The Minister of Communications and Information Technology Amr Talaat has delivered a talk during his meeting with the heads of the information systems and digital transformation units of the entities moving to the New Administrative Capital, who participated in the first session organized by the academy for supporting information systems and digital transformation units. The meeting was attended by the Deputy ICT Minister for Institutional Development Ghada Labib.
Talaat stated that the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) established an academy for supporting information systems and digital transformation units building on the creation of digital transformation units in ministries and government agencies. The academy aims to build the capacity of the units employees, open an ongoing dialogue and enable the exchange of experiences among those responsible for carrying out digital transformation in government agencies.
This comes as part of the efforts to build Digital Egypt and achieve the transition into a digitized government that renders automated services to citizens, along with moving the government to the New Administrative Capital. That step represents a qualitative rather than a geographical moving, achieved through creating a participatory digital government that exchanges data among its bodies and institutions, as well as with citizens, through paperless transactions.
The ICT Minister presented Digital Egypt strategy, which includes three main pillars: fostering innovation, building digital capacity and achieving digital transformation, based on three planks: efficient infrastructure, international leadership, and legislative and governance framework.
The digital transformation includes two main sections, the first is rendering digital services to citizens. Sixty services were made available on Digital Egypt platform as part of a plan that aims to digitize all government services by the end of 2023. That digital system was created in a way that suits all the segments of the society, as the services were also made available through post offices and call centers, covering the needs of non-tech savvy people. The second section relates to developing the government performance through the digital transformation units and the associated moving to the New Administrative Capital.
Talaat highlighted that this huge project is based on six main pillars, the first is building a robust information infrastructure in line with the latest ICTs to achieve digital transformation efficiently. The second is developing applications for each ministry or entity to digitize its activities and services. About 850 applications were collected, evaluated, tested, and transferred to a cloud. The applications are ready to operate after completing the data migration and final testing, which will be conducted after the data center at the New Administrative Capital is complete.
The third pillar is about creating participatory applications for the joint activities implemented in collaboration between different ministries. The priority in applications was given to both human resources (HR) management, since the HR structure is crucial for the success of work, and programs and projects management, in light of the implementation of a large number of national projects.
In an effort to achieve the transition into a smart paperless government, MCIT is cooperating with other ministries to create a correspondence system through a single platform for the Egyptian government, to facilitate the exchange of documents and correspondences among government agencies. This is in addition to creating an electronic signature system, which will be made available to all government employees, enabling them to have a legal signature.
Talaat said that the fourth pillar is about digitizing government documents through archiving the papers and files circulating within the government, pointing out the importance of that project, which is carried out in light of the existence of a plethora of documents, amounting to around one billion. MCIT and the State sectors agreed on running an archiving cycle including analyzing the types of government documents in each entity, introducing the organizational structure, creating a unified barcode, preparing, scanning and indexing the documents, then controlling quality and storing the documents.
The fifth pillar is creating digital transformation units in all ministries and government agencies, to act as a key player in every government agency, highlight the role of digital transformation and those in charge of this industry, and support the digital operation of the agencies moving to the New Administrative Capital. Those units represent the front line of technical support in the Egyptian government.
Moreover, a digital operation support unit will be created at the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, representing the second line of support, with the third line represented in communicating with the executing companies to solve operation-related problems. The ICT Minister added that the sixth and final pillar is training employees and equipping them with the digital skills required to keep pace with the new work environment.
For her part, Labib pointed out MCIT efforts to implement the institutional development plan to ensure the absorption and sustainability of the digital transformation to serve Digital Egypt strategy. MCIT also works to provide technical support for the information systems and digital transformation units at ministries, governorates and public agencies, through assessing, selecting and training people to work in those units. This is in addition to training and qualifying all the employees of the State’s administrative apparatus.
As part of the efforts to build the digital capacity of the employees at the State’s administrative apparatus, who are moving to the New Administrative Capital, MCIT trained 49,785 executives and supervisors, including 1,870 specialists at the information systems and digital transformation units.
The founding of the academy for supporting information systems and digital transformation units aims to ensure harnessing ICT to achieve the objectives of government agencies, building the leadership and technical capacity of executives and specialists of those units, improving individual and institutional performance through helping keep up with technological developments on regular basis, achieving technical excellence for specialists in information and digital transformation systems units, and using the academy as a forum for discussing common issues at the level of the State’s administrative apparatus with the units employees.
