Open Forum #70 Improving local online service delivery in a global world

Summary

This discussion focused on improving local online service delivery in a global context, with a particular emphasis on the Local Online Service Index (LOSI) methodology. Speakers from various countries shared their experiences and challenges in implementing and assessing e-government services at the local level. The session highlighted the importance of aligning national and local government strategies for digital transformation, with Saudi Arabia presenting a successful model of coordination between different levels of government.

Key challenges identified across multiple countries included low digital literacy, funding scarcity, and lack of specialized human resources. The discussion also addressed the need for standardization of services across different municipalities within countries, as well as the difficulties in assessing local government services due to varying organizational structures and service provision models.

Several countries, including India, Tunisia, and Cambodia, shared their experiences in implementing LOSI and other assessment frameworks. These case studies demonstrated the value of such assessments in identifying areas for improvement and benchmarking progress. The United Arab Emirates presented their digital maturity model, which incorporates elements of LOSI and other best practices.

The discussion also touched on future trends, including the potential use of artificial intelligence in assessing and improving e-government services. Speakers emphasized the importance of continuous improvement and the need for innovation in local government, even if it means accepting some level of failure in the process.

Overall, the session underscored the global nature of the challenges in local e-government development and the potential for international cooperation and knowledge sharing to drive improvements. The LOSI methodology was presented as a valuable tool for guiding and assessing progress in this area, with potential for further refinement and expansion.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– Challenges and opportunities in applying the Local Online Services Index (LOSI) methodology to assess local e-government services

– Experiences of different countries in implementing and using LOSI

– Alignment and cooperation between national and local levels of government in digital transformation

– Use of AI and other technologies to improve local e-government services

– Importance of citizen engagement and meeting local needs in e-government

Overall purpose:

The goal of the discussion was to share experiences and best practices in assessing and improving local e-government services using the LOSI methodology, as well as to explore challenges and future directions for local e-government development.

Tone:

The overall tone was informative and collaborative. Speakers shared their countries’ experiences in a factual manner, while also expressing enthusiasm for improving local e-government. There was a sense of mutual learning and desire for cooperation among participants. The tone became slightly more urgent towards the end when discussing the need for innovation and alignment between government levels.

Speakers

– Dimitrios Sarantis: Senior Research Analyst, UNU Operating Unit on Policy-Driven and Electronic MRIs in Portugal

– Angelica Zundel: Consultant for UN

– Ayman Alarabiat: Professor, Al-Balqa Applied University, Jordan 

– Dr Gayatri Doctor, CEPT University, India

– Mehdi Limam: Member of the Tunisian E-Governance Society

– Abdulaziz Zakri: Representative from Digital Government Authority (DGA), Saudi Arabia

– Manal Al Afad: Digital government and open government expert, Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority, United Arab Emirates

– Yin Huotely: Representative from Monitoring and Evaluation Department, Digital Government Committee, Ministry of Post and Telecommunication of Cambodia

– Vannapha Phommathansy: Representative from Digital Government Centre, Ministry of Technology and Communications, Laos

– Nevine Makram Labib Eskaros: Professor, Chair of Computer Information Systems Department, Sadat Academy for Management Sciences, Egypt

Additional speakers:

– Delfina Soares: Professor

– Young-Hwan Jin: Representative from the Seoul National University research team

Improving Local Online Service Delivery: A Global Perspective on LOSI Implementation

This comprehensive discussion brought together experts from various countries to explore the challenges and opportunities in implementing and assessing local e-government services, with a particular focus on the Local Online Service Index (LOSI) methodology.

LOSI Methodology and Components

Dimitrios Sarantis introduced the LOSI methodology, explaining that it consists of four main criteria:

1. Institutional framework

2. Content provision

3. Services provision

4. Participation and engagement

The LOSI assessment evaluates 86 indicators across these criteria, providing a comprehensive view of local e-government capabilities. Sarantis also highlighted the complexities in assessing local government services due to varying organizational structures and service provision models across different countries and municipalities.

Country Experiences and Challenges

Several countries shared their experiences in implementing LOSI and other assessment frameworks:

1. Jordan: Ayman Alarabiat highlighted issues with awareness, resources, and resistance to change. He emphasized the need for capacity building and change management strategies.

2. India: Gayatri Doctor reported that the LOSI assessment helped identify gaps in online services and challenges with distributed portals. The assessment process led to improvements in service delivery and citizen engagement.

3. Tunisia: Mehdi Limam explained how they leveraged EGDI scores and the UN toolkit to implement LOSI effectively. He stressed that LOSI helps identify weaknesses and benchmark digital maturity, driving continuous improvement in local e-government.

4. Cambodia: Yin Huotely emphasized the need to improve connectivity and digital literacy.

5. Laos: Vannapha Phommathansy highlighted additional infrastructure and adoption challenges due to the country’s early stage of development.

6. United Arab Emirates: Manal Al Afad presented their digital maturity model, which incorporates elements of LOSI and other best practices.

7. Saudi Arabia: Abdulaziz Zakri shared a successful model of coordination between different levels of government, aligning national and local efforts through governance frameworks. He highlighted plans to expand their e-government initiatives to ten major cities across the country.

Common challenges across countries included low digital literacy, funding scarcity, lack of specialized human resources, and the need to improve connectivity and infrastructure.

UN Local Government Toolkit

Angelica Zundel presented the UN Local Government Toolkit, designed to support LOSI implementation. This resource provides guidance and best practices for local governments looking to improve their online services.

Strategies for Improvement and Future Directions

1. Alignment of national and local efforts: An audience member, Delfina, raised the question of how local governments align their efforts with national-level strategies. The discussion highlighted the importance of coordination across different levels of government.

2. Expanding the LOSI network: Sarantis explained the purpose of the LOSI Network in facilitating knowledge sharing and addressing common barriers.

3. Leveraging emerging technologies: Nevine Makram Labib Eskaros from Egypt proposed using artificial intelligence to assess and improve e-government services, presenting a five-stage framework for AI integration in e-government assessment.

4. Regular assessment and benchmarking: Speakers emphasized the value of LOSI in identifying areas for improvement and tracking progress over time.

5. Addressing diverse local contexts: The discussion acknowledged the need to balance standardized assessment with country-specific needs and contexts.

Key Takeaways and Future Considerations

Dimitrios Sarantis concluded the session with key takeaways:

1. The importance of continuous improvement in local online service delivery

2. The value of knowledge sharing and learning from diverse experiences

3. The need for ongoing refinement of the LOSI methodology

Future considerations include:

1. Standardization of assessment across diverse government structures

2. Effective engagement of policymakers in utilizing LOSI results

3. Addressing resource constraints, particularly in developing countries

4. Ethical and effective integration of AI in e-government assessment

The session ended with a call for participants to complete a questionnaire regarding services provided at the local government level, further contributing to the ongoing development of LOSI.

Conclusion

The discussion underscored the global nature of the challenges in local e-government development and the potential for international cooperation and knowledge sharing to drive improvements. The LOSI methodology was presented as a valuable tool for guiding and assessing progress in this area, with potential for further refinement and expansion. As countries continue to develop their local e-government services, the insights shared in this discussion provide a foundation for more targeted and effective improvements, ultimately aiming to enhance service delivery for citizens worldwide.

Dimitrios Sarantis: Okay, we start. I welcome you to IG session entitled improving local online service delivery in a global world. My name is Dimitrios Sarantis, Senior Research Analyst in the UNU Operating Unit on Policy-Driven and Electronic MRIs in Portugal, together with Angelica Zundel and Denis Husser from United Nations Economic Cooperation. And we will moderate this session. I would like to welcome our eight distinguished speakers in the panel. And before starting the session, I would like to make a brief reference of the session structure and describe its sections. Firstly, I invite online participants to submit their comments and questions in the Q&A section of the online session. With the help of Angelica, we will gather all of them and do our best to transfer them to our panelists. Of course, participants in the room can set questions orally. Online participants have the possibility to also make comments if they request it. So let’s go quickly in session. The first part, the first section, is entitled Opportunities and Challenges in Applying LOSI. In this section, panelists will identify benefits of applying LOSI in their countries. They can suggest possible use of LOSI application results and ways of using them in policymaking. They can mention examples from their own experience. They will suggest ways to engage policymakers and local researchers in LOSI network activities. And they may identify challenges. of applying LOGIE and possible ways of facing them. And they will suggest, hopefully, ways of improving LOGIE methodology and expanding the network. After that, we will have a Q&A section. Then Angelica will briefly present a government LOGIE toolkit. She will explain this toolkit that is created from UNDES and UNUIGOV in order to support LOGIE application. The next section is local government present and future. So panelists will present the existing needs of citizens and cities in their countries. They will describe ways, for example, applications, technologies, innovations of facing these needs in local government level. They will also suggest future trends in local government coming from their countries. And also, they may suggest ways that we can assess local government development. And challenges and ways of facing these assessment methods and possible ways of collaboration and funding sources, which are problems that we face currently. Okay. Before going to the panelists, I will say, let’s say, the main topics of LOGIE instrument, which is a collaboration of UNDES and UNUIGOV. We started this collaboration back in 2018, and the reason was to support local government development. Here’s EGDI to assess e-government at the national level. So because citizen is more close to local government than the national one, we thought that there is a need to cover there. So we came up with this methodology. Very briefly, at the moment, the methodology comprises 95 indicators. And it is divided in six areas, in six criteria. In brackets, you can see the indicators that we use for each criteria. The first one is institutional framework. The next one is content provision. So we assess aspects about content, then services provision. So what online services are provided by the city. Participation and engagement. The next one, technology. The fifth, and the recently introduced one, e-government leadership. So together with this methodology that is applied biannually from UNDES and UNEGO, and the results are published in United Nations e-government survey, we use local government questionnaire, which gathers information from local government municipalities in preparation for the upcoming survey. So this gives us a better insight from local governments because of public officials that give us this information. The results from this assessment are published in United Nations e-government knowledge base and biannually. And you can see them in detail, all the results of the city. So we will not spend more time on that. We apply this methodology in the most populous city of each country, of the 193 member states. So, because there is… applied in more cities worldwide, we designed and applied the idea of Lossy Network, which invites interested institutions to participate with their resources and with our support, UNDESA and UNEGOV, in order to apply Lossy methodology in a larger number of cities in their country, after signing a memorandum of understanding. Okay. Now, I think it is the right time to go to the first section, where we will see partners that have already joined Lossy Network, and they will talk about their experience. The first panelist is Ayman Al-Arabyat, Professor Ayman Al-Arabyat, from Al-Balqa Applied University. Ayman, the floor is yours.

Ayman Alarabiat: Good morning, everyone. First of all, I would like to thank UNDESA, UNEGOV, IGF, and also the Sudanese government for organizing this forum. I will start with telling you about the story, how I got involved in Lossy. Of course, the main reason is my teacher, Professor Delfina Suarez. 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, Dimitris and I have conducted a study, we evaluate around 19 cities’ portals or websites in Jordan. So at first, Jordan is a small country in the Middle East, but we are, as Jordanians, we believe it’s great because of its people. At local level, we have two administrative levels of government, one under the Ministry of the Interior, for the municipalities, they are controlled under the local or the Ministry of Local Administration. We have around 100 municipalities in Jordan, however, the majority of Jordanian municipalities are, has a financial problem because of many financial situations in Jordan. The main expenses in Jordan municipalities goes to salaries, around from 50 to 85% of municipalities’ budget goes to salaries. As I said, we have evaluated around 19 cities in Jordan, for our methodology, Dimitris and I agreed that we remove around 16 indicators from the LOSI methodology that are related to service provision indicators. The reason that all of these 15 services are provided by national department or national ministries. in Jordan. For our result, a table that all Jordanian municipalities were ranked at middle or lowest group, except one city, it’s the capital, Amman. All of Jordanian municipalities face main challenges and main limitations in technology, service provision, and also in citizen engagement. However, our result indicates that small municipalities sometimes doing better than larger municipalities, despite having fewer resources. Maybe that’s related to the vision or the strategy that those small municipalities have taken in their perspective. Now, after we have done our study, we promote LOSI in Jordan. How we did that, we sent our report to local administrative ministry. We also have interactive lectures with greater Amman municipalities, and we have online session with Arab Smart Cities Network that are located in Jordan. At that session, around 100 persons from around 70 municipalities have attended that online session. Now, for the challenges and opportunities, in fact… In fact, we face a main challenge regarding the awareness of local administrative or local official about the international evaluation. They are not familiar with that. They also have limited resources, and digital transformation is not in the top of their priority. Of course, there was a resistance to change that we found when we talked to them. And also, I delivered some training program in IPA. It’s an institution of public administration in Jordan for many times. And the attendance was from many municipalities, and they do not have full awareness of the importance of digital transformation. And if they have, they don’t know how to move to digital transformation. The second challenge is regarding how we could transform this theoretical result into practical actions. For our opportunity, I think we should work in the long-term strategy for engagement. We have started some initial talk with the Ministry of Local Administration in Jordan. And also, we are trying to collaborate with potential partners like Arab Smart Cities Forum. They are expressing their willingness to participate with us in the next study that we are what we are going to do in 2025. So, thank you very much for your listening. So, of course, any valuable suggestions will be welcome. Thank you very much. Thank you, Dimitris.

Dimitrios Sarantis: Thank you, Professor Al-Arabyat, especially for the challenges… and the ways that we can move forward… engaging policy makers in using lousy results. Let’s move now to the second speaker, Dr. Gayatri Doktor… from CEPT University in India, which is an online speaker. And, Dr. Gayatri, we welcome you. Please, the floor is yours.

Gayatri Doctor: Thank you very much. First of all, I would like to thank UNDESA, UNU-IGAV and IGF… 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 populous city in each state… and the union territories. And we applied the LOSI methodology. This came out to 27 states, 9 union territories. But, of course, two cities did not have municipal government portals. So, our total assessment was of 34 cities. I had a student researcher… who worked with me on this, Soumya Mehta. In the second pilot, which we did, we decided to concentrate on only one state, which was Gujarat. And in Gujarat, we targeted 53 urban local bodies, or 53 cities, which was across municipal corporations and municipalities, with the municipal governance portals. And we also tried to study two cities where they did not have a municipal government portal. So this was also done with a student researcher, Devanshi Shah. Can we move to the next? In the Indian context, when we look at it, there are a variety of portals that are available. We have centrally-government portals of the government of India. Each and every state has state-governed portals. Then comes the district level, where there are district portals. And we have the city websites. Could be municipalities, municipal corporations, or city councils. This breakup is basically made on the basis of the population of the cities. So there are multiple modes of service delivery to access citizen service. There are some services available on district, state, or central portals. And the urban local bodies, that is the city websites, according to the Indian jurisdiction system, is supposed to perform certain specific services. We have something called the 74th Amendment and 18 services which a city should perform. When we did these studies, both of the pilots, we could identify cities based on high, medium and low maturity. We did not have anybody with the very high maturity. The LOCIE methodology helped us to assess and improve the efficiency, accessibility and the quality of the locally government services. Basically, when we assessed the 34 cities across the country, it was a little more difficult, but when we accessed 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. The next slide, please. So of course, when we did the LOCIE across both the pilots, we could see that we could identify the gaps in the online service. So there were some cities which were in the high, some in the middle, some in the low. So why were they? So we could see the cities, there was transparency and 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, though we did not get too many feedbacks from many cities, it was an understanding of how the government also appreciates this particular evaluation. Users were also… experience of users can be evaluated. Next slide, please. Of course, we did have challenges in applying the LOCIE network because all the services were not available on one city portal. They were distributed across different portals like the district, the state, the central, or some parastatal bodies. Also, some cities did not have an active or an updated MGP. There was some of them, the data was incomplete. There is some tax information which is supposed to be mentioned in the part of the LOCIE thing. But in India, there are various forms of tax, income tax, property tax, professional tax. So all these were not, it was difficult to capture all the elements in the current LOCIE. And also the organizational structure under LOCIE in the infrastructure institution setup, the organization structure has to be defined, which varies depending on the classification of the cities. So there were these type of challenges. And India being a diverse country, we have lots of languages. So the availability of the MGP accessible in multiple languages is also a constraint. Of course, once you give suggestions, there is always some sort of resistance to change, to implement the suggestions. 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 LOCIE helps us to identify the good performing cities, and policymakers can benchmark their services against the successful models so that other cities can adopt these particular things. It also helps policymakers to identify the areas and allocate resources and do some strategic planning. Of course, over a period of time, you can monitor the LOCIE data and track the progress of the cities and their impact over time. Next, please. This is just generic, that how do you do it? You can have stakeholder workshops and seminars. You can create policy briefs and reports. Do public consultations and feedback with the users, because citizen-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 with an approach to improving e-government services. Next, please. So on the whole, I would say that LOCIE 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 citizen engagement, and transparency and accountability. Thank you. The way forward, we are going to be doing a LOCIE pilot 3 in 2025, where we would be even studying in the Indian context, there is a state level e-service delivery system. So we would be studying that and comparing it with LOCIE. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Gayatri.

Dimitrios Sarantis: Well, India is a huge country. So for us, it’s a very important partner because we can have a very useful insight in order to improve LOCIE from this type of organizational structure, from this federation type of structure in the country. And I will just highlight here this aspect, the organizational structure in India varies depending on the classification of cities. They have municipal corporations, municipalities, different types of organizational units. And we face this not only in India, we face this aspect also in other countries that it is not easy to identify the organizational unit in municipality level, in city level that provides the services that we assess in our instrument. For example, in the UK, they have this structure of cities, municipalities, boroughs, the smaller ones. So which one provides the services? This comes in many places and is an issue that we should discuss in the future and find solutions. Anyway, we will proceed because, thank you, Dr. Gayatri. Now the next panelist is Mehdi Limam from the Tunisian government. society. The panel is yours.

Mehdi Limam: Good morning everyone. I’m Mehdi Rimem, a member of the Tunisian E-Governance Society and today I have the pleasure to share with you the experience of implementing the LUCI methodology in Tunisia and to discuss the opportunities and challenges it presents. We will take a look at the benefits of LUCI, key steps for implementation and the path forward for applying this methodology. Let’s begin with the first slide. This is a representation of the result of the implementation of LUCI in Tunisia. We evaluated 24 municipality portals across the 24 states. As you can see, only 9 achieved the rank of middle while the rest have low scores. We won’t dive too much into the results. For full details, I encourage you to consult our report which outlines our findings and insights from our evaluation. Next, LUCI has proven to be a powerful tool in enhancing local government. By evaluating the government portals, LUCI can help identify specific weaknesses, enabling municipalities to improve their services which can lead to more user-friendly and efficient portals. Additionally, benchmarking digital maturity through LUCI provides the municipalities with clear metrics, allowing them to strategically plan their digital transformation. One of LUCI’s greatest strengths is its ability to foster collaboration by learning from global best practices. LUCI enables governments to benefit from shared experiences. Countries that apply the methodology can serve as valuable case studies. Now, in the next slide, the question is how can countries effectively implement closely. Based on our experience in Tunisia, there are three key steps. First, as we can see, we can start with the EGDI scores. Analyzing the country EGDI scores provides a strong foundation for understanding the digital maturity of the country. The next step will be leveraging the UN Local Government Toolkit, as we see in the next slide. This toolkit provides guidance on Lucy indicators with concrete examples. And the final step, we suggest studying the country background to determine which criteria are likely to be present and which ones are not likely to be provided. This will help save time and ensure a more efficient evaluation. But implementation is just the beginning. To really leverage Lucy, we must build on opportunities. Next slide, please. Next. Thank you. First, collaboration is key. Partnering with other countries interested in Lucy allows for the exchange of experiences and best practices. We’re currently working on collaboration. Second, we must invest in training municipal employees on emerging technologies. Civil society can lead this effort to build local capacities. We also recommend launching initiatives for data collection and publication. Civil society can collaborate with municipalities to make data accessible on portals, which increase transparency and citizens trust. Finally, fostering public-private partnership is essential. This collaboration can expand e-services like digital payments. The private sector can provide expertise and resources for municipalities to deliver more modern and better solutions. Of course, we had some challenges, engaging policymakers and ensuring the methodology adoption at the local level can be difficult. Limited resources, both technical and financial, often slow implementation. Also ensuring consistent stakeholders engagement and overcoming resistance to change in local government can be challenging. But by expanding the LUCIE network, refining the methodology and involving stakeholders, we can address these barriers. In conclusion, this was our experience and findings in the Tunisian E-Governance Society in implementing the LUCIE methodology. I would like to extend my gratitude to Vivienne, UNDESA and UNUGOV for the opportunity and their trust in our work. I also 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 and engaging with us, we are open for collaboration and look forward to strengthening local governance globally. Thank you.

Dimitrios Sarantis: Thank you, Mehdi. Pynisia is one of the most recent LUCIE partners in our network. So now it is time to open the first Q&A section for comments, questions to our panelists or to any comments that you may have. Allow me to do the first question to Mehdi, starting from this thing that he mentioned at the end about the collaboration with the policy makers using the LUCIE results. So I would like to ask you Mehdi, if you have tried or you have succeeded to disseminate and serve the knowledge. produced from LOSI application in your country with government officials and decision-makers in your country? And if yes, or not the same, how do you think they should use the extracted results? And give us some thoughts which could be the next steps to improve local government development in Tunisia using LOSI output.

Mehdi Limam: Well, thank you. Currently, we have a slight problem. There is hesitance in local governments because we are waiting for the elections. The local entities’ mandates are over, but the elections are delayed. So there is hesitance to make any change, waiting for the new elected officials.

Dimitrios Sarantis: Okay. Thank you, Mehdi. So I invite now the participants or the online participants to, if they have any questions, please, it is the time to do it now. Yes, please. Please introduce yourself also for all the participants.

Audience: Hello. Yeah, my name is Young-Hwan Jin from the Seoul National University research team for doing the application of the LOSI methodologies in South Korea. So we just concluded all the researches and submitted the drafts to the UN DASA, and we are trying to wait for the comments right now. And this is a very great opportunity to have a very strong network to enhance the status of the local online services by measuring them and suggesting the new features. directions of the local online services. So I believe as this impact dated in every two years, and that’s why they came to date, and continuously they’re suggesting the most challenging indicators, such as the rise of the use of AI, and update of the internet, you know, the standards. Why? But in here, I try to ask the very one good question about the new future direction of the LUCI. So I believe that one of the most strong role and the purpose of LUCI is providing some guideline for the local government, like acting like a lighthouse, showing them the way, how the future looks like. So in here, I try to mention that the struggles, I’m not going to ask this as challenges, but struggles we have in the South Korea. So as a background, the South Korean cities can see that they’re some of the most developed countries in terms of the data governments and online services. So in our research, they show that the last of the cities, they have very high score in terms of the LUCIs. But the most, the third part we had is that the some of the services that is indicated in the LUCI index is not authorized to provide in the local government, because a lot of services there’s mentioned in the LUCI is not allowed to provide by the local government. Some of them are controlled and provided by central government or the state government or provincial governments. So I believe this, the very similar problem was already mentioned in the Indian cases than any other cities, something like that. In these kinds of cases, so what are the future direction we should have in the side of the UNESCO and the UNU, that that is one of the question I should ask. So how we deal with these kinds of struggles? Thank you.

Dimitrios Sarantis: Thank you. Thank you very much for the question. Well, I don’t know if I have the answer. The only thing that 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 criterion. Because our colleague here identifies this problem that not all cities in the world provide the same services and are authorised from the government to provide the same services in local level. So this is an issue that we should face. We try to do our best and identify, let’s say, the most common services that are used in all cities around the world. It’s very difficult to do that. What I can say is that Lossy Network is a solution, maybe partly in this problem, because what we do with our partners in each country is to identify their specific needs in their context, in their national context, and adjust those services in the specific case. So this is a solution. But again, when we go to the UN, the government survey every two years, it is very difficult to find the ideal set of services for each city. You can understand that. It’s very difficult. Finally, an answer to this would be the citizen at the end is not interested if he or she receives the service from the city or from the central government. Finally, he should receive the service that he expects to receive. So we have this approach in our methodology. We don’t seek and ask in the assessment if the city provides this service. service, but if the municipality website gives the access to this service, so for example, if they give the link to the national government for this service, this is enough because the citizen can receive this service in the way that he wants. But yes, this is a very interesting hot topic for us and for this reason, we have something for you at the end. We have made a questionnaire in order to identify, maybe to try to improve this set of services that we ask. We will, you will see at the end, and we are asking all of you to feel this. Thank you very much for your question. Any other questions or should we move to the next? If not. Okay. Now, Angelica will take the floor from you in Deza and she will give you a brief presentation of a very interesting, very useful, not interesting, very useful toolkit that we have designed and offered to everyone. It is publicly open and yeah, she will say more about that in a while, Angelica.

Angelica Zundel: Thank you, Dimitris. Hello, everyone. For those who don’t know me, my name is Angelica and I work as a consultant for UN. Let me quickly show you, so I’m just presenting first this QR code, which will give you access to our UN eGovKB 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 seconds to scan this or insert the link and then I’ll just quickly show you what that looks like on the website. And of course, I can also link the paste, sorry, paste the link on the chat afterwards. So hopefully you can see, yes, you can see my screen. So this is the page you’ll land on. Again, this is for the city data of the latest UNIGOV 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 LOCIE 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 LOCIE. And 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’d need to work on more, particularly in order to improve my LOCIE performance. Now with this sort of knowledge in mind, we encourage you to then check out our local e-government toolkit, which again, you can access here through this QR code or the link. Just giving you a few seconds to scan that, but again, I’ll share that again on the chat and also by email. So it’s especially useful to use in complement to what you just saw on the city data page, because the local e-government toolkit is essentially structured around the LOCIE and the six sub-components. Each module sorry, I hope you can hear me, is based on these sub-components. And so from what I saw as Istanbul, I would, let’s say, be interested in the technology sub-components. So I’ll click here and then I’ll land on a slide deck, which will give me information on which indicators are. assessed in this subcomponent as per the latest 2024 survey. So here’s an index of all the different indicators, just to give you an overview. And then let’s say I’m interested in what exactly that consists of. So what does that mean? I’ll click on the slide. And then each slide, which essentially looks the same here, it has the same structure. But for each indicator, it’ll give you an explanation of what that 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 a case study or a guide for each indicator. So I’ll keep it short, because 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 LOC performance. So back to, I think, the main slides. Or rather, I think we’ll proceed with the fourth presentation. And if you have any questions, feel free to put them in the chat or email me. Thank you.

Dimitrios Sarantis: Thank you, Angelica. So yes, please have a look at the toolkit. You will find it very useful. So now we move to the second section that is named Local Government, Present and Future. So here, we have speakers from countries that have not applied yet LOGi methodology, but I think they are most of them in this track. So the first speaker is from Saudi Arabia, Abdulaziz Zakri from DGA. And he will present us a few things to show us why DGA, why Saudi Arabia and Riyadh have made such a great improvement in the government recently. Abdulaziz, the floor is yours.

Abdulaziz Zakri: Thank you, Dimitris. We are very happy to have you here today in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Arabia and it’s my pleasure to be here among this audience and it’s really honored today to speak about Riyadh’s achievement in becoming one of the top three cities globally in local online services and as a matter of fact to achieve this status Riyadh has worked in three driving factors that set it apart. The first factor is Vision 2030 and by improving the quality of life and enhancing the quality of a 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. We speak here about satisfied citizen and enabled businesses, effective government, efficient investment and regulated ecosystem. Third factor is third factor is of course is important Riyadh needs is about service delivery, citizen empowerment and inclusion and we make sure that no one left behind and lastly daily life improvement. All of them are driven by SDG which is sustainable development goals. Here let’s look very quickly at the four foundational pillars of Riyadh digital transformation strategy. Starting with empowering businesses, prioritizing beneficiaries and encouraging active participation and harnessing emerging technology. Together those principles or pillars have propelled Riyadh as innovative and interconnected hub or urban hub where different system services and people are seamlessly connected. This is a very important part as the Digital Government Authority and Riyadh Municipality have collaborated extensively to implement the LUCI assessment framework and this relation between Digital Government Authority and Riyadh, I would say, has driven the alignment of municipal services with the global standards as well as enhance the digital processes and integration or integrated innovative technologies. And this relation lead to strengthen Riyadh today as we are positioning as a top global performer today in a government. And we decided to expand this successful journey with other major cities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia like Mecca, Jeddah, Medina, Dammam. And this is not only because the successful story of Riyadh. Also, it is part of the plan of the Saudi authorities for the project called Saudi or city, smart city in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to be implemented for 10 cities across the country. And it is the first stage for this plan. And yes, and we believe that we are delivering because we have all success factors to achieve it. Here, an example for a municipal service for Riyadh and this is part of the success use cases of Riyadh which is MyCity. MyCity is an online application. It provides Riyadh citizen and resident access to essential services, also enabling community participating in improving the urban landscape of the city. One of the services is called snap and send, and this is about if you want to fix your street, or there is a light in the street is broken, or anything will affect any issue related visual appeal, you just have to take a picture and you send it, and you have surface level agreement with agreed time to have the respond to any issue that you have it around you or any location in Riyadh city. And we also have a valid platform is not only application, it provide service through the web. It is a data driven platform in a national scale, serving all municipalities in Saudi Arabia, including Riyadh. And this is also a good example for collaboration between Ministry of Municipal and Housing, and also Riyadh city, and as well as DGA to deliver the best quality of the services. Riyadh also has or provides GIS information to support Riyadh and users to take a decision based on the information. For example, if you have a business, you’d like to build this business, you can choose your location. And also you would like to buy a house and you can understand from this information how to make the decision. And also we place a participation and public engagement as a priority 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. And this guarantee that public participation in policymaking is 100% is happening by cooperating with the stakeholders and partners of the city. On the other hand, most decisions related to Riyadh are being taken through consulting people and the service design. by this consultation and reflect to improve this quality of services. Sorry. Sorry for the confusion. And on the other hand, most decisions related to Riyadh are being 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 complain through Riyadh City, we have these services and also we are offering open data for public to use it and make success case from data for Riyadh. This is the last part and one of the most slide I like about Riyadh. As you can see here, some of the Giga project in Riyadh. We can speak about like Green Riyadh Project and King Salman Bar. We can see at the Riyadh Development Program. And if we speak briefly about two projects, let’s start with the Green Riyadh Project. It’s about transforming the city with a million of trees and to have a cleaner air and sustainable space for healthier and greener future. Also, as you can see, King Salman Bar Project is one of the largest urban parks in the world. And it’s all about green spaces and cultural hubs and recreation to create vibrant and thriving of Riyadh. I will end my topic today with this slide and thank you very much for your attention. Thank you.

Dimitrios Sarantis: Thank you very much, Abdulaziz, for your excellent presentation. And thank you because you showed us, you gave us a flavor. some ideas why Riyadh and Saudi have made this great progress in e-government, because you showed us real practical life applications that serve the citizen in real life. So, and also what I identified, collected from your presentation, this is this example that the success of local government in Riyadh will not stop here, but will work as a model to be expanded in the rest of the cities in Saudi. And maybe this is a pattern that can be followed also in other cases. So, thank you very much. And let’s move to the next speaker who comes from United Arab Emirates, Manel Al-Affad from Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority. The floor is yours.

Manal Al Afad: Thank you, Demetrius. First of all, I would like to thank you and DISA and UNU for this opportunity to be part of this distinguished panel and distinguished workshop. And thank you for King Saudi Arabia for hosting this fabulous event. For me, it’s the first time to attend the IGF, and really, it’s my pleasure. This is Manel Al-Affad. I am from United Arab Emirates. I’m a digital government and open government expert. I’m leading the UAE competitiveness profile. I’m here today to present for you the UAE story with regard to implementing Lucy unofficially and some other instruments. UAE commitment to digital transformation, actually, it’s a fundamental on the way UAE The fourth pillar, which is forward ecosystem, consists of the digital transformation and providing the most prestigious interactive proactive 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 are talking about. Okay, what does the citizen need? All of us here are citizens, either expat or local, either a tourist or maybe from outside the country. All of us seek for a service, all of us want to know, want to get a service. So here in UAE, we are focusing on leveraging advanced technology, fostering seamless interaction between government and society, ensuring equitable access to essential service, whatever user is. So it is digital service, yes, but we need to reach for 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 instruments, two tools. One of it is with which is Lucy methodology, we are implementing on seven emirates. And the second one, which is the UAE digital maturity model, which is built using a best practice model. One of this model is the UN e-survey and the Lucy methodology, which is built on the DNA of this digital maturity model, which consists of three pillars, leadership and policy, technology accelerators, organizations and data. You can see here this key framework implemented on seven local. emirates or d govs and 14 federal entities 14 federal entities which is the main sectors here providing service for community and it is assessed each two year each two year we are assessing this maturity model last year was the baseline and you can access it online of course what if what is we done for the world we are cooperating with bsi and providing and transferring this digital maturity to a pass standard which is passed 2009 2024 alhamdulillah we released this pass in cooperation with british standard institution on february which is digital maturity for government organization it is a guideline for any digital government or organization all over the world to for strategic integration of technology for efficient service deliver and for applicability globally so this is standard available for anyone they can download it from bsi you can download it from bsi website okay i would like to present from this platform abu dhabi case where is it’s providing the government service system which which is a super app for providing a digital service for the community its name or branded tem which is in english done okay this platform tem consists of more than 700 plus city services provided for the whole citizen across the abu dhabi emirates and even a tourist This application available you can check it online and 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 in Abu Dhabi, 15,000 for people with determination using a service specified for this category and this application or this super app super platform saved 24,000 24 million 300 visits to customer including 1 million and 900 visit for elderly and 382,000 visit for people of determination. This was for 2023 data and now we have different data in Abu Dhabi platform. Actually Abu Dhabi platform super app one of the success story on a local level it is now an organization it’s transferred to an organization with a director general with a factory to produce a service on a local level in cooperation with the whole organization under Abu Dhabi digital government. And here I would like to thank you all for hearing me I hope that it was not long and I will be happy to receive any question.

Dimitrios Sarantis: Thank you and and yeah you mentioned it’s not a question just a comment you mentioned that you do regularly assessment in UAE so every two years so maybe this explains or is an one of the explanation why UAE is well ahead regarding digital government. So you assess and then you improve things. Let’s move and we will have maybe the time at the end for questions. Next speaker is Yin Huatli from Cambodia, from 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 thank to the organiser, especially to Dimitris for giving me the opportunity to join such a wonderful event. This is my first time to join ITS forum here. My name is Ellie. I’m from the Digital Government Committee, Ministry of Post and Telecommunication of Cambodia. I’m in charge of M&E department. I’m very amazing of the presentation of Saudi Arabia and also UAE because here I am just give the overview of the local e-government in Cambodia because we are quite young and also we may be left behind the UAE and then Saudi Arabia. We come here to seek for the recommendation and also for the cooperation from the UNDESA and UNGOV for the cooperation for the fusion cooperation. Thank you. I have a short presentation here. Just before we go deep to the local service that provided by the local government to the local citizens, I just give the overview of the… e-government in Cambodia. We start the e-government project in 2002. This e-government project is under the financial and technical support from the Republic of Korea. The first e-government project in Cambodia, we call GAI, Government and Resilient Information System. We have the five core information systems in here. FEC, real estate information system, electronic approval system, resident information system, and also the B Corp registration information system and the connectivity. In this period, the support of the project is very large in five years. At that time, the e-government was implemented by involving all the 27 line ministries, but only one implementer. At this time, we can say that the issues of ownership is a big ownership problem. When the project ends, some of the core projects are no longer used and will move to the expertise line ministries, such as, for example, the real estate information system. They move to the Ministry of Land Management and Planning by using the LMAB. Also, for the electronic approval system, this system is no longer used. Right now, the MPTC, Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, are using the document workflow. This is for internal use only. For the resident information system, they have to move to the Ministry of Interior. At that time, from the period of their moving, they are also implementing a new system by their own. Also the vehicle information system moved to the Ministry of Public Work and Transportation and also they implement their own system too. And during the period of 2010 to 2020, yeah, the ownership issues is solved, but the lime district began to implement their own system. So the increase of silo system and also the interoperability issues also occur at that time. From 2020, here to solve the problem, Royal Government of Cambodia worked on the two policy frameworks we call Digital Society and Economy Policy Framework and also the Digital Government Policy Framework. And at that time, yeah, at that time, the four core DPI, digital platform for the core government, four digital platform, we established by the, recognized by the government and we use it as the central, the interoperability platform. The first is we call Verify Digital Authentication, verify.gov.kh and this is the government platform that can also write all the government issues document and with the standard QR code and this system is using the blockchain technology and very accurate, yeah. Right now, we We have more than 600,000 certificates that are using the Verify platform. Also, we have another digital platform called CAMDX, it’s for data exchange. This provides to register the business online registration. This platform interoperates between the line ministries that are involved with the business registration together, so the user can use only one platform in order to register their online business. Also, we have a digital payment called Bakong. Citizens can transfer money from one bank to another bank very easily. Right now, no charge. Also, the digital ID. Here is the current status of the digital government of Cambodia. This is the source I got from the digital government policy. As I mentioned, the role of ministries and institutes, they have developed their own public system. No interconnected, so the lack of information sharing from a ministry to another ministry is very left behind. Also, for the services from the government to the citizens and the services from the government to the business, the citizens can go to only one office called One Window Service Office. This One Window Service Office connects to all the line ministries that provide the public service to the citizens. and the business. Right now, the one-window service office is provided more than 1,000 service to the citizen. The one-window service office is operating countrywide. In all the country, they have one-window service. And also, yeah. And in this year, in 2024, there’s a pilot test to deploy 114 services fully online for the four sectors, agriculture, handicraft, tourism, culture, and fine arts to the Phnom Penh, in the Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia, and to some districts that have fully set up infrastructure. Yeah. This is the key challenge for improving the local service in Cambodia. The first is limited access of internet access. This is what we call the connectivity. We still have a problem with the internet access, especially in the urban area. And also, some internet quality in the Phnom Penh, the main city of Cambodia, also has some part. Also, the quality of internet also has a problem. And at that time, yeah, we got the Ministry of Post and Telecommunication, and also the Telecommunication Directorate of Cambodia take action on this. They build more internet. and also have the internet speed test app in order to give the local citizens to report the internet quality to the regulator office here. And also the law of digital literacy, this is very crucial part for improving the local government in Cambodia to be fully online because the citizens are lack of basic digital skill and also the limited digital capacity of the one-window service officer also. Sorry, Ian, I’m sorry, I’m going to have to ask you to summarize because we have two more presentations and a very, very long time, so please summarize. Thank you so much. Okay, thank you. So this time, the Minister of Post and Telecommunications also worked with UNESCO to work on, to put on the digital media and information literacy framework and for further action according to the activity that mentioned in the framework. And also the resource size of cybersecurity and teleoperability that I mentioned in the report and resistant chain. And thank you so much.

Dimitrios Sarantis: Thank you very much for the presentation and the full picture of a government infrastructure that you have in Cambodia. And as you requested and asked before, we are here to help you. So whatever you need in regarding national level assessment or local government assessment, we are here when you ask us to provide any guidance in these areas. And of course, you are welcome to Losi Network where you can find a lot of support. Moving forward, the next speaker is Vanama Phommathani from Laos, from Digital Government Centre, Ministry of Technology and Communications. Please, the floor is yours.

Vannapha Phommathansy: Yeah, good afternoon. My name is Vanama Phommathani from Digital Government Centre. Government Centers of Lao PDR. I’m the second to last speaker. I’m trying to be quick. However, I can’t even turn on. I think the slide was not there yet. Okay. Okay. So, I will just keep presenting first. So, Lao PDR is a small landlocked and also least developing country. We are in one of the ASEAN countries. Okay. Maybe I’m going to go back to the start. All right. So, in 2024, the released UN e-government index, our indicator was 152. We did a lot, improved a little bit, but then there is still a lot to catch up, even comparing to our neighboring country like CLMB. So, the government, we also realize the importance of digital transformation where we define three key pillars. One is digital government, digital economy, and the third one is digital society. We are actually the late adopter, and we are actually the newcomer in terms of digital transformation. So, in 2022, with the help of UN, United Nations, UNDP, we conducted the country-level digital majority assessment. I think that many indicators, we also look into LOSI, we look into the UN e-government index. So, we assess into six key pillars. So, out of the five metrics, we are in the nascent stage. The overall country only scored 1.7, the ministry levels 1.8, and the provincial level is 1.3. So, when we talk about the local online service index, it’s going to fall under the provincial level, where we have 18 provinces and 142 districts. So, at the province level, we still have a lot of things to improve, especially the interconnectivity, the languages, and the local content, and also the digital skills and the quality. of the services. So the challenges for Laos PDR, I think we share very similar challenges with other countries and also the participants at the panels. So the limited digital infrastructure, silo system, legacy processes, low digital literacy, also funding resources, as Laos is the, we call it the least developing country in our, we have mountainous area, a lot of development and infrastructure need to be made that use a lot of investment. And also we have low user adoption, as most of the people are still, you know, having difficult buying the smartphone or getting the laptop or even go online. And the language and also cultural barriers where most of the content have to be available in English, so Laotian language was not on the map. And also the regulatory enforcement is also a challenge. So what we help the local government is that we create this government website platform, so that most of the city and municipality, they don’t have their own platform, they don’t have the portal. So we can help them, zero code, they can just come in and adopt this and they can use this platform, just plug and play. And the second one is we have in Laos portal, we want to gather all the portal of all the government, both at the local and also central. And we also have the government, we call it a super application, we call it GovX, we also onboarding services from line ministry, but we also have to work with the local government to include their services, including like the bus tracking, postal tracking, electronic document tracking and the form. And digital ID will probably be the next step that we have to

Yin Huotely: 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 on one door service centers, but it’s now considered as a hybrid model. So all the transaction has to still go to physically, but at least the citizen can access to information with the application where they know what kind of licenses they need and how much for the application fees and how long it will take. But however, the electronic transaction and the digital payment is not available yet. So the future plan, we also hope to take the LOCE, and so UN Economic Index, and map it into our local digital government index. And we also want to access the local government every two years. I think start from January, we wanted to do some dissemination and also the consultation with our local government. So the question is, is LAO ready for LOCE? LOCE is very interesting and it’s very good to keep, however, I think having to improve our understanding on also having to, because at the end of the day, if we assess ourselves, it’s going to be all no, there will be no point. So I think having to build the infrastructure, having people digitally distribute, and also having the city to onboard their services and online and make it able to do transaction online. That will be, I think, the first step. And the second step, we also will take a look into LOCE and mapping ourselves and get ourselves on board. So with that, I think I have no more time. So thank you so much.

Dimitrios Sarantis: Thank you very much for the presentation. This is how LOCE can be used as the, also, it was the comment of a Korean partner, Korean colleague here, that it can be used as a guide to the country. What should we implement at least in an initial level, and then you can move forward to them. Also you identified some challenges, low digital literacy, funding scarcity, lack of specialized human resources, which are common findings in countries that show low. And you also gave… I remember well you use a centrally provided platform as a solution to local government, so this is a kind of solution to the resources. Anyway we should move, thank you very much, we should move to the last speaker which is online. So we welcome Professor Naveen Makrab from Sadat Academy for Management Science in Egypt. Naveen the floor is yours. You should unmute maybe. Can’t hear you Naveen. Unmute please. Still can’t hear you. She’s not muted but I think it’s on her side. Naveen can you check your sound please? There’s something. Seconds. Ah there we go. Can you hear me right now? Yes.

Nevine Makram Labib Eskaros: Okay it was synchronized with my mobile phone. So let me thank you for your very kind invitation, really happy to be amongst all of these eminent experts in the domain. I’ll be sharing my presentation with some insights about how to make use of AI in assessing the government services, especially that in Egypt we’re very keen and very much interested in aligning the AI strategy with all of the other strategies and plans to assess our services. So where is the presentation? I’m sharing my presentation so is it clear? Yes can you just click on present it’s on the lower menu. Exactly yes perfect thank you. So I’m the chair of computer information. Information Systems Department in Sadat Academy for Management Sciences, and I’m also the vice president of ISIS Act, which is the Egyptian Society for Information Systems and Computer Technology. My main specialization is medical informatics, so I also work on the board of our Ministry of Health and Population. I thought that it would be very useful to make use of all of the artificial intelligence technologies in this very important assessment. So by AI, of course, we’re not talking only about artificial intelligence, but also about the machine learning, how to feed the machine with all of the data so as to take some prediction and some patterns into consideration whenever it comes to policymaking or decision making, and also the deep learning and finally the generative AI. All of these, as we all know, are aligned with the achievement of all of the SDGs. So 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 electronic services provided to citizens. So I thought that 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 so as to leverage AI in order to provide better assessment of the government e-services is composed of these five stages, how we’re going to collect and prepare and pre-process the data. I developed a very simple AI model. I included some assessment criteria. And I highlighted the AI-powered assessment, what would AI help and aid here, 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, mobile applications, some social media platforms now associated to all of the ministries, the user feedback forms, and some performance metrics. As for the data extraction, I focused on the text mining because with text mining techniques we’re able to extract information from all of the unstructured text such as the user reviews, especially that we also have a system for the complaints of any citizen regarding any service. So it’s kind of a central system that collects all of the complaints and that deals with all of these complaints. Regarding the data cleaning and pre-processing, of course we do some pre-processing of the data before feeding it into the system or the framework here, and we aim here at removing any noise, any inconsistency. We also try to handle the missing values with many well-known technologies related to AI, and finally we have good data so as to be able to feed it into our system. Regarding the AI model development proposed here, I added the with natural language processing we can assess the sentiment and we can analyze the sentiment of the citizens which is very very important in assessing the user satisfaction. We also apply the text classification so as to be able to categorize the user feedback and identify any common issue. We also work on the topic modeling so as to be able to discover any underlying themes in user feedback, which is again very important. I also suggested to apply supervised 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. And finally, I thought about applying deep learning techniques, especially the artificial neural networks techniques, so as 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 to identify any problems that arose at any time. It’s kind of real time system. We’re also being able to apply both the predictive and the prescriptive analytics. In our country nowadays, we’re applying what we call the data driven decision making. So we make use of the data analytics framework. And we’re keen about having some prediction to help whenever it comes to policy making, especially in our two priorities, whether we’re talking healthcare or education, and of course, the citizen satisfaction. And finally, we have the continuous improvement, which is an advantage of being able to apply the AI here. When I proposed this framework, and I was thinking how we’re going to implement it, I thought that we will be faced with many ethical considerations, like the data privacy, which is a problem, or let’s say a challenge with all of the data protection 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 2019 and in 2023, we had developed a charter for responsible AI, which has many pillars and it’s trying to make sure that any of the AI systems developed in Egypt or used in Egypt should be aligned with our cultural aspects, our values, and making sure that it is for the benefit of humans, not posing any threats. Regarding the assessment criteria, since we’re talking AI, I thought about, yes, yes, okay. That’s kind of the last slide, if you allow me. So here we have the assessment, the usability, the accessibility, and the efficiency. I also added here a proposed roadmap if we are to implement this framework. So we should focus on having data repositories, on having national centers 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. Final words. Thank you. By applying this, we can improve citizen satisfaction. Thank you very much.

Dimitrios Sarantis: Thank you very much, Nevene, for the presentation. You introduced the AI perspective in local government. It is the future in local government. So thank you very much. I don’t know if there is only one question or not. Okay. We ran out of time, unfortunately. So is there any question? Yes, if you have one question, you can…

Audience: If there is time I will try to be very brief because it is an issue that I think comes every time we talk about local government and national things are connected. One of the main difficulties that we realize when conducting these assessments and when working with government at local level is how can and how are government 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 developed and more mature at the national level. They have strategies, many different strategies, many roadmaps, many action plans, etc. They have also many platforms, but at local level usually things are not so developed. All of you that are working at the local level and also all of you that have responsibilities at the national level, how are you interacting and discussing and aligning things and reusing things? This connects with the presentation that we attended from Saudi Arabia, where from what I could have understood, there is a strong linkage between the DGA that acts mainly, I think, if I’m not wrong, at the national level and what happened in Riyadh. Maybe it is also related to that, that we have this position, Riyadh is also our position in the ranking, because this has been, based on the experiences that we hear from many different responsibles for ICT at local level, one of the biggest difficulties and challenges that is how to align things, particularly when this connects with the lack of resources at the local level. So this is a discussion that I would like, if we have time, to hear and to hear from you, to see how this alignment, if it exists or not, and what is hindering this kind of alignment, and if it is or not relevant. This is just one point.

Dimitrios Sarantis: Thank you, Delfina. Yes, if you have any comment on that, on this alignment between different levels of government in Saudi, which I think it exists.

Abdulaziz Zakri: All right. I believe we have a very strong governance framework, an operational model that supports this achievement, because we have a steering committee that supports the international indices. We have a digital transformation committee. We have a technical committee. And Riyadh is part of the steering committee for EGDI that is led by a digital government authority. This committee has more than 25 entities that they are meeting regularly, and we are checking and evaluating and monitoring the KPIs that we have built. And also we do bi-weekly meetings and workshops. I’m talking generally, including Riyadh. We have done more than 500 workshops, and we have a regular assessment that we are working closely with Riyadh, and we make sure that they are aligning and complying with the Lucy framework. And we also use the whole government approach, that all governments are working together. And I would say the framework and the business model that we are working on is the main factors that make us achieve this level.

Dimitrios Sarantis: Thank you, Abdulaziz. the alignment mechanism works properly in the Saudi. This is maybe the secret behind the success. Thank you. So here we have also…

Abdulaziz Zakri: We have a very good colleagues at DGA that we are working for delivering and we love the country and they provide all driving factors or successful factors and we say always why we don’t deliver it and we feel that from DGA because I saw my colleagues from Ministry of Interior we are really working together and I would like to thank him also because he’s attending today the session and we really feel that all government entities are working for one goal. Thank you.

Dimitrios Sarantis: Thank you very much. Okay so now going at the end we have a questionnaire for you for all participants to fill where we can 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 because 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 very briefly by bullet some key takeaways from this workshop. Alignment in different levels of government, national, local, state level and a cooperation mechanism is a must. We identify also a gap applying assessment methods in local government so consequently governments and decision makers do not have a clear picture of the status regarding local government development in their countries. There are some challenges identified by speakers, low digital literacy, funding scarcity and lack of specialized human resources that are common findings in slow level development countries regarding local government. And also, I think that we should also reconsider the innovation thinking in local government. We should raise the bar from what our expectations are, iterate, pilot, to be more forgiving. Innovation sometimes means failure, so we have to get comfortable with that. You need to move fast, learn, and forgive. So we need to try more regarding innovation in local government. So with this one, closing the session, I would like to thank my colleagues in UNUIGOV who critically helped to design and develop our unit, Professor Delfina Soares, our research coordinator Morten Meijerhoff, Zoran Zordanovsky, and of course our co-organisers Ewin Deza, Vincenzo Acquaro, Denis Huzar, and Angelica Arzuntel. Last but not least, I would like to thank our host country, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and its people for their exceptional hospitality. Your warm welcome, attentiveness, and support were invaluable and are greatly appreciated. Thank you very much, all of you.

Agreement Points

LOSI is a valuable tool for assessing and improving local e-government services

Mehdi Limam

Gayatri Doctor

Dimitrios Sarantis

LOSI helps identify weaknesses and benchmark digital maturity

India identified gaps in online services and challenges with distributed portals

LOSI can guide countries on what to implement at initial levels

Multiple speakers agreed that LOSI is an effective tool for evaluating and enhancing local e-government services, helping to identify areas for improvement and providing benchmarks for digital maturity.

Challenges in implementing e-government services at local level

Ayman Alarabiat

Yin Huotely

Vannapha Phommathansy

Jordan faced challenges with awareness, resources, and resistance to change

Cambodia is working to improve connectivity and digital literacy

Laos is in early stages and faces infrastructure and adoption challenges

Several speakers highlighted common challenges in implementing e-government services at the local level, including limited resources, low digital literacy, and infrastructure issues.

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers emphasized the importance of structured frameworks and models for assessing and aligning e-government efforts at national and local levels.

Abdulaziz Zakri

Manal Al Afad

Saudi Arabia aligned national and local efforts through governance frameworks

UAE uses a digital maturity model to assess local governments

Unexpected Consensus

Need for collaboration and knowledge sharing in LOSI implementation

Mehdi Limam

Gayatri Doctor

Dimitrios Sarantis

Expanding LOSI network and refining methodology can address barriers

India identified gaps in online services and challenges with distributed portals

LOSI can guide countries on what to implement at initial levels

Despite representing countries at different stages of e-government development, these speakers all emphasized the importance of collaboration and knowledge sharing in implementing LOSI, suggesting a shared recognition of its value across diverse contexts.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The main areas of agreement included the value of LOSI as an assessment tool, common challenges in implementing e-government services at the local level, and the importance of structured frameworks for aligning national and local efforts.

Consensus level

There was a moderate level of consensus among speakers, particularly on the challenges faced and the potential benefits of LOSI. This consensus suggests a shared understanding of the importance of local e-government development and the need for standardized assessment tools, which could facilitate more targeted and effective improvements in local e-government services globally.

Different Viewpoints

Unexpected Differences

Overall Assessment

summary

The main areas of disagreement were related to the specific challenges and approaches in implementing LOSI across different countries, reflecting varying levels of digital maturity and local contexts.

difference_level

The level of disagreement was relatively low, with most speakers focusing on their own country’s experiences rather than directly contradicting each other. This suggests that LOSI implementation is highly context-dependent, and strategies need to be tailored to each country’s specific needs and challenges.

Partial Agreements

Both speakers agreed on the need for improving digital infrastructure and literacy, but their approaches and specific challenges differed based on their countries’ contexts.

Yin Huotely

Vannapha Phommathansy

Cambodia is working to improve connectivity and digital literacy

Laos is in early stages and faces infrastructure and adoption challenges

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers emphasized the importance of structured frameworks and models for assessing and aligning e-government efforts at national and local levels.

Abdulaziz Zakri

Manal Al Afad

Saudi Arabia aligned national and local efforts through governance frameworks

UAE uses a digital maturity model to assess local governments

Key Takeaways

LOSI (Local Online Service Index) is a valuable tool for assessing and improving local e-government services

Many countries face common challenges in implementing LOSI, including limited resources, low digital literacy, and resistance to change

Alignment between national and local e-government efforts is crucial for success

AI and other emerging technologies offer potential for improving e-government assessment and service delivery

Regular assessment and benchmarking helps drive continuous improvement in local e-government

Resolutions and Action Items

Expand the LOSI network to include more partner countries

Refine the LOSI methodology to address challenges identified by implementing countries

Encourage use of the UN Local Government Toolkit to support LOSI implementation

Conduct regular (e.g. biannual) assessments of local e-government in partner countries

Unresolved Issues

How to standardize assessment of services across countries with different government structures and service provision models

How to effectively engage policymakers in using LOSI results

How to address resource constraints, especially in developing countries

How to balance standardized assessment with country-specific needs and contexts

Suggested Compromises

Use centrally-provided platforms to support local governments with limited resources

Allow some flexibility in LOSI indicators to account for country-specific service provision models

Leverage partnerships and knowledge sharing between more and less advanced countries in e-government

We have identified clearly this problem. This is one of the basic problems that we face, designing the indicators specifically for the services criterion. Because our colleague here identifies this problem that not all cities in the world provide the same services and are authorised from the government to provide the same services in local level.

speaker

Dimitrios Sarantis

reason

This comment acknowledges a fundamental challenge in assessing local e-government services globally, highlighting the complexity of creating standardized metrics across diverse governance structures.

impact

It sparked discussion on how to adapt assessment tools to different local contexts and led to consideration of more flexible approaches like the LOSI Network.

We decided to expand this successful journey with other major cities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia like Mecca, Jeddah, Medina, Dammam. And this is not only because the successful story of Riyadh. Also, it is part of the plan of the Saudi authorities for the project called Saudi or city, smart city in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to be implemented for 10 cities across the country.

speaker

Abdulaziz Zakri

reason

This comment illustrates how success in one city (Riyadh) can be leveraged to drive digital transformation across an entire country, showcasing a strategic approach to scaling e-government initiatives.

impact

It shifted the discussion towards the importance of national-level planning and coordination in local e-government development, prompting questions about alignment between different levels of government.

I thought that 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 so as to leverage AI in order to provide better assessment of the government e-services is composed of these five stages…

speaker

Nevine Makram Labib Eskaros

reason

This comment introduced a novel perspective on using AI for assessing e-government services, demonstrating how cutting-edge technology could be applied to improve evaluation methodologies.

impact

It broadened the scope of the discussion to include future technological developments in e-government assessment and raised important considerations about data privacy and ethical AI use in government.

One of the main difficulties that we realize when conducting these assessments and when working with government at the local level is how can and how are government at the local level aligning things with what is defined at the national level.

speaker

Audience member (Delfina)

reason

This comment highlighted a critical challenge in e-government implementation – the alignment between national strategies and local execution, which is often overlooked in discussions focused solely on technology.

impact

It prompted a deeper exploration of governance structures and coordination mechanisms between different levels of government, leading to insights about successful models like Saudi Arabia’s approach.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by highlighting the complexities of assessing and implementing e-government services at the local level. They moved the conversation from a focus on specific tools and metrics to broader considerations of governance structures, national-local alignment, and the potential of emerging technologies like AI. The discussion evolved to emphasize the importance of flexible, context-aware approaches to e-government assessment and implementation, while also exploring how successful models can be scaled and adapted across different settings.

How to address the challenge of different organizational structures and service provision models across cities and countries when applying LOSI?

speaker

Dimitrios Sarantis and Young-Hwan Jin

explanation

This is a recurring challenge in applying LOSI across different contexts, affecting the comparability and applicability of the assessment.

How can countries effectively implement LOSI and leverage its results for improving local e-government?

speaker

Mehdi Limam

explanation

Understanding best practices for LOSI implementation and utilization can help countries maximize the benefits of the assessment.

What are effective strategies for engaging policymakers and ensuring methodology adoption at the local level?

speaker

Mehdi Limam

explanation

Overcoming resistance to change and ensuring buy-in from local governments is crucial for the success of LOSI assessments and improvements.

How can the LOSI methodology be improved to better accommodate the varying levels of digital development across different countries?

speaker

Yin Huotely

explanation

Adapting LOSI to be more relevant for countries at different stages of digital development could increase its usefulness and adoption.

What are the best practices for aligning local e-government initiatives with national digital strategies?

speaker

Delfina Soares

explanation

Understanding how to effectively coordinate between national and local levels of government is crucial for successful e-government implementation.

How can artificial intelligence be effectively and ethically integrated into local e-government assessment and improvement?

speaker

Nevine Makram Labib Eskaros

explanation

Exploring the potential of AI in e-government assessment could lead to more efficient and effective evaluation and improvement processes.