Simultaneously elec- tronic governance does not bring new public services, but it provides a support system for the existing public service with the ultimate ben- efit for both the government and the public. The government of South Africa is in the process of making a lot of investments by extending the communication infrastructure to the remotest parts of the country so as to bridge the gap in the quality of service provision that has been built on racial public service from the pre-1994 era (DPSA 2015). There however continues to be high expectations to the government with respect to improved public service as proven by the recurring public service delivery protests (DPSA 2015). Such expectations are not unique to the public service and in this regard there is a need for the South African government to recog- nize that the implementation of e-governance will afford them the opportunity to enhance service delivery for the benefit of the general populace. The implementation of e-governance has been extensively commended in that it provides innovative momentum to deliver services quick- ly and efficiently (Evans and Yen 2006). In rec- ognition of these benefits, various arms of the South African government have already em- barked on a number of e-governance initiatives including the Batho Pele portal, the South Afri- ca Revenue Services e-filing system, the e-Natis system, electronic processing of grant applica- tions from remote sites and several departmen- tal web portals (StatsSA 2015). Although the South African public service is committing to the delivery of electronic services, they are still not accessible to the regular and marginalized citizen. This is coupled by the fact that South Africa is one of the most unequal societies in the world due to the increasingly widening gap between the rich and the poor as proven by the Gini co-efficiency of 63.1 (World Bank Data 2016). Areas with high poverty rates lack access to most public services since these areas are eco- nomically backward and they also lack exten- sive development of various interlinking net- works and infrastructure to public services (World Bank Data 2016). This implies that in- creasing e-governance in the public service as a support system will leverage the infrastructure to ultimately assist the marginalized citizens through the provision of local electronic servic- es (Ijeoma and Nwaodu 2013). METHODOLOGY Qualitative research is characterized by the fact that the researcher attempts to get multiple