Recent Perspectives of Sustainable Local Economic Development: The Role of Informatics in Determining Municipal Revenue Management

This chapter discusses the challenges undermining the ability of smaller municipalities in South Africa
(SA) to raise revenue to sustain local economic development (SLED). The concept of enactment of
technology-in-practice (ETiP) of Structuration Theory (ST) was adopted as a lens to understand and
interpret the factors hindering the implementation of relevant legislation e.g., the municipal property
rates Act of 2004 (MPRA) for SLED. The purpose of the study was to determine the role informatics
can play in the implementation of MPRA to institutionalise its provisions to improve revenue collection.
An extensive investigation in twenty-five (25) smaller municipalities across SA indicated a number of
factors suggested by ETiP have impacted on the implementation of MPRA and property rates
collection. The view is that implementation of legislation e.g., MPRA is similar to the deployment of
ICT solutions in governments. Thus, in the world of social theory, legislation implementation is a
socio-technical phenomenon with significant political, economic and social components. The finding of
the study is a general framework as a lens through which factors influencing SLED can be understood
and interpreted to provide a richer understanding of the complexity associated with the role of
informatics in government revenue management to drive SLED.