Services of Different Agencies are Developing without Proper Integration, Lack of Interaction and Data Sharing
The disintegration of e-Government systems and services leads to inefficiencies, redundancies, and increased costs as significant amounts of resources are wasted in duplicating efforts as well as increases risks of data losses. It also hinders citizens’ access to public e-services making their integration in daily life more challenging.
Challenge Description
Integration in the context of e-Government refers to the ability of various digital systems and services to work seamlessly together, communicate with each other, share data, and offer access to similar services. The importance of ‘a whole government approach’ that implies systems integration and establishment of shared services is highlighted in the Digital Governance section of the AU’s Digital Transformation Strategy for Africa 2020-2030 since it can benefit both government agencies and citizens as integration of systems enhances efficiency by eliminating the need for users to re-enter their information repeatedly.
Integration of e-Government systems and services leads to reduced costs, more efficient use of resources, elimination of redundancy and inefficiencies and improved overall performance of public service and therefore stimulates the use of e-Government service. Emerging interdepartmental services like social security also increase the demand for interoperability between information systems and shared databases.
The commonly listed reasons for not establishing interoperable and integrated systems include:
1. potential security issues as interconnection between systems increases;
2. platform and system diversity as they are being developed and managed by different agencies;
3. inflexibility of legacy systems, task scheduling complexity, etc.
As indicated in the article ‘The practicality of public service integration’ (2015) by Mohammed Al-Husban from Southampton Solent University (UK), apart from lack of funding, organisational culture and resistance to change along with middle and high -level civil servants’ attitudes toward e-Government, changing government regulations are among the major barriers to public e-services integration.
The commonly listed levels of interoperability are:
1. Legal interoperability
2. Organisational interoperability
3. Technical interoperability
4. Semantic interoperability
The latter often remains overlooked. The semantic interoperability between systems which implies maintaining a common interpretation of information across entities and their information systems.
According to World Bank’s GovTech metadata of March 2023, many African countries report a low degree of integration of e-Government systems and services. Only 11 African countries had operational e-Government Interoperability Frameworks whilst 13 had draft eGIFs, leaving 30 countries (55%) without systematic integration of digital services and systems. With services developing without interoperability standards, subsequently public service providers will have to duplicate efforts in integrating different systems, leading to a duplication of costs.
Additionally, there is a lack of uniformity between national services hampering the Pan-African initiatives like AfCTA and Digital Single Market whilst promoting continental integration and interconnectivity is among the priority objectives in the AU’s Digital Transformation Strategy for Africa 2020-2030 *.
In line with boosting integration of e-services and use of shared data, additional regulations on personal data protection should be adopted to ensure citizens’ control over their personal information and foster public trust in e-Government services.
Recently, African countries and their international partners have been placing much focus on improving interoperability of e-services on the continent. In 2022, Morocco launched its national e-Government interoperability platform. In April 2023, the Estonian Centre for International Development (ESTDEV) organised a workshop on increasing e-Government systems interoperability in Kenya.
* At the same time, according to the European Commission's Joint Research Centre study ‘Quantifying the Benefits of Location Interoperability in the European Union’ (2022), increasing the interoperability of public services in EU Member States could save annually an estimated 543 million EUR or 24 million hours for citizens and 568 billion EUR or 30 billion hours for businesses.
Solutions
1. The integration of government information systems can be established either through standards or through architecture. The former entails adopting an e-Government Interoperability Framework (eGIF) that sets requirements and standards for data exchange and system integration whilst the latter implies developing a National e-Government Architecture (NEGA).
2. In order to encourage agencies to bring their systems in compliance with the standards outlined in eGIF, incentives must be developed. For instance, the compliance can be linked with budget, thus only compliant projects would receive funding. Another incentive that can be introduced is the certification requirements.
3. Using open standards would allow agencies and organisations to keep up with the technological advancements and would reduce costs of compliance, as well as guarantee interoperability with systems based on these standards.
4. Publishing or sending to agencies manuals and guides on building systems and platforms compliant with the interoperability standards and eGIF would also facilitate developing integrated e-Government systems and reduce agencies’ expenditures.
5. Integration of services requires establishing adequate infrastructure including shared data centres for storage and managing of the data, using cutting-edge software-defined storages or, in case of financial services, establishing national switch.
6. As most agencies are prone to developing systems and services on their own, to ensure interoperability the governments are advised to encourage inter-agency cooperation and joint projects.
7. Introducing Digital IDs would also lead to increased interoperability between governmental information systems.
8. At the continental level, harmonising national regulations on interoperability and e-IDs and systems would foster regional integration and facilitate the movement of people and goods.
9. Raising awareness about advantages of interoperable e-Government systems as well as staff training on eGIF standards would foster the effective adoption of new regulations and reduce resistance to change.
10. The UNDP also recommends developing a measurement system for assessing the effectiveness of interoperability.
11. Using Artificial Intelligence can simplify the data exchange and harmonisation between different government information systems.
Russia’s Experience
Over the last years the Russian Government has made significant progress toward full integration of e-Government services. In 2016, the first 10 regional portals of public services were integrated with the Public Services Portal of the Russian Federation (Gosuslugi). In 2019, e-passports of vehicles were integrated into the service.
Over 2022, the agreements on introducing virtual Mir benefit cards in the accounts of citizens on the Gosuslugi Public Services Portal, integrating Unified Biometric System and governmental information system ‘Unified Centralised Digital Platform in the Social Sphere’ with the Portal were signed.
In 2023, integration of the super service for individual housing construction (IHB) was carried out and the plans for integrating Justice Online super service with the public services portal were announced.
Case 1. Integration of Online Business Registration System (by BRELA)
In 2017, the Tanzanian government adopted the E-Government Architecture Vision Standard Technical Guides and the E-Government Interoperability Framework – Standards and Technical Guidelines in order to ensure the interoperability between different e-Government solutions, and, according to the Section 28 (g) of the e-Government Act (2019), ‘a public institution is supposed to maintain and promote integrated and interoperable systems to be used in service provision’.
Nevertheless, as per the 2022 Performance Audit Report on the Business Registration and Licensing by the National Audit Office of Tanzania, the online business registration system by the Business Registrations and Licensing Agency (BRELA) (Online Registration System, ORS) was completely integrated with only two other systems out of 17 envisaged (12%), namely with the National Identification Authority (NIDA) and Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA). The research indicated that lack of interoperability between authorities’ systems complicated registration as it required manual verification of information (for instance, of the plot number and location details which could be verified automatically via information systems of the Ministry of Land) and often led to system failures. A reviewed e-GA Report of September, 2019 indicated that the integration between ORS and Intellectual Property Administration System (IPAS) which is used by Intellectual Property Section at BRELA. Furthermore, whilst the report showed that the ORS was inadequately designed for integration with other systems (as the Application Programming Interface (API) allowed accommodating only nine stakeholders), it also noted that integrating ORS with other information systems would have reduced time for verification of information required by other public entities.
Tanzanian authorities encountered challenges with using shared infrastructure as well. In 2015, the 94 million USD investment in constructing a government data centre was announced. Huawei Tanzania provided advisory support to the project which was completed in 2016. The data centre is managed by Tanzania Telecommunication Company Limited (TTCL). However, the project met some challenges, including lack of clients. In 2017, the Minister for Works, Transport and Communications directed public institutions to cancel their own data centre development initiatives and use the existing government data centre.
Case 2. Integration of HMIS and OpenLMIS
In October 2018, the Malawi Ministry of Health launched a project aimed at integrating their DHIS2-based Health Management Information System and electronic Logistics Management Information System (eLMIS) OpenLMIS in order to facilitate evidence-based decision making by medical and logistics staff by allowing access to shared data. The project mainly focused on HIV,Tuberculosis, and Malaria data.
While Malawi's HMIS contains data from more than 60 health programmes, until 2018, health programme data and medical stock data in the country had been stored in different information systems. During the project implementation readiness assessment was conducted, key performance indicators were elaborated, an interoperability layer based on OpenHIM (an open-source mediator platform) and an Application Programming Interface (API) were developed to allow data exchange between the systems. As a result, data from OpenLMIS could be sent to HMIS via the interoperability layer.Integration of the systems allowed combined analysis of HMIS and LMIS data. Thus, for instance, using data from both systems, staff can create maps that show if a facility is over- or under-stocked.
To guarantee effective use of the integrated systems, staff training was conducted in March and November 2020 with the support from HISP Malawi.
During the COVID pandemic, Malawi health authorities used OpenHIM platform to integrate DHIS2-based One Health Surveillance Platform and the Lab Management Information Systems used for COVID tests. The integration allowed better statistical analysis and quicker notification of patients about their results.
The project was implemented with support from University of Oslo, HISP Malawi, GHSC-PSM, and Kuunika Data for Action (a project funded by The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) and was funded by The Global Fund.
Have you spotted a typo?
Highlight it, click Ctrl+Enter and send us a message. Thank you for your help!
To be used only for spelling or punctuation mistakes.