E-Government Development in Egypt

Egypt is developing the e-Government institutions in order to improve delivery of the public services and increase the efficiency of administration. In 2016, the implementation of the national strategy Egypt Vision 2030 was launched with Digital Egypt being developed by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) within its framework. Development of artificial intelligence, providing support to the students, entrepreneurs, small and medium-sized enterprises are mentioned among its objectives.

Private Egyptian companies (mostly from the high-tech business district Smart Village) play an important role in the development of public platforms. 

There are also agreements with private multinational corporations and international organisations like Ernst & Young, Microsoft, German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ), Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), Center for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI, an affiliate of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness).

The Government has made it a priority to improve the quality of the Internet in the country. Consequently, as of 2022 the Egyptian Internet was the fastest on the continent. Another initiative undertaken was the construction of mobile towers in some regions of the country to facilitate the penetration of the Internet in the countryside. Less attention has been paid so far to the development of data centres.

While the Egyptian public e-services are still scattered with some of the declared functionality is yet to be implemented. Many services are under development or beta testing. A unified design of public service platforms has not been developed. There is no unified system of identification and authorising citizens on the government websites, it is also impossible to file a complaint or proposal on most websites of government departments (however, this opportunity is available on the single portal of public services).

Rankings

As of 2022, Egypt was ranked 103rd in the UN e-Government Development Survey (up from 111th in 2020) with an EGDI score of 0.59. This places Egypt in 6th place among the countries in Africa with the highest EGDI values. According to the 2022 World Bank’s GovTech Maturity report, Egypt moved up from Group B to A (group of GovTech Leaders). 

Integration of Public Services

Another important achievement is the single platform for public services (Digital Egypt). The portal allows users to find information about a service, the relevant regulatory documents, the geographical location of the responsible organisation, as well as to submit an application. There is also a mobile app. 

However the offline way of accessing public services still prevails. There are just few services available online in the domains of healthcare, legislation, and taxation. The platform does not allow for paying most of the bills, fines or fees. Payment of licence fines is available only.

The poor awareness of the population about the Digital Egypt unified portal remains a significant constraint for its development as the citizens often choose the websites of the ministries they got already used to.

G2G Service

The plan resulted in the creation of a secured government network linking some 33,000 institutions. In addition, the G2G system is being optimized to ensure data exchange between government agencies. Public entities interact through the system and coordinate their operations providing services to the citizens through a single structure.

Education

Services related to schools (Egyptian Education Platform) are better developed, there are information sections for parents, teachers and pupils, but there is no system for controlling the entry/exit of students. 

Healthcare

The government also places much attention on digitalization of the system of compulsory medical insurance (UHIA) as well as of federal medical institutions. However, paper document management still dominates at the municipal level, and the citizens are poorly aware of the opportunities of e-services in the healthcare sector.

Identification and Biometrics

There is no information on the national register of biometric data. However, the French Idemia has launched the FinTech Accelerator Card program based on a biometric payment card. Some consultations have also been held with the Russian Center for Speech Technologies.

e-Elections

Egypt has not implemented an e-voting system at the national level. All elections and referendums are held offline. However at some local elections the pilot projects were carried out to introduce ict technologies. In 2022 the e-voting project was carried out at the elections to the prosecutor's office, voters had the opportunity to vote online.

National Payment System

Egypt has developed its own national payment system MEEZA, financed by the Central Bank of Egypt and the Egyptian private company E-Finance. MEEZA is available only from Egypt. Although there is a mobile application, the payment recipients are limited to the cardholders issued by 15 major banks. Most of the salary cards of civil servants have been replaced with MEEZA cards.

A mobile wallet-to-wallet transfer network Digital Meeza links over 16 million mobile wallets in Egypt.

e-Taxes

The development of the digital tax payment system is focused mainly on providing G2B services. In 2020, the project for electronic invoicing on ETA was launched. The system of electronic receipts on the same portal is also being developed. The service facilitates tax due diligence for companies, eliminates return visits, offers remote audit solutions, and simplifies tax refund procedures. 3.8 million documents per year are processed electronically. 

Also on March 15, 2023, a contract was signed to develop the service of calculating payroll tax for civil servants on the ETA portal (بوابة الأجور للموظف).

Author:
Egor Astrakhantsev