The impending collaborative activities by Business Botswana and Botswana Unified Revenue Service (BURS) in encouraging the uptake of e-services could finally provide the business community with better tools and information to do business.
The automation of government process, referred to as e-Gov, has in the past decade remained a concern to BB with particular reference to the inability of the business community to effectively deal with government processes. This concern was previously cited by BB in its response to the 2015/16 budget speech when it vehemently expressed the limited progress by government to implement its electronic platform.
“The opportunities that such a game changing tool could bring to the economy continue to be missed,” said BB. The slow implementation was regarded by BB as a threat to doing business in the country as it impedes the delivery of products and services by the business community.
The e-services tool forms part of the broader e-Gov electronic government. The process is expected to start on 9 August 2016 where a workshop will be held in Gaborone, with the last of the five workshops ending on 19 September 2016 in the same city. The other places include Francistown, Selibe Phikwe and Maun whose workshops will be held on 18, 19 and 29 August 2016 respectively.
According to information from BB the e-services exercise is intended to rollout the e-services platform and create a feedback mechanism from the business community; give the business community an opportunity to interact with BURS on a one-on-one basis so that they are able to better appreciate the e-services platform and lastly to enable BURS to share information which will help the business community to become complaint with just the click of a button. The workshops will be provided for free.
BURS has previously bemoaned of limited resources to expend a wide reach to the business community in terms of encouraging and ensuring compliance, the e-services tool could therefore be seen as a relief to the limitation of BURS. This could also be seen as a benefit to the business community as it will assist them to build better suited business models. Access to readily available information and tool results will enable businesses to deliver effectively.
