The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> MODERATOR: Now I talk and you hear me. So I don't do anything. How will we hear them? The headphones. Okay. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Can you hear me now. Okay. Okay.
Okay. Good. Okay. We're starting. Okay. Okay. We'll start.
I welcome you to session improving local online service delivery in a global world.
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I will moderate the session. I would like to welcome our distinguished speakers in the panel. Before starting the session, I would like to make a brief reference to the session and describe it. I invite online participants to submit their questions and comments to the Q & A section of the online session. We'll do our best to transfer them to our panelists. Participates in the room can ask questions orally. Online participants have the possibility to make their questions.
So let's move quickly into the session.
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The first section is applying logic. In this section, panelists will identify benefits of applying Losi applications. And the ways of using them in policy making.
They can mention examples from their own experience. They'll suggest ways to engage policy makers in local networks. And may apply possible ways of facing challenges. And they'll suggest, hopefully, ways of methodology and expanding the network.
After that, we'll have Q & A section. Then Angelica Zundel will talk about supporting the Losi application. Panelists will describe ways examples of applications, technologies, innovation of facing these needs in local government level. They'll suggest future strengths in local governments from their countries. And, also, they may suggest ways we can assess local government development. And challenges and ways of facing this assessment methods. And possible ways of collaboration and funding sources, which are problems that we face currently. Before going to the panelists, we'll say the main topics of LOSI.
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So because citizens is more close to local government than the national one, we thought that there is a need to cover there. So we came with this methodology. Very briefly, at the moment, methodology comprises from 95. And it is divided in six areas. In six criteria. In brackets, you can see the indicators for it that we use for it.
The first one is institutional framework. The next one is content provision. We ask about content. Then provisions. So what online services are provided by the city. Participation and engagement of the next one.
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so together with this methodology that is applied biannually. And the results are published in the United Nations. We use local government questionnaires which gathers information from local government municipalities in preparation for the upcoming survey. So this gives us a better insight from local governments. Because public officials
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The results from this assessment are published in the United Nations Government Knowledge Base. You can see them in detail on the results. So we'll not spend more time on that. We apply this methodology in the most popular city of its country. Of one of the three member states. Because there is applied in more cities worldwide, we designed and applied the idea of LOSI network, which invites different institutions to participate with their resources. And with our support. In order to apply LOSI methodology, it allows a number of cities in their country.
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Okay. Now I think it is the right time to go to the first section where we'll see partners that have already joined the LOSI network, and they'll talk about their experience. The first panelist is Ayman Alarabiat from Al Balqa Applied University.
>> AYMAN ALARABIAT: Good morning everyone. First of all, I would like to thank you, IGF, and the city and governments that are organizing this forum.
I will start with telling you about a story. How I got involved in LOSI. I like the concept. And I think it's very crucial. Very important to evaluate and assess the E services at local level. Two years ago, I conducted a study where we evaluated around 19 cities. The importance of work sites in Jordan. So Jordan is a small country in the Middle East. We believe it's [?] because of its people. At the local level, we have two representative levels of government. One under the Ministry of Interior. they are controlled under the Ministry of Local Administration. We have around 100 municipalities in Jordan. However, the majority of Jordan house financial because of many financial institutions in Jordan.
From 50 to 85% of municipality's budget goes to [?]. As I said, we have evaluated around 19 cities in Jordan. I agree that we remove around 16 indicators from the methodology that are related to service provision indicators. The reason that all of these 15 services are provided by national development on national ministries.
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Except one city, the capital. All of Jordan municipalities face main challenges and main limitations in technology.
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It indicates that small municipalities sometimes more than larger municipalities despite having few resources. Maybe that ability to the vision or the strategy that municipalities have taken in their perspective.
Now after we have run our study, we promote LOSI in Jordan. How we did that, we sent our report to local administrative ministry. We also have interactive lectures. And we have a line session with cities that are located in Jordan. At that session, around 100 persons from around 70 municipalities have attended. For the challenges and opportunities. We face a main challenge regarding awareness of local officials about international evaluation. They are not familiar with that. They also have limited resources and the digital transformation is not
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Of course there is a resistance to change that we found when we talked to them. And, also, I delivered some framing programme in an institution of public administration in Jordan for many times. I did this with many municipalities. And they have they do not have full awareness of the importance of digital transformation. And if they have, they didn't know how to move to a digital transformation.
The second challenge is regarding how we can transform this critical result into a practical action. For our opportunity, I think we should work in the long term strategy for engagement. We have some with the Ministry of Local Administration in Jordan. And, also, we are trying to collaborate with potential partners. Thank you for your listening. Thank you very much.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Ayman Alarabiat, especially for the challenges and the ways that we can move forward engaging policy makers in using local resources.
Let's move now to the second speaker, Dr. Gayatri Doctor from CEPT University. We welcome you, Dr. Gayatri Doctor.
>> GAYATRI DOCTOR: Thank you very much. First of all, I would like to thank you for having this Open Forum. Giving an opportunity to talk about the LOSI experience. And the pilot studies that we have done in India.
Can I have the next slide, please. So as everybody knows, India is a large and diverse country. We started off with the first pilot of LOSI in 2023, where we assessed the most popular city in each state and the Union Territories. We applied the LOSI territories. This came out to 27 states, nine union territories. But, of course, two cities did not have the Municipal Government. So our total assessment was of 34 cities.
I had a student researcher who worked with me on this, Saumya Mehta. In the second pilot, when we did, we decided to concentrate on only one state. We targeted 33 open local authorities. 53 cities, which was across municipalities. With the municipal government supporters. And we also tried to study two cities where they did not have a municipal government.
So this was done with a student researcher, Devanshi Shah. Can we move to the next.
In the Indian context, when we look at it, there are those available. We have Centrally Governed Portals. Each and every state has state governed portals. Then comes the district level. There are district portals. And we have the city websites. It could be municipalities, municipal corporations, or city councils. This break up is basically made on the population of the cities.
There are multiple modes of service delivery to access citizens services. There are some services available on district, state, or central portals. And the city websites, according to the Indian jurisdiction system, is supposed to perform certain specific services. We have something called the 74th Amendment. When we did the studies, both of the pilots, we could identify cities based on high, medium, and low maturity. We didn't have anybody with a high maturity.
The LOSI methodology helped us to assess and improve the efficiency, accessibility, and quality of the local e government services. Basically when we assessed the 34 cities across the country, it was a little more difficult, but when we assessed a particular state, which were the 53 cities, we could immediately tell the type of accessibility and the type of services and the quality of the local e government service. Next slide, please.
So, of course, when we did the LOSI across both the pilots, we could see that we could identify the gaps in the online service. There were some in the high, some in the middle, some in the low. Why were they? So we could see the cities. There was accountability. And it helped us make some informed decisions as to which cities needed more information on their websites and things like that.
With the introduction of the LGQ, we did not get too many feedbacks from many cities. It was understanding of how the government also appreciates this particular evaluation. The experience of users can be evaluated. Next slide, please.
Of course, we did have challenges in applying the LOSI network. Because all the services weren't available on one city portal. They were distributed across different portals like the district, the state, the sectorial. Also, some cities did not have an active or updated MGP. There was some of them the data was incomplete. There is some tax information, which is supposed to be in the LOSI. In India, there are various forms of tax. Income tax, property tax, professional tax. So all of these were not it was difficult to capture all the elements in the LOSI.
And, also, the organizational structure under LOSI in the sector, the organization structure has to be defined. Which varies depending on the classification of the cities. So then there were these type of changes. And India being a diverse country, we have lots of languages. So the availability of the MGM, assessable available in multiple languages is constrained. Of course, once you get suggestions, there is always some resistance to change. In addition to which resource constraints, both financial and human, at the local government level are always there.
Next slide, please. So there is when we do a benchmarking and Best Practices, because LOSI helps us to identify the good performing cities and policy makers can benchmark the services against the successful models. So that other cities can adopt these particular things. It also helps policy makers to identify the areas and allocate resources and do some strategic planning.
Of course, all over a period of time, you can monitor the LOSI data and track the progress of the cities and their impact over time.
Next, please. This is just general. How do you do it? You can have stakeholder workshops and seminars. You can create policy reports. Public consultations and feedback with the users. Because citizens centric services must have interactions with the citizens.
And being in a country where there are a lot of different levels of government, we could have some intergovernmental collaborations. We can approach to improving e government services. Next slide.
So on the whole, I would say that LOSI is a very valuable tool for assessing and improving the e government services at the local level. It helps in service improvement, resource allocation, policy formulation, benchmarking and Best Practices, capacity building and citizens engagement, and transparency and accountability.
Thank you! The way forward we're going to be doing a LOSI pilot three in 2025. Where we would be even studying in the Indian context there's a state level E service delivery system. So we would be studying that and comparing it with LOSI. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you, Gayatri Doctor. Well, India is a huge country. So for us, it's important partner. Because we can have useful insights in order to improve LOSI. From this type of organizational structure, from this federation type of structure in a country. And I will just highlight here, the organizational structure in India depending on the classification of cities. They have municipal cooperations, municipalities, different types of organizational units. And we face this not only in India. We face this aspect also in other countries. But we are not it is not easy to identify the organization in municipality level, city level. But that profiles the services that we assess in our instrument. For example, in the UK, they have this structure of cities, municipalities, Boroughs. This comes in many places. This is an issue we should discuss in the future and find solutions. Thank you, Dr. Gayatri Doctor. Now the next panelist is Mehdi limam. Today the have the pleasure to share the experience of application of LOSI in Tunisia. We'll take a look at the benefits of LOSIs with, the steps for implementation, and the steps forward for applying. As you can see, we achieved our evaluation.
Next LOSI has proven to be a powerful tool in enhancing local government. By evaluating the government portals, LOSI can help by identifying specific instances. Countries can serve as valuable cases.
Now moving to the next slide. The question is how can other countries effectively implement this? This is our experience in Tunisia, there are three key steps. First, as you can see, we can start with the scores and analysing the EGDI scores. It provides a strong foundation for understanding the digital maturity of the country. The next step will be the leveraging the U.N. local government market, as we see in the next slide. This provides concrete examples.
And the final step, we suggest that country background to determine which criteria are likely to be present, and which ones are not likely to be provided. Implementation is just the beginning. Next slide, please.
Thank you. First, collaboration is key. Partnering with other countries with LOSI allow for the exchange of experiences and Best Practices.
Second, we must invest in training municipal employees on technologies. We also recommend launching initiatives for data collection and publication. Civil Society can collaborate with municipalities to make data assessable, which increases transparency. And public/private partnerships is essential. It can extend e services like digital framings. The private sector can provide expertise and resources to deliver better solutions.
Of course, we have some challenges. Policy makers in ensuring the methodology adoption at the local level can be difficult. The resources were technical and financial. Also, ensuring consistent stakeholder engagement and overcoming change in local government can be challenging. In conclusion, this was our experience and findings in E government society in implementing the LOSI methodology.
I would like to extend my gratitude to the U.N. for the opportunity for their work. I want to thank our entire team for their tremendous efforts in making this implementation a success. And to all of you here today for following the presentation with us. We are open to collaboration. I look forward to serving local governments. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. So now it is time to open the first Q & A section for comments, questions to our panelists. Or any comments you may have. Allow me to do the first question to Mehdi.
With government officials and decision makers in your country. And if, yes, how do you think they should use the results. And give us some thoughts which are the next steps to improve local development in Tunisia using LOSI output.
>> MEHDI LIMAM: Thank you. Currently we have a problem in local governments because we are waiting for the elections. The local entities. But the elections are delayed. So there is hesitance to make any change waiting for the new elected officials.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. I invite the participants or the online participants, if they have any questions. Please. It is a time to do it now. Please unmute yourself.
>> AUDIENCE: Hello. I'm from the University research team for doing an application of the LOSI methodologies in South Korea. We concluded and submitted a draft to the UNDESA. So I believe as it has this impact dated every two years. That's why they can
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I believe the purpose of LOSI is providing some guidelines for the local government. Acting like a lighthouse. Ensuring how the future is looks like. So in here, I try to measure that. The struggles and the challenges but struggles we have in the South Korea.
As a background, the south Korean cities can
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Some of the services that is indicated in the LOSI index is not authorized to provide in the local government. Because a lot of services, there's a mention in the LOSI is it's not allowed to provide by the local government. So there are providing a central government or the state government. So I believe the very similar problem was mentioned in cases.
In these kind of cases, what are the future directions we should have? In the side of UNDESA. I should ask. How do we [?] these kind of struggles?
>> MODERATOR: Thank you for the question. Well, I don't know if I can answer. The only thing I can say is that we have identified clearly this problem. This is one of the basic problems that we face. Designing the indicators. Specifically for the services criteria. Because our colleague here identifies these problems. But not all cities in the world provide the same services and are authorized from the government to provide the same services in local level.
So this is an issue we should face. We try to do our best and identify that let's say the most common services that are used in more cities around the world. It's very difficult. What I can say is that LOSI network is a solution. Because what we do with our partners in this country is to identify the specific needs in their context, the national context, and adjust those services in the specific case.
So this is a solution, but, again, when we go to the U.N., the government survey every two years, it's very difficult to find the ideal set of services.
Finally, it will be the citizens at the end is not interested if he receives it from the city or the central government. Finally, he should receive the service he expects to receive. So we have the approach in our methodology. We don't seek and ask in the assessment if the city provides the service. But if the municipality website gives the access to the service. So, for example, if they give the link to the national government for this service, this is enough. Because the citizens can receive the service in the way that he wants/she wants. But, yes, this is an interesting topic for us. And for this region, we have something for you at the end. We have made a questionnaire maybe to try to improve the set of services that we ask. You'll see at the end. We're asking you to fill this. Thank you very much for your question.
Any other questions? Or should we move on? If not. Okay. Now Angelica Zundel will take the floor. It's a useful tool kit we have designed. Yeah. She'll say more about that in awhile. Angelica Zundel.
>> ANGELICA ZUNDEL: Thank you. Hello everyone. For those who don't know me. My name is Angelica Zundel. I work as a consultant for UNDESA. Let me quickly show you. I'm presenting, first, this QR code, which will give you access to our U.N. city data page. On which you can access your latest results for the biggest city in your country.
So I'll just give you a few the seconds scan this or insert the link. And then I'll just quickly show you what that looks like.
And, of course, I can also link the paste the link, also, in the chat afterwards.
So as you can see. Yes. You can see my screen. So this is the page you'll land on. This is for the city data of the latest survey. And you can find all the major cities. So let's say I'm interested in Istanbul's latest findings. You'll land on this page. Which will give you an overview of the LOSI of 2024, comparing to the world leader, as well as the sub region leader, which is Riyadh.
And then you'll find more granular data on each of the sub components of the LOSI.
This is especially useful for you to understand where your strengths and where your weaknesses are. So in this case, if I were Istanbul, I would understand that technology and e participation, perhaps are two of the sub components that I need to work on more particularly in order to improve my LOSI performance.
Now with this sort of knowledge in mind, we encourage you to then check out our local E government tool kit. Again you can access here through the QR code or the link. Just giving you a few seconds to scan that. I'll share it again in the chat and also my e mail.
So it's especially useful to use in compliment to what you saw on the city data page. Because the local e government tool kit is essentially structured around the LOSI and the six sub components. Each module will sorry. If you can hear me. Is based on the sub components. And so from what I saw, I would, let's say, be interested in the technologies component. I'll click here. And then I'll land on a slide deck, which will give me information on which indicators are assessed in the sub component as per the latest 2024 survey.
So here is an index of the different indicators. Just to give you an overview. And then I'll let's say I'm interested in exactly it consists.
What does it mean? I'll click on this slide. And each slide, which essentially looks the same here, it has the same structure. But for each indicater, it'll give you an explanation of what it is exactly. Why is it important. And then a generic kind of guide on how to implement those in your local government portal.
As well as case study or a guide for each indicater.
So I'll keep it short. We have other presentations. But this is just a little preview for you to know how to use this toolkit, as well as the city data page to really ensure that you can improve your LOSI performance. So back to, I think, the main slides. Or rather, I think we proceed with the forum presentation. And if you have any questions, feel free to put them in the chat. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Have a look. I think you'll find it useful. And now we move to the local E government present and future. So here we have speakers from countries that have not applied yet LOSI methodology.
So the first speaker is from Saudi Arabia, Abdulaziz Zakri from DGA. And he'll present us a few things to show us why Saudi Arabia and Riyadh have made such a great improvement in E government recently. The floor is yours.
>> ABDULAZIZ ZAKRI: Thank you. It's my pleasure to be here among the audience. Today I'll speak about the achievement in becoming one of the top three cities globally in local online services.
As a matter of fact, to achieve this status, Riyadh had worked in three driving factors. The first factor is vision 2030. And by improving the quality of life and enhancing the quality of E government services, and boosting the digital economy, as well as encouraging the digital innovation.
The second factor is the digital government strategy with its five pillars. Enabling businesses, satisfied citizens, effective government, efficient investment, and regulated ecosystem.
The third factor is, of course, is important. Riyadh needs. It's about service delivery, citizens empowerment and inclusion, and we make sure that no one is left behind. And lastly improve. All of them are driven by SDGA, which is sustainable development government authorities.
We look at the full foundational pillar of Riyadh strategy. So starting with the empowering businesses, providing beneficiaries, and encouraging active participation, and how we're seeing emerging technology. Together those principles or pillars have propelled Riyadh as innovative and interconnected hub. Different system services and people are seamlessly connected.
This is very important part as a digital government authority and Riyadh municipality hub collaborated extensively to implement the LOSI assessment and framework. And this relation between digital government authority and Riyadh, has driven the alignment of municipal services with the global standards. As well as enhance the digital processes. And integration of integrated innovative technologies. And this relation leads to strengthening Riyadh today, as we are positioning as a global performer today in e government.
And we decided to expand this successful journey with other major cities. This is not only because the successful story of Riyadh. Also, it is part of the plan with the Saudi authorities for the smart cities like Saudi Arabia to be implemented for 10 cities across the country. And this is the first stage from this plan. And we believe that we are delivering on all achievements.
Here an example for municipal service on use cases of city. My city is an online application. It provides Riyadh access to services. Also, enabling community participating in improving the urban landscape of the city. This is about if you have something that is broken. Or anything that will affect any issue related visual appeal, we just have to take a picture and send it. And you'll have service level agreement to respond to an issue you have. And we also have a Balady platform. It data driven platform in a national scale. Serving all municipalities in Saudi Arabia, including Riyadh. And it is also good example for collaboration between minister of housing and Riyadh city, as well as AGA to deliver the best quality of the services.
Riyadh also has or provides the information to support Riyadh end users to take a decision based on their information. If you have a business, you like to build the business, you can choose your location. Also, if you like to buy a house. You can understand from the information how to make a decision.
And, also, we place public engagement in our decision making. It is by law. Every policy, also, and every legislation has to be announced to the public. And to receive their feedback before we make the decision. And take it into the action. This guarantees that public participation and policy making is helping by cooperating with the stakeholders and partners.
On the other hand, most decisions related to Riyadh are being taken through consulting people and the surface design by the consultation and reflect to improve in this quality of services. And it's taken through consulting people and services designed to improve by co creation activity to ensure users' satisfaction and service efficiency.
And, of course, if you would like to report any issue or complaint, we have this services. And, also, we are opening open data for public to use. And make a case for data for Riyadh.
This is the last part. And one of the most slides I like about Riyadh. You can see some of the projects in the arts. We can speak about green Riyadh project. We can see the government programme. And you if you speak about briefly about the project, let's say with the green or start with the green Riyadh project. It's about transforming the city with a million trees. To have a cleaner air and sustainable space for healthier and greener future.
Also, because we can see the largest urban park in the world. It's all about green spaces and cultural hubs and recreation to create vibrant and thriving of Riyadh.
I will end with this slide. Thank you very much for your attention.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Thank you very much for your excellent presentation. Thank you. Because you showed us, you gave us a flavor. Some ideas why Riyadh has this great progress in the government. Because you showed us real practical life applications that serve the citizens in real life.
So, and, also, what I identified collectively in your presentation, is this example about the success of local E government in Riyadh will not stop here. But we'll work as a model to be expanded in the rest of the cities in Saudi Arabia. Maybe this is a pattern that can be followed in other cases.
So thank you very much. And let's move to the next speaker who comes from united Arab Emirates. Manal Al Afad, the floor is yours.
>> MANAL AL AFAD: Thank you. First of all, I would like to thank you UNDEA for this opportunity to be part of this distinguished panel. And distinguished workshop. And thank you for Saudi Arabia for hosting this event.
For me, it's the first time to attend the IGF. And, really, it's my pleasure. This is Manal Al Afad. I'm from the united Arab Emirates, a digital government expert. I'm leading the UAE in this. I'm here today to present for you the UAE story with regard to implementing LOSI.
UAE commitment to digital transformation, actually is a fundamental on the we UAE strategy. The four pillars is forward ecosystem consists of digital transformation and providing the most prestigious interactive pro active service for the whole community in the UAE.
We have four pillars under this strategy. First of all, forward society, forward economy, forward diplomacy, and forward ecosystem, which is the main pillar we're talking about.
Okay. The citizens needs. All of us here are citizens. Either local, tourist, or maybe from outside of the country. All of us seek a service. All of us want to know, want to get a service. So here in UAE, we're focusing and leveraging advanced technology, fostering seamless interactions between government and society. Ensuring equitable access to essential services. Whatever user is. So the digital service, yes, but we need to reach a person who cannot use digital tools. We need to go to him and provide him a service.
Okay. How to assess the local E government in the UAE. Actually, we are using two tools. One of is LOSI methodology. We are implementing on seven Emirates. And the second one is the UAE digital majority model. Which is built using Best Practice model. One of this model is the UNE survey and the LOSI methodology which is built on this DNA which consists of three pillars. Leadership and policy, technology accelerators, organizations, and data. You can see here that this key framework implemented on seven local Emirates and 14 federal entities. 14 federal entities, which is the main sectors here providing service for community. And it is assists each two years. Each two years, we're assessing this model. Last year was the baseline.
And you can access it online, of course. What have we done for the world? We are cooperating with BSI and providing and transferring this digital maturity to a standard which is 2009, 2024, and in cooperation with standards institution on February, which digital maturity for government organization. It's a guideline for any digital government organization all over the world. For strategic integration of technology for efficient service delivered and for applicability globally.
So this is standard available for anyone. They can download it from the BSI website. Okay. I would like to present from this platform another case. It is providing the government service system, which is a super hub for providing a digital service for the community. It's name in English is TAMM.
Okay. This platform TAMM consists of more than 700 plus cities services. Provided for the whole citizens across all the Emirates. And even tourists. This application available you can check it online. You can check the website, as well. It consists of 2 million users and more than 10 million digital government transactions annually. It consists with 221 women using a service only dedicated for women. And 57,000 for elderly, which is senior citizens. And 99,000 young people using a service through this platform. 15,000 for people with determination using a service specified for this category. And this application or this super hub, super platform, served 24,300,000 visits to customers, including 1 million and 900,000 visits for elderly, and 382,000 visits for people of determination. This was for 2023 data. And now we have different data in Abu Dhabi platform. Actually, Abu Dhabi platform, on a local level, it is now an organization. It is transferred to an organization with a Director General to produce a service on a local level. And in cooperation with the whole Abu Dhabi digital government. Thank you. I would be happy to receive any questions. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: You have regular assessment in UAE. Maybe it's an explanation why UAE is in regarding digital government. You assess and improve things.
We'll maybe have time at the end for questions. Next speaker is Yin Huotely from Cambodia for monitoring and evaluation department. Please, the floor is yours.
>> YIN HUOTELY: Thank you so much. Good morning everyone. First of all, I would like to say to the organizer, thank you, for the opportunity. Yeah. This is my first time to join IGF forum. Here. Yeah. My name is Yin Huotely. I'm from the Digital Government Committee and telecommunications of Cambodia.
Here I am just a few overview of the local E government in Cambodia. We may be left behind UAE and Saudi Arabia. And we come here to support the recommendation, and also for the cooperation from the UNDES and the UN EGOV.
I have a presentation here. So this is provided by the local government to the local citizens. And just gives an overview of the E government in Cambodia. The E government projected in 2002. These are the E government project is
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This project is under the financial and technical support from the Republic of Korea. The e government project in Cambodia is an information system. We have the core information system in here. And we realize the information system received information system. And, also information system and the connectivity in this period. The support of the project is being finalized by year. And, at that time, the E government was implemented and involving all the 27 line ministries. But only one implementer. We can say that the issues of ownership. Yeah. Ownership problem. It's no longer used. And we moved to the line ministries. For example, like Riyadh's information system. They moved to planning and by using the map. And, also, for the delivery system. This system is no longer used. And right now ministry and telecommunications are using the document for internal use only. From the period of moving with, they implemented a new system of their own.
Also, the information system moved to the ministry of public transformation. And also implement their own system, too. And during the period of 2010 and 2020, the ownership sold. But the line ministry began to implement their own system. And also the interoperability occurred at the time. From the 2020 here to solve the problem, Cambodia put on the two policy frameworks. Digital Society, and Economy Policy Framework and Digital Government Framework. And at that time, the DPI, digital platform for the core government, for digital platform, established by the government. And we use it at the centre. We have digital authentication. And this is the government platform that can also issued. And you can scan the QR code. And the system is using the block chain technology. Very accurate. Yeah.
Right now we have more than 600,000 that are using that verified platform. Also, we have a digital platform called CamDX. It provides to register the business online registration. This is between the line ministry that involves with the businesses. So the user can use the only one platform in order to register their online business.
Also, we have a digital payment. Citizens can transfer the money from one bank to another bank. Very easily. Yeah. By now, no challenge. And also the digital ID. Here is the current status of digital government of Cambodia. I got it from the digital government policy. As I mentioned, the role of ministry, they developed their own system. No interconnected. So no information sharing from ministry to nonministry.
And also from the government to the citizens and the service from the government to the business, the citizens can go to only one office. And this one office connects to all the line ministries that provide the public service to the citizens and the business. The office is providing more than a thousand services to the citizens. And through that [?] and the country that have the service. And, also, yeah. And in this year, 2024, there is a pilot test to deploy 140 businesses fully online. The capital city of Cambodia and some districts that have fully set up advanced infrastructure.
And this is the key challenge for improving the local service in Cambodia. The first is limited internet access. This is connectivity. We still have a problem with the internet access. Especially in the urban areas. And, also, some internet quality. The quality of internet also has a problem. And, yeah, we got the ministry and telecommunications and also the telecommunications of Cambodia. They build more antenna and also have the internet speed in order to build the local citizens to report the internet quality.
And, also, the low digital literacy. Improve the local government in Cambodia to be fully online. The citizens lack the basic digital skills and the digital capacity.
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>> MODERATOR: We have two more presentations. I have to ask you to summarize. Please summarize. Thank you so much.
>> YIN HUOTELY: Thank you. And telecommunications works with UNESCO to work on the framework. And further action, according to the activity that I mentioned in the framework. And resistance to change. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much for the presentation. We are here to help you. Whatever you need. We are here. When you ask us to provide any guidance in these areas. Of course, you are welcome to the LOSI network, where you can find a lot of support.
Moving forward, the next speaker is Vannapha Phommathansy from Laos.
>> VANNAPHA PHOMMATHANSY: Thank you. I'm trying to be quick. I'm trying to turn on I think the slide is not there yet. I'll keep presenting.
So we are a small and least developing country. We are in one of the ASEAN countries. Okay. Maybe I'll go back. Okay.
All right. So in 2024, the indicater was 152. We improved a little bit but still a lot to catch up. Even comparing to a nearing country.
So the government we realize the importance of digital transformation with five key pillars. One is digital economy, digital society. We are actually a late adopter and, actually, the newcomer in terms of digital transformation.
So in 2022, with the help of UNDP, we conducted the digital majority assessment. I think that many indicated we looked into LOSI, we looked into the U.N. index. We assessed into six key pillars. So the five metrics, we are in the infant stage. The overall country scored 1.7, ministry level 1.8. We have 142 districts. So you have a lot of things to improve, especially the interconnectivities, the languages, and the local content, and, also, the digital skills and quality of the services.
So the challenges for Lao here. We have share others. Limited digital infrastructure, siloed systems and legacy processes, low digital literacy, low funding resources. We are the least developing country, we call it. We need to use a lot of investment. And we have low user adoption. Most of the people are still, you know, having difficult in getting the laptop or even going online. And the language and cultural barriers. Most of the content has to be available in English. And, also, the regulatory enforcement is a challenge.
What we have done is we call government web platform. Most of the city and municipalities they don't have their own platforms. They don't have the portal. So we can help them. They can come in and we offer this and they can use the platform.
And the second one is we have the laoportal. We want to gather all the portals of all the government. Both at the local and central. And we also have the government super application. We call it Gov x. We onboard services with line ministry and work with the local government to include their services. Including electronic document tracking. And digital ID will be the next step. We have to take on in order for us to do the verification and also to process the electronic transaction.
So at the city level, we have the we call it the door service centre. It's considered a hybrid model. It has to go to physically. But at least the cities can access information with the application. It knows what kind of licenses they need and how much for the application fees. And how long it will take. But however the electronics section and the digital payment is not available yet.
So the future plan we also hope to take the Losi and map it into our local digital government index. And we also want to access the local government every two years. I think I'll start from January, we wanted to do in consultation with our local government.
So the question is Laos ready for LOSI. LOSI is interesting. However, I think having to improve our understanding and also having to at the end of the day, if we assess ourselves. It's no, there would be no point. I think having to build the infrastructure and having the city to onboard the services and online making able to do transactions online. I think that's the first step. And the second step, take a look into LOSI and mapping ourselves and get ourselves on board.
With that, I think I have no more time. Thank you so much.
>> MODERATOR: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you very much for the presentation.
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This is how LOSI can be used. And with the comment from the Korean partner here. It can be used as a guide to the country. What should we implement? And then you can move forward. Also, you identified some challenges. Literacy, funding scarcity, lack of specialized human resources. Those are common findings.
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You provide a platform as a solution to local government. This is a kind of solution.
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Anyway. Thank you very much. We should move to the last speaker, which is online. So we welcome Nevine Makram Labib Eskaros from Sadat Academy for Management Sciences. The floor is yours. unmute maybe. We can't hear you, Nevine Makram Labib Eskaros. Unmute. We still can't hear you. I think it's on her side. Maybe can you check your sound, please. There's something. There we go.
>> NEVINE MAKRAM LABIB ESKAROS: Okay. Synchronize with my mobile phone.
So let me thank you for your very kind invitation. Really happy to be amongst all of these experts in the domain. I'll be sharing my presentation. It's some insights about how to make use of AI. In assessing the government services. Especially that in Egypt. We're very interested in aligning the AI strategy with all the other services and plans to Assess our services.
>> MODERATOR: Can you click on present? It's on the lower yes, exactly. Perfect.
>> NEVINE MAKRAM LABIB ESKAROS: I'm the chair of computer information systems department in Sadat Academy for Management Sciences. And I'm also the Vice President of ESISACT.
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My specialization where I work on the board of Ministry of Health and Population. I thought it would be useful to make use of all the artificial intelligence technologies in this very important assessment. So by AI, of course, we're not talking about all about artificial intelligence, but about machine learning.
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Whenever it comes to policy making or decision making. And, also, the deep learning and, finally, the generative AI. All of these are aligned with at achievement of the SDGs. Why have I suggested this framework? It's because now we're in the stage of working on the second phase of our AI strategy in Egypt.
And we're kind of redesigning the data electronic services provided. So I thought it would be more useful and more beneficial to all of us to see if we can make use of all of these technologies. My proposed framework to leverage AI in order to provide better assessment
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Is composed of these five stages. How we're going to collect and prepare and process the data. I developed a very simple AI model. I included some assessment criteria.
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And the AI powered assessment. And, finally, how we can work on the continuous improvement. Regarding the data collection, we have many data sources. The important ones are coming from government websites.
The user feedback forms and some performance metrics. As for the data extraction, I focused on the text mining. Because it was text mining techniques were able to extract information from all the unstructured texts such as the user reviews. It's a system that collects all the complaints and deals with the complaints. Regarding the data processing, of course, we do some processing of the data before feeding it into the system or the framework. And we aim at removing any noise, any inconsistent. We also try to handle the missing venues with well known technologies related to AI. And, finally, we have good data as to be able to feed it into our system.
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We also apply the text classification. To be able to categorize the user feedback and define any common issue.
I also suggested to apply, supervisor, and unsupervised machine learning. For the supervised we make use of the classification. So as to be able to predict the service performance metrics. With the unsupervised we're aiming at identifying patterns and anomalies. Finally, I talk about applying deep learning techniques. Especially the artificial and new techniques. To be able to help with the prediction.
The benefits of the AI powered assessments lies in these four points. First of all, we'll be able to have an automated monitoring system, which will help identify any problems that arose at any time. It's kind of real time system. We're able to apply those predictive and prescriptive analytics. We're applying the data driven decision making. We make use of the data analytics framework. And having some prediction to help whenever it comes to policy making, especially in our two priorities. What we're talking health care or education.
And, of course, the citizens satisfaction. And, finally, we have the continuous improvement, which is an advantage of being able to apply the AI here.
While I propose this framework, and I was thinking how we're going to implement it. I thought we would be faced with many ethical considerations. Like the data privacy, which is a problem. Or let's say a challenge with the data protections laws and regulations. And how to make sure that the AI system that will be developed based on this framework, how this will help without posing any threat or any problem to humans. Especially that in Egypt. We're focusing nowadays on the responsible AI.
We have the National Council of Artificial Intelligence that started in November of 2019. And in 2023, we had developed a charter for responsible AI. It had many pillars and making sure any of the systems developed in Egypt, or used in Egypt, should be aligned with our aspects, our values, and making sure it is for the benefit of humans. Not posing any threats.
Regarding the assessment criteria, since we're talking AI, I talk about
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>> MODERATOR: We have run out of time.
>> NEVINE MAKRAM LABIB ESKAROS: Okay. If you'll allow me. Here we have the assessment. The usability. The accessibility. The efficiency. I also added here a proposed road map. If we're to implement this framework, so we should focus on having data repositories on having national centres, so as to be able to integrate these data. And on developing and deploying solutions and a main challenge for us in Egypt is the update of the regulations and policies and to ensure the technology trends.
And applying this, we can improve citizens satisfaction. Thank you very much.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much, Nevine Makram Labib Eskaros, for the presentation. You introduced an AI perspective. It's the future in local government.
>> NEVINE MAKRAM LABIB ESKAROS: Yes.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. If there is only one question. Or not. Okay. We are run out of time, unfortunately.
>> NEVINE MAKRAM LABIB ESKAROS: I'll stop the share.
>> MODERATOR: Yes, thank you. Nevine Makram Labib Eskaros, is there any questions? If you have one question. Yeah.
>> AUDIENCE: I'll try to be brief. I think it's an issue that comes every time we talk about local government. One of the main difficulties we realize when conducting the assessments and when working with government and locals, and how can and how are government and local governments at the local level aligning things with what is defined at the national level. Because we know that most of the countries are more it is not for all, but most of them, are more mature at the national level. They have strategies. Many have different strategies. Many road maps. Many action plans, et. cetera. They have also many platforms. But things are not so developed. How is overview with the working at the local level and a view that responsibility at the national level. How are you interacting and discussing and aligning things and using things?
This connects with the presentation that we attended from Saudi Arabia. From what I understood, there is a strong link.
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And what happened in Riyadh. And maybe it is also a way that we have this position. So the position in ranking. Because this has been based on the experiences that we have from many different responsible at the local level. One of the biggest difficulties and challenges. How to align things. Particularly when this disconnects with resources at the local level. So this is a discussion, I'd like, if we have, to hear from you to see how this environment, if it exists or not. And what is hindering this kind of alignment. And if is not relevant. It's just one part.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. Yes. If you have any comment on that. Alignment between different levels of government in Saudi, which I think it exists.
>> PARTICIPANT: I think we have a strong E governance model that supports this achievement. Because we have a steering committee that supports the international decision. We have a digital transformation coming to you. We have a technical committee. And Riyadh, a part of the steering committee is the government entity. This committee has, like, more than 25 cities. More than 25 entities they are meeting regularly. And we are, like, checking on evaluating and monitoring that we have built.
And, also, we do a biweekly meeting. And workshop. Last year we achieved, I'm talking general. We have more than 500 workshops. And we have assessments that we are working closely with Riyadh. And we make sure they are aligning and complying with the LOSI framework. And we, also, the government approach is working together. And I would say the framework that we are working on is the main, like, factors that makes to achieve this level.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you. So it works properly in Saudi. It's maybe the secret behind the success. Thank you.
So here we have,
>> PARTICIPANT: Also, we have colleagues that are working. We love the country and they provide all successful. And we say always why we deliver it. And we feel from DGA. I saw my colleagues from Ministry of Interior, we are working together. I would like to thank him. He's attending today the session. And we feel that all government entities are working for one goal. Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much.
Okay. So now we're at the end. We have a question for you for the participants to fill. We try to collect to identify which services are provided in local government level in each city that you are a resident. So please fill it. It gives us a good insight. Good information regarding the services provided in local level in each area of the world.
And closing now, so just briefly. Some key take aways from this workshop. Alignment at different levels of government. National, local, and state level and corporations mechanism is a must. We identify a gap applying assessment methods in local governments. Governments and decision makers do not have a clear picture regarding local government in countries. There are some challenges identified by speakers the literacy for discussing and the lack of specialized human resources and corporate findings. And, also, I think we should also consider the innovation thinking in local government. We should raise the bar from our expectations.
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To be more forgiving. Innovation sometimes means failure. We have to get comfortable with that. We need to move fast. Learn and forgive. We need to try more regarding innovation in the local e government.
So with this close in the session, I would like to thank my colleagues.
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Last, but not least, I would like to thank our host kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its people. Your welcomeness and support in the environment is greatly appreciated. Thank you very much, all of you!
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