It was a wonderful privilege for my first experience of completing a Digital Government Review to take place at the invitation of the government of Panama and under João’s excellent leadership.
Available as both PDF or HTML publication
What’s the TL;DR?
Digital Government Reviews give us an opportunity to get under the skin of the digital government practices of a country. We send out a survey to every government agency, we use the material that countries submit for the Digital Government Index, and we spend a week interviewing (with country peers) as many government agencies as possible.
The whole process is quite intense but they offer a fascinating snapshot of what’s happening in a country. It was also great to spend the week on mission with Barbara and João as well as the peers of Frank (from Belgium), Kareen (from Chile) and Cristina (from Spain) to gain their insight and wisdom from their different backgrounds. We were also so well hosted by Irvin and his team at the National Authority for Government Innovation (AIG) in Panama.
In this case the focus for Panama was on governance, capabilities, data and services. I was asked to focus on data and services (chapters 3 and 4 of the review).
We recognised that Panama has long championed the value of digital government and built some good foundations and this sets up a lot of opportunities for future development, if they can build the cross-government momentum to collaborate and work together. We made a series of recommendations that I’ll include below but if you want to really understand the state of digital in Panama you should probably read the whole thing.
Available as both PDF or HTML publication
Key policy recommendations
Strengthening Governance
- Prioritise a strategic shift in the digital government framework towards efforts that reinforce the country’s digital maturity and encourage greater involvement from the ecosystem of stakeholders for better policy alignment and value creation.
- Continue supporting the relevance and mandate of AIG as the national public sector organisation responsible for leading and coordinating the development of digital government, prioritising the evolution of some of its responsibilities.
- Strengthen coordination mechanisms inter-departmentally to secure coherent and sustainable policy implementation, shared ownership and responsibility for the development of a digitally-enabled state.
- Continue efforts to keep the legal and regulatory frameworks updated that can allow Panama to enhance the digital transformation.
Building Institutional Capacities
- Reinforce the level of priority attributed to the development of digital skills in the public sector that can properly sustain the country’s efforts and ambitions towards a digitally-enabled state.
- Amplify the use of policy levers such as business cases for ICT investment and budget thresholds that reinforce the coordinating role of AIG in planning for investments in digital technologies across the public sector.
- Prioritise the development of a specific ICT procurement policy for the Panamanian public sector to strengthen the country’s permanent efforts towards a coherent and sustainable digital government.
Data-driven Public Sector
- Increase the strength and visibility of leadership for the data agenda at both the central level and within each institution in order to build a data-driven public sector culture in Panama.
- Consider how civil society actors and private sector entrepreneurs can work with public servants to explore how Panamanian government data can improve lives whether through government policy, voluntary activities or commercial solutions to everyday problems.
Service Design and Delivery
- Establish a service design and delivery culture driven by citizens’ needs within its institutions as well as at AIG to help Panama develop a joined up, channel agnostic approach to delivering services.
- Prioritise the design of a seamless experience for businesses, citizens and visitors and clearly identify how services and technologies already in use, as well as those planned for the future, will interact.
- Develop an understanding of the needs of citizens that allows the Panamanian government to focus proactively on the most important user problems to maximise public value as services are being designed.
- Support experimentation with emerging and disruptive technologies by encouraging an innovative approach to the delivery of public services in Panama.
- Commit to government investment in Panama’s digital infrastructure and industries and encourage inward investment and collaboration across borders to sustain and develop Panama as a “digital hub”.
The blurb
This review explores how Panama can enhance and harness digital government to achieve broader strategic goals at both national and local levels. It looks at institutional governance, legislation, and inter-departmental co-ordination, including institutional capacities and skills for delivering quality public services. It identifies opportunities for making public service delivery more efficient and inclusive, as well as for expanding the strategic use of data. The review provides policy recommendations to help Panama enable and sustain the digital transformation of the public sector.