GovTech Spring Series

8:00 am – 9:30 am, Monday, May 16, 2022 (EDT)

GovTech Impact in EAP: Efficient Government Systems and Citizen-centric Services in Cambodia and Myanmar

EVENT RECORDING | PPT 1 | PPT 2

OVERVIEW

The GovTech initiative, launched in 2019 and supported by the GovTech Global Partnership, utilizes technology to modernize public service.  World Bank client countries have been increasingly requesting support to design and improve advanced digital transformation programs.

The GovTech case study notes — GovTech Case Studies: Solutions that Work — provide concrete experiences of GovTech solutions that have been successfully implemented.  

These experiences will be shared in a series of events that will highlight the challenges, objectives, digital solutions, results, and lessons learned. The second BBL will introduce GovTech solutions adopted and implemented in Cambodia and Myanmar. The government of Cambodia was able to maximize the benefits of the Financial Management Information System (FMIS) through enhancing business process streamlining and facilitating change management. In Myanmar, the GovTech intervention, a mobile application and a web-based dashboard, facilitated the identification and registration of over 290,000 potential beneficiaries of the Maternal and Child Cash Transfers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

WHAT WE WILL LEARN

• How GovTech solutions contributed to efficient government systems and citizen-centric public services in Cambodia and Myanmar.
• Why adequate and ongoing attention to business process streamlining and change management is important in implementing FMIS and what results were achieved in Cambodia.
• Which digital technologies were adopted in the mobile application and they facilitated the registration process in Myanmar.

PROGRAM / SPEAKERS

RELATED 

• GovTech Case Studies: Solutions that Work (Summary Infographic)
• Cambodia: Maximizing the Benefits of FMIS (Case Study Note)
• Myanmar: Mobile Phones for Maternal and Child Cash Transfers (Case Study Note)

12:00 PM – 13:30 PM, Tuesday, May 17, 2022 (EDT)

Tech Savvy: Advancing GovTech reforms in Public Administration

EVENT RECORDING | PPT-1

OVERVIEW

GovTech has increasingly become an effective way for governments to respond to citizen needs and improve the effectiveness and efficiency of public service delivery. GovTech can serve as the core foundation for the digital economy, providing the foundation for the private sector to use GovTech digital platforms and digital services and providing digital enablers for digital entrepreneurship, ecommerce, and digital financial services.

Despite this increased focus on GovTech, all too often digital technology projects fail to deliver on the promised outcomes, take longer, and cost more than expected. There are many reasons why digital technology projects do not succeed in the public sector as well as they do in the private sector. In short, insufficient attention is paid to the analogue complements for these projects to succeed. GovTech projects often struggle to overcome coordination challenges and secure the sustained political commitment to see them through. The vast sums involved in procuring GovTech solutions also lead to additional challenges, including navigating complex public procurement rules as well as fraud and corruption.

Tech Savvy: Advancing GovTech Reforms in Public Administration focuses on three key analogue complements that support GovTech implementation: whole-of-government coordination, building and retaining civil service digital skills and supporting leadership and culture for innovation in public sector organizations. The report elaborates on these three C’s and how to strengthen them to support government digital transformation. Each chapter includes lessons, recommendations, and country examples to inform policymakers and practitioners.

WHAT WE WILL LEARN

• Understand how government coordination, building and retaining civil service digital skill capacity and supporting leadership and culture for innovation impacts on GovTech implementation.
• Share the results of a new GovTech survey module – Assessing Digital Readiness, Skills and the Organizational Climate for Innovation in Public Administration.
• Lessons and recommendations for policy makers and practitioners to strengthen coordination, capacity and culture to support effective government digital transformation.

PROGRAM / SPEAKERS

RELATED 

• Tech Savvy : Advancing GovTech Reforms in Public Administration (Full Report)

11:30 am – 13:00 pm, Thursday, May 19, 2022 (EDT)

Service Upgrade: Modernizing Services for Efficiency and Accessibility

EVENT RECORDING | PPT

OVERVIEW

Citizen-centric service delivery is core to the World Bank approach to GovTech, and many governments are undertaking efforts to modernize publicly provided services to citizens and businesses. These include using technology to better target, track, and deliver services. Putting the citizen at the center of service design and delivery implies focusing design of services around the needs and preferences of the user. Migrating to digital service delivery provides governments with opportunities to redesign services with the user in mind, identify redundancies, and automate decision-making for more inclusive services. These services can, in turn, raise citizen satisfaction with service delivery, a key indicator under Sustainable Development Goal 16.6.

The rapid pace of digitalization brought important opportunities to expand access to and improve the quality of administrative services. As of 2020, over 140 countries had deployed government-provided e-services and unified service portals.  The COVID-19 pandemic made digital service delivery even more relevant in times of remote government, lockdowns and social distancing. However, these solutions and services may be limited in their user-centricity, quality and efficiency. Further, the benefits of e-services do not accrue equally to everyone in society, and the disabled may lose the opportunity to gain from new technological approaches unless their concerns are carefully integrated into service design and delivery.

Service Upgrade: a GovTech Approach to Citizen Centered Services provides practical guidance on service modernization to governments, practitioners, and task teams, and how citizen centricity can be incorporated into each stage of the process. The guide provides information on how to incorporate citizen centricity in the four stages: rationalization, re-engineering, digitization, and delivery to increase quality of services to meet citizen needs and preferences. Service modernization is an iterative process that is contingent on country context, and the note identifies potential challenges, both technical and non-technical, that countries may face in each stage and provides tips to encourage citizen engagement into each stage of the reform, including inclusive accessible service delivery.

The World Bank Guidebook for Accessible GovTech aims to provide development practitioners and governments with steps and actions to mainstream accessibility concerns in the development of GovTech projects and adopt accessibility as a systematic feature of digital solutions in the provision of public services. Persons with visual, hearing, cognitive, learning, dexterity, and mobility disabilities can use voice recognition and text-to-speech, short message service (SMS), instant messaging, video messaging, and hands-free navigation to participate in their communities and independently interact with government agencies and services. Designing GovTech solutions to be accessible to people with disabilities (PWDs) could result in opening independent access to government services for the first time to a significant proportion of citizens.

WHAT WE WILL LEARN

• Learn the stages and activities that comprise a service modernization reform and how to incorporate citizen centricity based on country experiences.
• Understand opportunities and challenges surrounding each stage of the modernization process, including rationalization of services, re-engineering services, digitization and delivery.
• Understand how to incorporate accessibility into service design and delivery.

PROGRAM / SPEAKERS

RELATED

• Service Upgrade: The GovTech Approach to Citizen Centered Services (Report)