Strengthening Democracy Through Digital Progress

Democracy is the foundation of our society. Therefore, it is alarming to realize how democracy is under pressure across the world. Both in the western world as well as in the developing countries, citizen dissatisfaction with democracy has risen significantly over recent decades.

According to the American think tank Freedom House, we have seen a statistical increase in the number of democracies, but the quality of democracies is deteriorating, among other things driven by uneven digital development. The institute also concludes that the largest share of weak democracies with little governance exist in Africa. This development is furthermore fueled by rising expectations from citizens for the government to provide digital services on par with the service standards of the private sector.

Bridging the digital divide

At cBrain we believe that new digital technologies bring opportunities for low- and middle-income countries to build new industries, deliver better government services, strengthen institutions, improve markets, and, most importantly, enhance peoples’ lives. We also acknowledge that the technological revolution at hand is not simply about technology or ‘digital policy’ in isolation: this transition involves optimizing social, political and economic conditions for inclusive growth. Technology alone, no matter how innovative, will not guarantee success. Development will come from deploying technologies in a conducive environment, alongside profitable business models, and with the necessary protections in place. Therefore, making technology a force in development requires empowering local partners with the skills to configure, deploy, and administrate the technology to ensure that digital benefits reach everyone.  

At cBrain we believe that adoption of standard technology will be transformational for ensuring successful and equitable public sector digitalization in less-developed countries. The advantages of standard software make it ideally suited to the specific needs of emerging markets, in terms of lower cost, faster implementation timelines, ease of configuration to adapt to future legislation, robust quality and testing compared to one-off custom solutions, interoperability with other data systems, and feasibility of training local resources to operate and maintain the software. However, this transformation cannot be driven from abroad in the Western world. Thus, the conclusion is to adopt standard software and to build local ownership around the technology transfer, working with in-country partners.

Often the digital divide is perceived as a lack of infrastructure. But in reality, 80% of people in developing countries live under a cellular internet signal; the challenge is that only 30% have ever used the internet. No amount of infrastructure construction will make internet access affordable to someone in poverty. Instead, increasing up-take will require new business models to serve the poorest. Addressing this fundamental access challenge is a prerequisite to providing digital public services to citizens in less-developed countries. Once citizens have internet access, even just from a phone, a range of services that enhance economic and social development become possible: applying for an identification card, healthcare benefits, marriage or divorce certificate, driver’s license, or registering a small business.

Cultural Change and Digital Change goes Hand in Hand

The foundations of digital transformation often include connectivity, digital ID, e-payments and national data registries. Taken together, these foundational platforms support social, financial, and economic inclusion. Digital ID is a key building block for platforms and systems for public service delivery. To be successful, digital transformation also requires critical analogue complements: legislation, regulation, capacity and coordination across government. Particularly important is leadership and change management to ensure that governments are organized and have the capacity to migrate to new ways of working.

A major factor contributing to the failure of most digital government efforts in developing countries has been the traditional project management approach. For too long, government and donors have seen the introduction of digital services as a stand-alone “technical engineering” problem, separate from government policy and internal government processes.

While digital government has important technical aspects, change also depends on “culture change” – a long and difficult process that requires public servants to engage with new technologies. They must also change the way they regard their jobs, their mission, their activities and their interaction with citizens. And change relies on the participation of the private sector. The private sector is vital for national digital transformation – creating new jobs and delivering digital products and infrastructure. Countries cannot truly embrace digital transformation without leadership from the private sector. Business leaders should be involved in crafting a national digital compact – a shared vision for the future – that recognises their central position in the economy. This includes: designing affordable digital products, embracing the disruptive competition of new digital industries, and building digital skills across the workforce. This is not only a matter of social obligation, but of mutual benefit.

Trust comes with Delivery

There are many opportunities to leapfrog technologically, and at the same time address some of the key governance challenges faced by developing countries. The implementation of digital solutions in government can be transformational not only in terms of operations and delivering for citizens but can also result in positive governance impacts. Research shows that e-government capacity is positively correlated with government effectiveness and lower perceptions of corruption.

Therefore, the private sector and governments should create foundational digital systems that are interoperable and easy for others to build upon and configure. Donors, multilateral organisations and philanthropists can play an important role in providing tools, frameworks, and funding to assist with this process. 

We argue that trust in democracy comes with delivery. To protect and develop democracy, government must deliver accountable systems. But many government institutions seem to be at a crossroads, often under pressure both economically and politically, unable to deliver and lacking popular support. The strategy to counter this crisis in democracy is to rethink and build a next generation of more efficient, transparent and accountable institutions. Strong and stable government institutions can reverse this erosion of trust.

Our experience – both studying the theoretical foundations of government administration and delivering more than 100 projects with public sector customers in multiple countries – confirms that all government organizations work based on the same fundamental principles. The organization and production theory of “Bureaucracy”, as described by German philosopher Max Weber, remains the fundamental model for accountable, rules-based administration. Unfortunately, when governments attempt to bring bureaucracy into a digital context, supposedly transformational projects often fail due to a “technology first” approach.

For decades governments has applied the latest technologies, such as advanced analytics, blockchain, cloud first, robotics, artificial intelligence and open source. Yet, as new technologies have come and gone, government is still struggling to convert ambitious digitization plans into deliverable and measurable results. Now the Technology First approach is challenged. A new public-private partnership which originated in Denmark and underpinned by extensive research has fostered an approach to government digitization based on formalized methods and standards.

Digitalizing all types of work processes and services, from internal ministerial work to citizen-facing processes, end-to-end, the new approach to digitalization offers government fast track digitalization and strong measurable effects. While technology continues to change, government roles and duties remain. The basis for the new approach was therefore applying a “processes first, technology second”, studying and understanding the processes and resources enabling government service delivery. By understanding the nature of bureaucracy and government work. This has led to a generic model for government work, based on best practices and independent of technology, entitled “Digital Bureaucracy”. And this approach, we believe could be a role model for technology transfer.

We know it works

In Denmark many government institutions now base their work on the Digital Bureaucracy model. All are running on the exact same standard software, built to support the Digital Bureaucracy model, which has been configured to support each institution’s individual work processes. In Denmark, several ministries have implemented the Digital Bureaucracy Model and standard software within a few months, enabling a paperless working environment supporting everyone from most junior employee to the minister, running meetings and approvals on their iPad. This has significantly improved productivity, data and process control.

Likewise, many different Danish citizen facing processes are now digitally supported, end-to-end, based on the digital bureaucracy model and standard software. This includes processes like national citizenship, immigration permits, divorce, reclaiming tax dividends, and fraud management. Solutions typically have been delivered within 3-6 months from start to finish, from analyzing work processes to configuring the standard software and going live.

Enabling government institutions to digitalize in months rather than years and delivered at significantly lower cost compared to traditional government IT projects not only reduces risk but offers a fundamentally new way of transformation and provides a fast track to build next generation government institutions, digitally based. We see this as a game changer for government digitalization in developing countries.