While much hope is being invested in the new Cabinet and government ushering in a fresh beginning for SA, the reality is that as long as the core system of governance is radically altered to embrace a rapidly changing digital world and 'big data', it is likely to be business as usual. In a Business Day analysis, Luci Abrahams, director at the Link Centre, Wits University, and Mark Burke, visiting researcher and convener of the Frontiers of Digital Government Programme at the centre, say because the design of SA's government, like most others worldwide, is based on the outdated Weberian model of state organisation developed in the 18th century, it will continue to be a barrier to real development which does not allow for the flexibility needed today. 'One of the most dramatic influencing factors to emerge since the turn of the 21st century is the extent to which digital technologies now shape our lives. Increasingly, they are impacting ... the relationship that citizens have with the state, the nature of policy-making, and the opportunities and constraints for delivery of services.' Ramaphosa's new administration, they say, 'must take account of the changing conditions under which this administration will come into being and must, by design, be congruent and responsive to major developments impacting the ability of the government to perform'. The current model sees governments arranged as organisational units concerned with the provision of services to meet specific needs, such as education, healthcare and welfare, or support for economic sectors, such as agriculture, mining and various branches of industry ... trapping them in modes of operation that are confined to narrow, sectorally focused approaches to problem-solving, they write. 'This limits the flexibility necessary to respond to continuously changing ways of living and doing business.' Big data, however, has the potential to better target distinct packages of social insurance to the most marginalised in society, with predictive analytics capable of modelling cause and effect to channel support to the most effective forms of social insurance, the writers argue. But the value of these kinds of digital technologies can only be harvested optimally for policy-making and service delivery when large scale data sets are established in ways that enable databases to interface with each other to form cross-departmental digital platforms, they say, adding that the major challenge for the government is not the technical infrastructure, but the re-organisation of the institutional arrangements that make possible a citizen-centric approach to policy-making and service delivery. 'Rehashing a mode of organisation fit for the 20th century is unlikely to enable government to cope with the complex governance and service challenges of this century.'