Online Administrative Services (TN0047)

Approximate administrative services through putting them online
Beginning of October 2018 – End of August 2020
Lead implementing agency/actor
Ministries involved
Commitment description
In addition to initiatives and projects aiming to develop electronic services at the national level and horizontally, this commitment is intended to establish a package of e-services at several sectors and educate people about them as follow :
- Develop an application (m-Agri) enabling citizens to obtain several services remotely in the agricultural
sector;
- Further improve and make more closer and accessible public services offered by the Land Property Register to citizens through developing some of them, receiving requests, delivery and online payment, such as consulting titles online, and obtaining various documents electronically (copies of titles, certificates of no property, certificates of property ownership and co-property, certificates of reference of acts);
- Interactive service through the National Defense Portal to view and follow-up postponement and exemption situations;
- Setting up an electronic service to monitor the distribution of support costs granted in the cultural field.
Problem/Background
The limited public services currently available online coupled with citizens’ increased need for more effective and transparent services that can be accessed as quickly and easily as possible, an advantage provided by ICT
Identification of commitment objectives/expected results
- Render services more closer to citizens and facilitate access to them; - Providing effective and simple services across several sectors.
How will the commitment contribute to solve the public problem?
This commitment will enable citizens' access to a package of services electronically without having to travel to institutions that offer these services. In addition, it provides more guarantees to benefit from these services effectively and transparently.
Relevance with OGP values
Developing e-services to promote the principles of transparency, integ- rity and fighting corruption:
Developing these services will improve the level of their use by citizens. In addition, the use of this electronic interface will further promote transpar- ency of information, procedures and adopted processes to offer these services. In addition, these services will guarantee the clear identification of responsibilities and actors involved in the service provision process, while contributing to reducing the risk of corruption that may result from direct interactions between citizens and public servants.
Source of funding/
Relation with other programs and policies
Source of funding: Budgets of Ministries involved Steps and execution agenda
Beginning of October 2018
End of October 2018
Milestone Activity with a verifiable deliverable
Start Date
End date
Contact Information
Name of the responsible person from implementing agency
1. Mr. Anis Mansour
2. Mr. Imed Hammadi
3. Mr. Faycel Yaakoubi
4. Mrs. Saloua Abdelkhalek
Title and Department
1. Director; Ministry of Agriculture, Water Resources and Fisheries
2. Director General; Ministry of State Property and Land Affairs (Land
Property Register)
3. Deputy Director; Ministry of the National Defense
4. Director; Ministry of Cultural Affairs
E-mail address
1. [email protected]
2. [email protected]
3. [email protected]
4. [email protected]

Other Actors involved
State actors involved
- Ministry of Local Affairs and Environment
CSOs, private sector, multi- laterals, working groups, Tunisian association for development and training

12. Approximate administrative services through putting them online

Language of the commitment as it appears in the action plan:

"In addition to initiatives and projects aiming to develop electronic services at the national level and horizontally, this commitment is intended to establish a package of e-services at several sectors."

Milestones:

• Develop an application (m-Agri) enabling citizens to obtain several services remotely in the agricultural sector;
• Further improve and make more closer and accessible public services offered by the Land Property Register to citizens through developing some of them, receiving requests, delivery and online payment, such as consulting titles online, and obtaining various documents electronically (copies of titles, certificates of no property, certificates of property ownership and co-property, certificates of reference of acts);
• Interactive service through the National Defense Portal to view and follow-up postponement and exemption situations;
• Setting up an electronic service to monitor the distribution of support costs granted in the cultural field.

Responsible institution: Ministry of Agriculture, Water Resources and fisheries, Ministry of State Property and Land Affairs, Ministry of the National Defense, Ministry of Cultural Affairs

Supporting institution(s): Ministry of Local Affairs and Environment, CSOs, private sectors, Multilaterals, Tunisian association for development and training

Start date: October 2018                                                       End date: August 2020

Editorial Note: This is a partial version of the commitment text. For the full commitment text from the Tunisia national action plan, see here.

Context and Objectives

This commitment is a compilation of four e-services that the government intends to provide in the sectors of agriculture, land registration, military service, and art. It aims to contribute to the effectiveness and transparency of provided services, making them easily and quickly available to citizens.

The first milestone covers the development of an application called m-Agri that enables citizens to obtain several services remotely in the agricultural sector. The IRM could not find any information about the application and therefore the type of services the application would provide remains unclear. The second milestone aims to improve the services that the Tunisian Land Property administration provides in its online portal. The third milestone plans to add an online service to the existing Ministry of Defense website to facilitate the follow-up process for military exemption and postponement applications. The fourth commitment concerns an online system to centralize information on grants awarded by the Ministry of Culture to artists that apply for financial aid, intended for use by the decision makers and artists. The final three milestones are specific enough to be verifiable.

The commitment is relevant to the OGP value of access to information, as the Land Property Register Website intends to provide new online access to titles, land operations, certificates of ownership and non-ownership, certificates of inquiry, and certificates of reference of acts. ^[50] It is also relevant to the OGP value of technology and innovation for transparency and accountability because it plans to develop e-services for the sectors of agriculture, land registration, military service, and art.

Improvements to the Land Property Register Website and the National Defense Portal and could help begin to streamline land registration and military exemption and postponement. Preceding this action plan, exemptions and postponements from military service were possible, but the follow-up process was usually long, bureaucratic, and complicated. For land registration, access to an electronic Land Property Register was restricted to the computers at the Land Registry office, and the Land Registry took a month to respond to land registration applications, according to the Doing Business index. ^[51] This commitment could limit the in-person requirements for land registration applications and military exemption and postponement. However, it may not significantly accelerate the timeline of either process, given that delays stem from bureaucratic practices. Additionally, development of m-Agri and the Ministry of Culture electronic service are not coupled with milestones to support uptake. For the electronic service, the text of the commitment does not clarify whether the information it publishes will be made available to the public, meaning that it may not introduce the external monitoring process necessary for accountability. Overall, this commitment does not incorporate assessment of citizen needs to determine the direction of e-service provision.

Next steps

To increase the impact of future commitments in this policy area, the IRM recommends the following:

• Identify government-held information in these services areas that could be proactively published as part of implementation;
• Promote mechanisms to allow citizen input to prioritize services or elements in each service area;
• Implement an outreach strategy to promote use of new online services and disseminate government held information.

12. Approximate administrative services through putting them online

Limited:

According to the OGP Tunisia repository, [113] the Ministry of Agriculture, Water Resources and Fisheries selected a developer for the mobile application “m-Agri” that enables citizens to remotely obtain agricultural services. [114] The developer identified the model and design for the application's development. The IRM researcher could not verify the existence of the beta version of the application since the published link does not lead to it. [115]

The Ministry of State Property and Land Affairs (Land Property Register) developed several online services via the Land Property Register website, such as viewing the titles and land operations online, and getting copies of titles, certificates of ownership and non-ownership, certificates of inquiry, and certificates of act references. [116]

The Ministry of the National Defense developed an e-service to follow up on postponement and exemption from military duty. According to the Tunisia OGP repository, the ministry launched the e-service and it is available at http://www.services.defense.tn/TAJNID/. The text in the Tunisia repository was published in May 2021 and IRM researcher could not establish the launch date and functionalities of the e-service.

The Ministry of Cultural Affairs started working on the development of an e-platform to monitor the support costs granted in the cultural field. [117] However, the results of their work have not been published. The winning team of a hackathon is currently developing a parallel project on opening data on subsidies to civil society in the cultural sector. The product could be integrated with the future platform. [118]