Assignment task:
In this article, it is argued that South Africa's public service employees require multiple skills, amongst others, emotional intelligence, creativity and problem-solving skills in order to meet the demands of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). The 4IR can be described as the advent of 'cyber-physical systems' involving entirely new proficiencies for people and machines, representing entirely new ways in which technology becomes embedded within societies (Davis 2016). The 4IR signals the innovative and digital transformation of entire systems of not only production but also management and administration. Sutherland (2020:233) describes the 4IR as an 'umbrella' term for three-dimensional (3D) printing, artificial intelligence (AI), big data, internet of things (IoT) and robotics. This new technological change is marked by a combination of technologies that blur the lines between the physical, digital, biological and neuro-technological spheres (Xu, David & Kim 2018:91), thereby impacting skills stability in the public service.
In that regard, the sudden upsurge in the use of advanced technologies has the potential to fundamentally alter how people live, work and think within our communities. The public service is about delivering public services and products to the society and in ways that are operationally convenient and efficient. Subsequently, the technology is re-defining the public service workforce with a combination of intelligent technology and human ingenuity.
Urgent and targeted action needs to be undertaken by governments such as South Africa in order to secure advanced technologies and thereafter establish a workforce equipped with the skills to cater for the changing economic dynamics influenced by the 4IR. Jarbandhan (2017:63) concluded that 'the ability of government systems and public authorities to adapt will determine their survival'.
The World Economic Forum (2016) projected that innovation brought about by the digital transformation would cause massive job losses. The public service is lagging behind in the adoption of technology, especially digitalisation because of its social obligation to address the triple challenges of poverty, inequality and unemployment, currently hovering around 30% (Manda & Backhouse 2017:8). As a result, there is a need to conduct research on what the public service should do to enhance its preparedness to fully embrace digitalisation of the work environment. The existing body of knowledge highlights the challenges, prospects and opportunities of the 4IR in developed countries. More research studies are needed in the context of developing countries such as South Africa.
This article, therefore, seeks to address the following research questions:
Question 1: What are the critical drivers for technological change?
What can be done by South Africa's public service to enhance its preparedness to embrace the 4IR? And What are the opportunities and challenges of embracing the 4IR?
As already alluded to, this study followed a qualitative desktop approach that focused on secondary sources of information to get insights into embracing the 4IR in the South African public service. However, to mitigate the limitation in reliance to secondary information, data from previous empirical studies were also consulted to establish balanced viewpoints regarding embracing the 4IR.
Question 2: From the given case study, what are the key challenges faced by the public service in South Africa in adopting and implementing digitalization and advanced technologies for research.