Edition July 2025

Matthew Chetty is at the forefront of modernising South Africa’s public sector through the development of smart, integrated digital systems, particularly in healthcare.

A trailblazer in digital transformation, Chetty serves as the Impact Area Manager for e-Government at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), an entity of the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation (DSTI).

Chetty believes that technology should serve people, enhance service delivery, ensure accessibility, and promote equity.

He says e-government initiatives are not only intended to meet current challenges, but also to anticipate future needs, moving South Africa towards an era wherein technology, governance and service delivery converge to create meaningful change.

“Our unit seeks to leverage digital technologies to support the development of a capable state and to improve service delivery, thereby driving socio-economic transformation, which is one of the organisation’s key strategic objectives,” he explains.

Using digital technology to support government

He adds that the CSIR has over the years applied digital technology innovations to support a wide range of government priorities.

His role involves setting the group’s overall strategy, stakeholder engagement and management, leading business development, securing sufficient sales to ensure the group’s sustainability and growth, and ensuring delivery on various client contracts.

Through his work, the CSIR supports the implementation of the National Health Insurance (NHI) by developing some of the required technology. The NHI aims to provide universal health coverage in the country.

“We have been supporting the Department of Health since 2011 in the developing of national foundational digital health systems. We have the Health Patient Registration System, which is deployed in more than 3 000 clinics in the country and serves as the national authoritative source of patient demographic information,” he said.

The system also generates the unique patient identification number, which is critical for patient identification and interoperability across the health sector.

Data-driven decision-making

By creating a unified digital identity for each beneficiary, Chetty says the system ensures the continuity of care and strengthens data-driven decision-making.

Another initiative is the Electronic Vaccine Data System (EVDS), which was used in the private and public health sector for managing the national COVID-19 vaccination programme.

“At the peak of the vaccination programme, EVDS was used by more than 4 000 vaccination sites in the country. The system facilitated real-time scheduling and tracking of millions of vaccine doses, proving that large-scale digital health solutions are both feasible and effective in South Africa,” he said.

Other initiatives championed by Chetty and his team include Master Health Facility List, which provides a national database of healthcare-related facilities in the country along with their service offerings, and the Health Normative Standards Framework, which provides a prescriptive set of technical standards and profiles to facilitate interoperability between diverse health information systems.

“These foundational digital systems and national databases are critical for implementing universal health coverage initiatives in the country, notably in establishing the information platform required for the NHI,” he says.

He adds that the National Electronic Health Record System revolutionises how patient information is stored, accessed, and shared across the healthcare network, facilitating the seamless and secure flow of person-centred healthcare information across institutional and provincial boundaries.

“These systems are critically important in the context of our health environment, especially as we transition towards NHI," Chetty explains.

Career journey

Chetty completed a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering from the then University of Durban-Westville in 1996. He also holds a Master of Science Degree in Management of Technology and Innovation from the Da Vinci Institute, which he completed in 2018. He also completed the CSIR’s Executive Development Programme with the University of Cape Town in 2024.

Early in his career, after a stint at the CSIR as a network planning engineer, he worked for the then New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) (now African Union Development Agency-NEPAD) and later for the Advanced Micro Devices Foundation.

“These roles allowed me the opportunity to implement various information communication technology for development initiatives across the African continent, notably the NEPAD e-Schools initiative that introduced technology assisted learning in close to 100 schools across 16 countries in Africa,” he explained.

He rejoined the CSIR in 2011 as Competency Area Manager for Integrative Systems, Platforms and Technologies. With the implementation of CSIR’s synapse strategy in 2018, a new Impact Area called e-Government was established, and he was appointed Manager of the e-Government Impact Area.

Taking technology to the marginalised

He says providing communities in deep rural areas with access to digital technologies and the opportunities they offer has been a long-standing objective of the CSIR e-Government Impact Area.

“For more than 20 years, we have worked with government, notably the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development, and the DSTI, to implement various rural ICT access technologies – from rural ICT centres to school ICT laboratories to Digital Doorways.

“The Digital Doorway initiative provides communities with access to computers and the internet in fully self-contained containers. Through these initiatives, we estimate that more than a million children across the most rural areas in our country have been able to teach themselves vital computer skills,” he explains.

Another area of critical importance is the monitoring of our oceans and coasts. Under the leadership of the Department of Fisheries, Forestry and the Environment, the CSIR has developed the Oceans and Coasts Information Management Systems (OCIMS).

OCIMS uses satellite imagery for real-time monitoring of South Africa’s vast coastline. “The National Sea Rescue Institute uses the system to plan rescue operations for people lost at sea. It can also detect harmful algae bloom in the ocean, allowing for proactive measures to be taken to protect our fisheries, and detect ships engaged in illegal fishing activities,” he explains.

Given the increasing threat of cyberattacks on information systems, Chetty believes that securing information systems is of paramount importance. “We work closely with information security experts at the CSIR to continuously build diverse safeguards into the development and operation of information systems. We continuously monitor threats and potential vulnerabilities,” he concluded. ❖