About e-Template

Why e-Template?

The IDP is still evolving and everyone agrees that there are many areas where refinement and even in some cases, a major overhaul is required. IDP information and therefore information captured by the IDP Nerve Centre will rely on the extent whereto municipalities succeed over time in "getting the IDP right".

Municipalities create and use a massive amount of IDP planning, budgeting and project-based information.  Gathering and assisting municipalities to manage this information is a top priority for the IDP Nerve Centre. Currently, many municipalities capture this information via insufficient processes and in different formats, ranging from paper-based copies or electronically, ranging from documents to spreadsheets, presentations and email. Others have build custom, in-house mostly stand-alone, access-based applications, making access to this information virtually impossible by external organisations. Because of the difficulty of extracting and reusing current IDP information from these different processes and methods, users of this information must often re-type or recapture this information leading to data entry errors. Moreover, key decision makers are unable to make informed decisions because the IDP information they need is either trapped within IDP documents or is sitting on some consultant or official's computer. 

e-Template was designed to address all of these needs. It streamlines the process of gathering key planning and project-based information at regular time intervals.  The IDP Nerve Centre will make use of e-Template to define a standard set of electronic template forms, each focusing on a particular aspect of the IDP. The e-Template tool will not only request information that is likely to be currently available but will take note of the current limitations or even total absence of certain key IDP information and direct the municipal environment towards a more ideal state. In this case, the e-Template will not only request IDP information that might be available but will start serving as a powerful tool to point out to municipalities the importance of maintaining certain key IDP information. 

How does the e-Template work?

Essentially, the IDP Nerve Centre staff will set up and serve the electronic templates to municipalities and departments. The e-Template tool is flexible enough to cater for different circumstances. Serving templates would be done in several ways, of which the following serves as a couple of examples:

By email

  1. The organisation or user receives an email, requesting the supply or reminding them to update key information;
  2. The user is prompted to login by asking for his/her username and password;
  3. The user is taken to the exact location in the IDP Nerve Centre containing the template form;
  4. The user then captures new or validates existing planning and project-based information, and then submits the template form for processing;
  5. Depending on the workflow state, the template is adjusted and the data submitted.

By accessing the e-Template application of the IDP Nerve Centre

Alternatively, it will be possible for registered users to go directly into the e-Template application of the IDP Nerve Centre, where they will be able to access the following:

  1. "Inbox" to see whether there is any new template forms that need to be completed by a certain date;
  2. "Outbox" to view template forms that have been submitted in the past; and
  3. "Calendar" to see what template forms users might expect in upcoming months.

These three basic elements have the advantage that the organisation will know at all times what information still needs to be supplied/updated ("Inbox"), what has been supplied ("Outbox") and what information needs to be supplied/updated in the near future ("Calendar").

What are the benefits of e-Template?

Updating and maintaining IDP information will be an ongoing task. Although the IDP Nerve Centre will be using different techniques, the e-Template provides a sustainable way of managing the capturing and maintenance of key information.

  1. The e-Template serves both as a reminder and provides the means whereby departments and municipalities can update key planning and project-based information;
  2. Information that is supplied by the user on the e-Template form will be available in the e-Project application of the IDP Nerve Centre. This means that the user would be able to access, edit and report on their own information instantaneously;
  3. The e-Template provides an effective medium whereby the IDP Nerve Centre will request and maintain key IDP information in a standardised way. Standardisation is essential not only for the sake of analysing information but will add significantly to increase the mutual understanding and subsequent interpretation of key planning and project-based information throughout government;
  4. The information collected by the e-Template form can be used by many different systems and processes because the information is stored as XML (For further details refer to e-Xchange);
  5. e-Template forms can be updated, revised and repeatedly served making it possible for the user to see what he/she might have supplied in the past;
  6. e-Template forms validates user input according to rules created by the form designer, and the form will alert users immediately when input does not appear valid; and
  7. The e-Template component of the IDP Nerve Centre enables users to begin working on a form and save the incomplete form for later completion and submission.