search E-Gov Knowledge Sharing Workshops: Investing in digitalization of public finance
Last week, December 10, the team of experts of the E-Governance Knowledge Sharing Program held a series of workshops in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Several sessions on African economies’ digitalization turned out to be a great step towards improving e-governance services in the African states.
Despite the number of challenges like financial barriers and digital divide, they all may be turned into opportunities through knowledge exchange or various educational programs from public and private entities. That’s why not only African officials, but also Russian private companies participated in the workshops.
As Dr. Mactar Seck, Head of the Innovation and Technology Section of UNECA, admitted,
“knowledge-sharing on digitalization of public finance is extremely important for building the capacity for the young generation. To achieve it, African countries should share their experience with each other. There are some applications created in Malawi and Mauritania that can be shared with us. Russian companies can also help African countries to become key actors in the foreign industrial revolution”.
“Human capital for digitalization of economic governance” session was moderated by Valentin Bianki, Deputy Coordinator of the E-Governance Knowledge-Sharing Program
The session outlined the demand for digital literacy and developing digital skills among Africans. By 2030, the digital economy in Africa will represent 180 billion dollars. But to achieve this goal, the African population, especially youth, must possess appropriate digital capacity. In this matter, sharing solutions on how to teach Africans IT, is extremely important.
Ngcaweni Busani, Director-General of the National School of Government of Republic of South Africa (NSG), provided 2020 example on the effective officials training for e-governance purposes:
“A “COVID grant” was designed by the South African Social Security Agency as a social relief of distress. It was a grant for unemployed people to mitigate poverty during the pandemic. The main problem was that, because of the COVID restrictions, people could not go to their offices to apply for it. Eventually the leadership came up with a decision: they used WhatsApp, SMS and email to process applications. And it helped: in spite of the hard lockdown, 16 million people made applications without setting foot in the office, and the 6 million were successfully processed and given those grants using the most basic technology in anybody’s headsets. This case emphasizes the importance of providing digital literacy among the staff. That’s why we’ve partnered with universities to do training on cybersecurity. We are doing huge work, and we think that it is bearing its fruits now”.
An innovative solution was provided by Diana Smirnova, project manager of School21 network development launched by Sber. It is an innovative digital engineering school where any participant over the age of 18 can acquire an IT job absolutely free of charge. The studying is on the digital platform, in a peer-to-peer format that aims to develop teamwork and other soft skills among the participants. Practice-oriented training is already organized in the 17 campuses not only in Russia, but also abroad. School21 may serve as an additional solution for those Africans who would like to learn IT, but have some difficulties in it. It also provides countries an opportunity to keep the population inside, because they don’t need to travel abroad to get an education in IT. It can also increase employment as the School’s graduates can easily get a new job or change the current one.
“Cybersecurity: Effective measures to safeguard government and financial data” session moderated by Phillip Grinin, Deputy Coordinator of the Program
The session offered a unique perspective on how countries may address the cybersecurity challenges and provide appropriate solutions to them.
In 2023, African countries faced 2164 cyber attacks, outlining that Africa is now considered to be the most vulnerable continent from the cybersecurity perspective. However, such challenges as data theft, extortion, breaches and leakages can be transformed into opportunities. These challenges open prospects for developing innovative solutions, tailored to local contexts, particularly in industries most targeted by cyber attacks such as African state agencies (29%), financial institutions (22%), telecommunications (10%), etc.
Government agencies are the institutions mostly vulnerable to cyber attacks. Statistics show that in Angola, for example, the National Bank faced about 350 cyber attacks in 2023. To improve cyber resilience for critical digital infrastructure, it’s important to develop in line with the latest technology trends and enhance international cooperation. This should be collaboration between the private sector, academic institutions and other stakeholders.
Ackim Sanuka, Senior Deputy Director of ICT in the Department of E-Government from Malawi, shared his country’s experience in the field of cybersecurity. Since 2017, they have been working on a project funded by the World Bank. It aims to increase the access to affordable high quality Internet services for government businesses and for the citizens as well. Moreover, all the government employees are required to only use official emails when it comes to communication.
“Each of our departments and ministries has its own data center. But we definitely couldn’t achieve this without making an appropriate regulatory framework,” highlighted Mr. Sanuka.
Sergey Kozlov, Deputy Director of Global Center of Cybersecurity Solutions Expertise of the Kaspersky Lab, one of the leading cybersecurity companies around the world, recommended implementing several innovative measures that aimed to avoid falling victim to the cyber attack. For example, to ensure critical infrastructure protection, Kaspersky Industrial CyberSecurity technology may be implemented in the energy sector. The company also suggests African agencies and companies educating their employees with IT knowledge via cybersecurity courses so they could tackle cyber threats effectively. Such a course is available within the Kaspersky Security Awareness Platform.
Dmitrii Shabanov, Business Development Manager at Security Code, a Russian developer of software and hardware information protection tools and a member of the working group and Information Security competence center in the national Digital Economy program, underlined the importance of data sovereignty on the path to digital independence.
“Digital sovereignty is a multifaceted subject which consists of data privacy data control control over State digital strategy and its development implementation and creation of policies and regulations or legislature itself, and the protection against influence from the site and out cyber attacks. And the object is, of course, data sovereignty. It’s about data residency, the storage of data within territories of your country. It’s about again, the jurisdiction or the legislature about the creation of some frameworks of laws that regulate the circulation of data and the protection of data,” he specified.
“Artificial Intelligence in Public Service Delivery” session
The session highlighted the role of AI, which is one of the most transformative tools nowadays, assisting us everywhere. Basically, it revolutionized many countries’ economies. Considering some internal processes in the government agencies, AI is very useful for big data analysis and for procurement procedures. It can also be used for public financial management regarding tax fraud prevention. And that’s why governments start implementing such systems.
However, the rapid implementation of AI may be hindered by a range of obstacles such as lack of legislation, data availability, and ethical concerns.
African countries are making big steps towards AI adoption: in 2022, there were more than 2,000 AI-specialized companies and startups across the continent. In 2024, the African Union introduced the Continental Artificial Intelligence Strategy and the AI for Sustainable Youth Development in Africa policy brief.
Ilya Kravtsov, Africa Regional Manager of the Speech Technology Center (STC), presented some of the solutions that the company can propose in the area of AI and that can be beneficial for African countries. He outlined that the STC is the world’s oldest and largest company working on voice and facial biometrics, having been working in the area for 35 years, and has been deployed in more than 80 countries with over 5,000 different projects.
“As far as identification of a person by biometrics is the most secure way to identify him, we suggest you to accelerate your voice biometrics service capacity. It can do all the entire workflow enrollment, verification and authentication 100% remotely. What’s more, it doesn’t require Internet connection or any kind of specialized equipment, like fingerprint scanners or readiness scanners, or even cameras. It can identify the citizens by voice just by using simple phones, and it doesn’t have to be a smartphone. That is especially relevant for African countries, when there’s a need to identify the recipients of e-government services in remote areas or areas with a very low connectivity,” he claimed.
“Digital Transformation and Tax Tech” session
It provided a deep understanding of the challenges that African countries face when it comes to tax collection. Africa has the highest tax administration cost in the world, spending $231 for every $100 collected alongside. In other words, governments across the continent are losing much needed financial assets. As for the challenges, there’s data scarcity since data is often outdated. Then there’s noncompliance: many registered taxpayers fail to comply with tax obligations, reducing revenue potential. To address these inefficiencies, digitalization emerges as a critical solution by implementing ICT technologies into tax administration. Governments can enhance data collection, monitor compliance and cross-check diverse sources, thereby reducing noncompliance and improving revenue collection.
One of the major highlights of the workshop was a presentation delivered by Yelisey Balta, Head of the Department for International Cooperation and Financial Control, Federal Tax Service of the Russian Federation. In his speech Mr. Balta presented a detailed overview of the experience of implementing effective digital solutions in the activities of the Federal Tax Service of Russia, demonstrating the specific advantages and opportunities provided by digitalization. Speaking about the experience of the Federal Tax Service of Russia, Mr. Balta traced the transformation of the organization into a modern, customer-oriented, digitized structure:
“15 years ago, we were something like a traditional tax administration trying to collect more tax revenues through standard procedures. In 2010, Mikhail Mishustin, who is currently the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, became the head of the Federal Tax Service of Russia and defined a new long-term strategy. We are paying more attention to technologies and services for taxpayers.”
Mr. Balta also shared information about the implementation of a number of digital solutions, namely the Automated VAT Control System (VAT ASK). Since 2015, the Federal Tax Service has decided to make it mandatory to transfer VAT declarations to digital format, and in the foreseeable future it plans to introduce mechanisms for pre-filling tax returns, which will further simplify and speed up the processes for taxpayers.
At the end of his speech, Mr. Balta spoke about the taxation system for the self-employed. The digital taxation system for the self-employed eliminates the need to visit the Tax service (FTS), register as an individual entrepreneur, calculate taxes independently, file tax returns and use cash registers. Registration is carried out online through the mobile application in just two minutes. Taxes are calculated automatically by the Federal Tax Service, with the possibility of online payment and automatic payment. To date, 12.5 million self—employed people have been registered in the system, which resulted in more than $ 1 billion collected in taxes. Mr. Balta attributed that largely to the convenience of digital services created by the Federal Tax Service. Due to this, self-employed workers voluntarily file tax returns. As the speaker summed up, “digital transformation, first of all, is a transformation in mind.”
During its 47 years of experience, Russian GNIVC company has created a standalone system for the collection, processing and storage of tax data. It implements technical assistance projects in advisory and analytics, infrastructure review and also in the field of information system development. One of the most insightful is the taxpayers personal account. It provides the mobile application for taxpayers and for all electronic services. For African countries, GNIVC company’s tax training programs for executives might be useful.
Alexander Demyanov, member of the Board of Directors, Center for the Development of Advanced Technologies, in his speech shared insights about the advantages and capabilities of the innovative state of the art Russian digital product labeling system “Chestniy Znak”. For example, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the “Chestniy Znak” system used real-time data to track information about medicines, which helped prevent shortages and resale of medicines intended for social needs. The system also provides an opportunity to collect information about potential disease outbreaks, tracking the increase in consumption of certain medicines and enabling authorities to respond promptly to health threats. In this context, Mr. Demyanov shared his personal experience about his recent yellow fever vaccination before traveling to Africa. At the time of receiving the vaccine, he scanned the matrix code on the vaccine package. The system instantly displayed all information about a particular drug, including the date of its manufacture and the time of receipt of the vaccine. At the end of his speech, the speaker demonstrated the advantages of the system with hard numbers. According to Mr. Demyanov, over the past five years, the “Chestniy Znak” system has brought an economic benefit to the state of $ 8 billion.
Every nation must have its AI technologies, cybersecurity and national e-tax systems that it can control and use for its own benefit. African nations are striving to develop sovereign and more tailored to local context e-governance systems. To promote this, the countries need to pay closer attention to the diversity of approaches and adopt innovative solutions. Since peer-to-peer knowledge exchanges in search for suitable solutions contributes to it greatly, the “E-Gov Knowledge Sharing Workshops” turned out to be a big contribution to the African countries development.
