The City of Cape Town recently received an Institute of Risk Management South Africa (IRMSA) Award for its COVID-19 Dynamic Operations Framework during the IRMSA Annual Awards virtual ceremony. The City was recognised and rewarded for the Best Risk Management Initiative within the Local Government sector.
‘We could not be more grateful and proud to have received such a prestigious award for our operational response to the COVID-19 pandemic this year. We thank the IRMSA for the acknowledgment of our strategic risk management practice throughout this crisis,’ said the City’s Mayoral Committee Member for Corporate Services, Councillor Sharon Cottle.
This is the second year in a row the IRMSA has awarded the City in this category – in 2019 we received an award for our response to the Drought crisis.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the required responses confronted the City with both a health shock and an economic shock that had multiple implications and fast moving impacts for the City of Cape Town. It was therefore necessary to comprehend the risks of multiple City systems, all interlinked, simultaneously and to present these risks and their statuses to the Mayoral Committee (Mayco) and fellow Executive Management Team (EMT)on an ongoing basis.
‘The Mayco and EMT have held regular joint meetings to track the City’s response to the pandemic. We are now tracking service delivery very closely to ensure we get on top of the backlogs brought about by the COVID-19 regulations. My sincere thanks to all the dedicated officials who have been on the frontlines of the COVID-19 response serving the residents of Cape Town. It is due to these efforts that the City again receives national recognition for our crisis response and risk management plans,’ said Executive Mayor Alderman Dan Plato.
‘I believe this award speaks to the level of competence and strategic direction provided to the administration by this transversal team led by the Chief Resilience Officer.
‘The way the City responded to and coped with the extreme pressures which the COVID-19 pandemic and drought crisis presented was truly commendable. I believe the strongest point of our approach to risk management has been that we prioritise collaboration and that we are a forward-looking administration,’ said Councillor Cottle.
The COVID-19 Dynamic Operations Framework was conceptualised in late March 2020 and implemented in mid-April 2020. The Framework and its application allowed for risk management to make sense of a whole-system shock event with the use of rapidly changing data. This allowed multiple senior decision-makers the ability to understand the broad ranging impacts of the pandemic and the associated responses.
‘Through the implementation of this framework, various parts of the organisation had an understanding of how their respective areas of work were being impacted or could be impacted by other systems and processes,’ said Councillor Cottle.
The dynamism of the COVID-19 pandemic cannot be viewed only through the lens of the public health response. While the public health response was and is the dominant societal focus, similar and related attention had to be given to the disaster management response, and the City operations’ adjustments to ensure the continuation of essential service delivery.