The Mozambican president said on Wednesday that the digitalisation of public services requires a change in the mindset of public servants, arguing that the process must eliminate bureaucracy and the culture of “refrescos” that fuels corruption.
“It is not enough to modernise equipment if procedures remain slow, complex, bureaucratic and distant from people’s needs. We do not want to digitalise bureaucracy. We want to put an end to unnecessary bureaucracy. That is why we do not want to digitalise only services, but also the minds of public servants,” said Mozambique’s President, Daniel Chapo.
Chapo was speaking in Maputo at the opening of the Citizen Connect Africa – Mozambique conference, dedicated to digital transformation and the modernisation of public services. He argued that it is not enough to create digital platforms if citizens still have to visit several institutions to resolve a single problem.
“We want a state that operates in an integrated manner, in which institutions cooperate, systems communicate with one another and services are organised around citizens’ needs. It makes no sense for citizens to have to provide the same information repeatedly to different state institutions,” he said.
“It makes no sense for a document issued by a public institution to be inaccessible to another institution on the same platform when legally permitted. We want citizens to be able to deal with their concerns from home, on their phones, without having to travel,” he added.
Centro Pronto
The Ministry of Communications and Digital Transformation yesterday presented Centro Pronto, a platform designed to facilitate the delivery of services to citizens. The head of state said the tool should be accessible above all in the country’s rural areas.
“We want the state to organise itself internally to serve citizens better, rather than forcing citizens to walk the corridors of the state to resolve matters that institutions can settle among themselves. We want a state in which technology simplifies procedures, reduces costs, increases transparency, strengthens trust in public institutions, and fights corruption and bureaucracy,” Chapo said.
The president added that digital transformation must take into account the fact that not all Mozambicans have access to the internet, arguing that these solutions must be accompanied by the expansion of infrastructure to support communities.
Chapo also argued that digital transformation should enable businesses to obtain licences more quickly, establish companies faster and gain time to invest, produce and create jobs.
“When investors encounter clear, transparent and predictable procedures, confidence in our country increases. Digital transformation is precisely about cutting red tape in the state, fighting corruption and other unlawful practices in order to increase the confidence of our domestic and foreign investors,” he said, adding that digital services should also support the development of domestic tourism.
The head of state argued that the impact of digitalisation should be measured by tangible improvements in citizens’ lives, through reductions in the time, costs and obstacles involved in accessing public services.
“We want to measure this success by the time citizens no longer lose, the distances they no longer have to travel, the costs they no longer have to bear and the obstacles they no longer have to face. That is why the true measure of digital transformation must be an improvement in people’s lives,” he concluded.
The conference took in Maputo, bringing together representatives from Botswana, South Africa, Tanzania, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Madagascar, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Kenya, Senegal and Brazil, sharing experiences of the digitalisation of public services.
Source: Lusa