The Minister of Communications and Information Technology Amr Talaat has chaired a session of the executive bureau of the Supreme Council of Digital Society.
The session discussed topics related to supporting digital transformation to build Digital Egypt and reviewed the digital society objectives and the general vision for services, data, and applications.
During the session, the ICT Minister discussed the objectives of the Council’s strategy, which are facilitating access to government services, creating digital job opportunities, and improving government performance.
The ICT Minister referred to “Digital Egypt 360,” a vision that marks the culmination of the efforts made to create integrated, shared national databases. The vision aims to achieve the transition from government applications to digital platforms to facilitate the provision of public services. Transition is achieved based on three main pillars: “Citizen 360,” a platform that includes all data of citizens, including provided support, skills, properties, and residence; “Asset 360,” which includes information on assets, such as licenses, registration, and taxes; and “Company 360,” which comprises information on companies, including exports, employees, and insurances.
Talaat pointed to the digital society objectives, achieved in collaboration among different state sectors. The objectives include reengineering the current design to introduce complex digital services, upgrading software in line with technological changes, and creating an online digital interface for citizens. This is in addition to integrating and connecting all government applications to ensure having an updated and reliable information infrastructure and reducing the expenses for applications, software licenses and development and integration work.
Talaat referred to the key measures taken by the country to achieve institutional development, including enacting laws and legislations, and creating digital transformation units in government agencies.
The ICT Minister highlighted the general vision for services, data, and applications. The vision involves developing the information infrastructure and raising its efficacy to provide a sustainable mechanism to improve the quality of data and support the launch of service platforms to provide data based on analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI). He clarified that the “Ahmose” project is implemented, aiming at restructuring government operations and applications.
Talaat revealed that Egypt moved up on the World Bank’s 2022 GovTech Maturity Index (GTMI). Scoring high in the digital government indicator, Egypt came among the countries of Group A, the highest category of the Index. GTMI measures key aspects in four focus areas of digital transformation in the public sector: core government systems, public service delivery, citizen engagement, and GovTech enablers.
Talaat explained that Egypt was one of the highest-performing countries in Group B, according to the World Development Report 2020, with a maturity score of 0.649. This year, the country achieved a 0.751 maturity score, exceeding the global average of 0.552 and the regional average for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), which is 0.595.
The session discussed the global trends in government administration, which focuses on earning citizens’ trust. The aim is to transform the government into a perceptual, integrated and highly-adaptive digital body, capable of performing comprehensive planning and implementation. This is in addition to providing more efficient services to citizens, eliminating red tape, adopting a data-driven governance approach, and maintaining cybersecurity.
It is worth noting that President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi issued Decree No. 511 of 2022 on restructuring the Supreme Council of Digital Society under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister. Members of the Council include the Governor of the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE), Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, the Minister of Defense and Military Production, the Minister of Interior, the Minister of Justice, the ICT Minister (as rapporteur), the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Planning and Economic Development, the President of the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), and representatives of the General Intelligence Directorate (EGID) and the Administrative Control Authority (ACA).
Under article No. 5 of the Decree, the Supreme Council of Digital Society has an executive bureau headed by the ICT Minister, and members including representatives of the Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Justice, MCIT, Ministry of Planning and Economic Development, Ministry of Finance, EGID and ACA.
The executive bureau presents and discusses strategic plans for digital transformation, sets policies, procedures, information infrastructure designs and governance mechanisms for digital transformation; and adopts mechanisms for implementing the strategies issued by the Supreme Council of Digital Society. This is in addition to supervising and coordinating specialized committees and presenting their work reports to the Council.
The bureau has five advisory committees: the project governance committee; the data, applications and services governance committee, the digital operation committee, the procedures and legislation restructuring committee, and the data centers committee.
