Fostering coordination to advance Uganda’s digital transformation

The all-African panel that took place at the e-Governance Conference 2023 brought into the spotlight country cases of digital transformation from the continent. An enlightening sessions, where everyone attending – both online and offline – got a unique chance to hear, at a glance, the most salient developments in digital taking place in Uganda and Namibia, among others.

In this episode of the Digital Government Podcast, we host one of the speakers of that session – Dr. Amina Zawedde. As the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of ICT and National Guidance of Uganda, we discuss the status of digital transformation in the country, priorities, and the next steps on their journey.

National guidance in focus throughout the digital journey

First interesting thing to notice, as our attentive audience might have already thought, lies in the name of the Ministry – “National Guidance”. It does reflect, however, what information technologies and digital transformation mean to the country’s government. More and beyond plans and digital services, “it is also about incorporating in these ventures the values we uphold as a country, and as citizens,” Dr. Zawedde begins with.

“In some economies or ecosystems, you might notice that – with technology – people change too. You wonder where values or culture have gone. Instead, we want to make sure that we keep track, maintain, and preserve our culture,” Dr. Zawedde says. “In parallel with the natural mindset change that digitalization requires, we try to ensure that such national guidance is kept into consideration as we move forward.”

Status of digital transformation in Uganda, at a glance

Digital transformation, as we know, does not take place overnight. It is a long process, one that Uganda has already embarked on, and with interesting results so far. “We have had good progress over the last years where we now have over 71% of Government mainstream agencies using one form of an e-service. This comes with the much-needed benefits in reducing time taken to access an e-service, costs that would otherwise been incurred in tedious paper based manual processes and also removed the hustle of having to physically move between Government offices,” Dr. Zawedde says.

“As a result, we have calculated that over 5 million working hours have been saved to date over the last 10 years, and the country has improved its positioning in international rankings on digital government development. Uganda’s ranking on the E-Government Development Index has improved by over 5%. As per the World Bank’s recent GovTech Maturity Index, Uganda’s has moved from Group B to Group A of GovTech leaders. This shows that we have improved across all the four core areas considered in the GovTech Maturity Index: government systems, public service delivery, digital citizen engagement, and govtech enablers.”

The most used e-services are eTax, ePassport, automated business registration e-services, and e-procurement. All core components, among others, of a full-fledged and functioning digital government.