Adoption of e-Government and Digital Inclusion (MW0008)

Brief Description of the Commitment

The commitment seeks to enhance Government’s capacity to utilize ICT in service delivery while increasing citizen utilization of ICT in accessing information in order to make service delivery transparent, responsive and accountable

Problem Definition

8. What problem does the commitment aim to address?

The commitment seeks to address the problem of underdevelopment and underutilization of digital and electronic facilities for delivering services in the Government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs). It also seeks to address low ICT penetration among the Malawian population. The four specific problems to addressed are as follows:
a) Manual processes for service delivery which are slow, inefficient and prone to loss of documents which delay service uptake. The problem is pervasive across the entire public service. It is associated with low levels of transparency and accountability for service delivery.
b) Personalization and loss of official information and records due to use of personal webbased email systems that are prone to cyber-attacks and preclude transparency and accountability as the emails are personal and not accessible for verification by supervisors to ensure responsive services;
c) Silo mentality - an attitude within the public sector where MDAs or teams do not share knowledge, data or information or do not ordinarily collaborate with one another, leading to delays and other inefficiencies in delivering services that straddle several MDAs.
d) High cost of digital gadgets and data which limit ICT uptake or penetration and use of digital means of accessing public information.

9. What are the causes of the problem?

Manual Process There is inadequate and unreliable ICT equipment and infrastructure for most of the Ministries Departments and Agencies. As a result, officers still have to provide services and do so using available means which are manual. Also, even when equipment is available, there are frequent system failures (‘network problems’) so much that urgent transactions are carried out using parallel manual systems. However, the non-use of systems (such as the Integrated Financial Management Information system-IFMIS) allows malfeasance to happen but also creates gaps in electronic records and affect transparency. A good number of government employees are technophobic. One reason for this state is that many of them do not have sufficient ICT skills to enable them carry out work transactions and provide the services that they are required to provide using ICT. Even for the slightest glitches, they need an ICT specialist to sort it out for them;

Personalization of official information This problem is attributed to the unreliability of government ICT infrastructure. It is reported that the Government Wide Area Network (GWAN) is often down. Consequently, people resort to using web-based email. Furthermore, there is a culture of co-mingling personal and official information in pretty much the same way that formal and informal stuff are mixed which creates the incentive to shun use of official emails when it suits officers and avoid accountability.

Silo mentality The silo mentality is attributed to the tendency of MDAs to protect their mandates in order to safeguard their budget allocations or to just maintain political and bureaucratic relevance. Furthermore, it is worsened by the absence of a shared database that MDAs can access and use to provide services to citizens especially those services whose transaction cover several MDAs. NB: At the core of the causation of the three foregoing problem is inadequate or sub-optimal institutional leadership on ICT leadership within the Government Service. The Department of E-Government has structural, institutional and human resource challenges that constrain it from effectively driving the ICT uptake and deployment in Government MDAs.

High cost of digital equipment and data This is attributed to the cost of importation, currency fluctuations and government taxes.

Commitment Description

7. What has been done so far to solve the problem?

Various initiatives have been or are being implemented. Some of these are as follows: The Government has adopted a digital transformation roadmap focusing on egovernment and digital services beyond the Government realm.

a) The Department of E-Government has rolled out a Digital Government Transformation Agenda which focuses on delivering better and more accessible digital services to the citizenry including modernizing public service delivery, securing and controlling citizens personal information, adopting cloud technologies to deliver better digital services, and increasing the transparency of digital Government services
b) Efforts to improve broadband coverage, from the 38% to 75% through licensing over 30 community broadband operators.
c) Malawi is spearheading the formation of diplomatic data corridors with its neighbouring countries in a bid to reduce the cost of data. The diplomatic data corridors will enable Malawi to have affordable and meaningful internet connectivity.
d) An annual targeted Innovation and Research Fund for the youth, in partnership with the private sector, to the tune of $350,000.00 per year to ensure secure and sustainable funding for young innovators in Malawi.
e) Government through the Public Private Partnerships Commission launched Digital Skills and Innovation Grants aimed at transforming the digital space in Malawi. It will provide free public WIFI and internet connectivity in 500 public institutions and has disbursed resources to six Tech Hubs to impart digital skills to youths.

8. What solution are you proposing? Institutional review and strengthening of the Department of E-Government to make it ‘fit for purpose’ in form, mandate and functionality, to effectively drive digitalization of transactions and service delivery across the public sector. This requires a functional review of the Department of E-Government with a view to making it a more autonomous quasi government agency, an enhanced mandate for setting standards on ICT usage and enforcing them across the public sector and ensuring ICT- based harmonization, coordination and sharing of databases and platforms for e-services.

9. What results do we want to achieve by implementing this commitment? What outputs would we like to produce? What changes in knowledge, skills, and capacities do we want to achieve? What changes in behavior, systems, and practices do we want to create?

The following results are expected:
i. The Department of E-Government transforms in form, mandate and authority to accelerate digitalization of transactions and service delivery across the public sector;
ii. Efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery using ICT in selected sectors
iii. Interoperability i.e. connectedness of information systems and sharing of database by MDAs

Commitment Analysis

4. How will the commitment promote transparency? How will it help improve citizens’ access to information and data? How will it make the government more transparent to citizens? Use of ICT in service delivery enables citizens to track the status of their requested services and generates useful trail for accountability. It will also create a conducive environment for proactive disclosures of information about services by the MDAs through digital means.

5. How will the commitment help foster accountability? How will it help public agencies become more accountable to the public? How will it facilitate citizens’ ability to learn how the implementation is progressing? How will it support transparent monitoring and evaluation systems? Digital governance will enhance the accountability and transparency of government business through automation of transactions which generates unadulterated audit trails necessary for accountability when it becomes necessary. Also proactive disclosures of information enable citizens and CSOs to track progress and developments and may raise red flags or blow the whistle when anomalies occur and trigger accountability mechanisms

6. How will the commitment improve citizen participation in defining, implementing, and monitoring solutions? How will it proactively engage citizens and citizen groups? Digitalization of government services and proactive disclosure of information through electronic means will enable access to information by media groups and civic groups that will disseminate the same through many other means and whip up public interest in defining problems and solutions and advocating for implementation modalities that ensure transparency, inclusiveness and responsiveness. Furthermore, with the help of E-Government, MDAs will develop web-based interactive platforms through which they can ask for specific information and submit their suggestions on service delivery that respond to their needs. The specific MDAs that the EGovernment Department will work with will rollout public education programs on how citizens can access their services digitally. As part of reviewing the performance of the ICT infrastructure, the Department of E-Government in collaboration with Civil society Organization such as MEJN may carry out citizen satisfaction surveys with digital services. This will enhance citizen voice and hopefully make the ICT designs responsive to citizen feedback.

Commitment Milestones

Institutional Review and Restructuring of Dept of EGovernment [Institutional Review report Establishment charter or statutory of a revamped EGovernment agency]

MDAs have active digital interactive platforms for disclosing information to the public [MDAs compliance with the ATIA. Capacity development of MDAs on Digitalization and orientation on the ICT platforms for sharing information with the public. MDAs have active digital interface with the public including websites and mobile phone interfaces]

Groups of citizens are actively accessing digital information and monitoring the performance of the MDAs [Civil society is actively monitoring information from the selected MDAs and ensuring publicity for citizen engagement. Citizens have more access to ICT services and ICT gadgets]