Received: 2026-02-15  |  Accepted: 2026-04-30  |  Published: 2026-06-30

Title

Digital governance for improving service delivery and municipalities' accountability: context of South Africa


Abstract

Despite the potential benefits of digital governance across South African municipalities, there is a need for an in-depth understanding of its efficacy, challenges, and gaps in improving service delivery and fostering accountability and transparency in this context. Therefore, this paper analysed secondary sources published between 2010 and 2024 on the efficiency of digital governance in improving public service delivery and fostering accountability across the South African local municipalities. The review paper has identified factors that can improve digital governance, as well as potential challenges and gaps that contribute to its ineffectiveness. The findings show that to ensure effective service delivery through the use of digital governance, it is important to invest in ICT infrastructure and to capacitate the municipal officials in the use of digital municipal governance tools to improve accountability and transparency.


Keywords

accountability, digital governance, local governance, service delivery


JEL classifications

H30


URI

http://jssidoi.org/ird/article/252


DOI


Pages

82-94


Funding


This is an open access issue and all published articles are licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Authors

Pindo, Abongile
Human Science Research Council (HSRC), Pretoria, South Africa https://hsrc.ac.za
Articles by this author in: CrossRef |  Google Scholar

Journal title

Insights into Regional Development

Volume

8


Number

2


Issue date

June 2026


Issue DOI


ISSN

ISSN 2345-0282 (online)


Publisher

VšĮ Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Center, Vilnius, Lithuania

Cited

Google Scholar

Article views & downloads

HTML views: 374  |  PDF downloads: 271

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Dr Abongile PINDO is a PhD research trainee at Human Science Research Council (HSRC) and hold Dr of Philosophy in anthropology development studies and her research focuses on community and rural development and innovation.

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