LocationsEvaluating UNDP support to digitalization of public services
Digitalization: a critical enabler of development progress
In only 20 years, digital technologies have connected half the population in the developing world, revolutionizing the way public services are delivered globally. The COVID-19 pandemic drove a sharp increase in the demand of essential government electronic services, posing significant challenges for governments to keep up with these rising needs.
UNDP considers digital public infrastructure a cross-cutting theme and explicitly prioritizes digitalization across its signature solutions.
The Evaluation of UNDP Support to Digitalization of Public Services covers 2015-2023, spanning three strategic plans and almost $3 billion in expenditure on digitalization projects. Over 400 people across all regions of UNDP operations were consulted to inform the evaluation's insights.
What helps countries digitalize?
COVID-19 became the catalyst for many countries to ramp up digital solutions, with 90% of governments using digital portals to provide public services during the pandemic. Yet, how well countries were able to take public services digital depended on existing governance systems and digital infrastructure.
The evaluation found that 3 elements of digital ecosystems in particular helped countries adapt faster:
- Digital identity: Being able to verify your identity online with a digital ID
- Digital financial services: Being able to pay online
- Data interoperability: Having data systems that connect to each other
Wide regional disparities in e-governance levels
E-Government Development Index for 158 UNDP-supported countries
How did UNDP contribute?
UNDP established and improved critical databases and registries. This helped expedite access to services, reduced backlogs and increased transparency.
UNDP helped grow the customer base for MSMEs and cut payment transaction costs, including for migrant remittances, in LDCs and in the informal sector.
Digitalized data facilitated informed policy development and promoted coherence among data sources.
Why did digitalization struggle to advance? What did we learn?
Human factors: Digitalization processes tend to focus too much on efficiency at the expense of the human and institutional factors that will help or hinder service uptake.
Interoperability: Different systems need to speak the same language, to provide comprehensive end-to-end services.
Data privacy: To trust digital systems, people need certainty that their data won’t be misused.
More innovation, transfer of good practices and development financing are required to support the digital transformation agenda at the country level.
Recommendations for UNDP
Based on its findings, the report laid out eight recommendations. They took into consideration corporate policy formulation and the institutional change processes underway at the time of writing, UNDP’s comparative niche, and areas where the organization could enable transformative change
Building on UNDP’s ongoing work in strengthening digital public infrastructure, advance user-focused design and streamlined digital offerings for key digitalization drivers such as digital legal identity, digital financial services and data interoperability.
UNDP has successfully supported health and social protection sector digitalization initiatives. Given the critical role of digitalization in enhancing the efficiency of public services, UNDP should strategically and consistently engage with comprehensive programme options to enable sector-wide holistic digital transformation. UNDP should prioritize digitalization efforts at the local government level, to ensure the last mile digitalization of public services.
UNDP has put significant emphasis in its current and previous corporate frameworks on strengthening development accelerators and enablers through digitalization, innovation and development financing, with positive dividends. While continuing and consolidating such an emphasis, UNDP should strengthen its efforts to enable development financing for sector efforts and digital transformation at the country level.
In the LDCs, UNDP should adopt a targeted approach to strengthening digital public infrastructure and regulatory frameworks for improving public services and economic development.
UNDP is well positioned to facilitate South-South and Triangular cooperation for digital transformation and should strategically engage in enabling this.
UNDP should support data privacy and legal identity management at the country level. UNDP programmes should incorporate the rights dimension in its legal identity support. Data privacy concerns brought by digitalization should be addressed beyond the standard data security safeguards.
UNDP should strengthen its support to bridging the digital gender divide at the policy level. UNDP should clarify resources that will be made available for implementing corporate gender strategies for an inclusive digitalization of public services.
At both the country and global levels, UNDP should advocate to strengthen digital government measurement frameworks to assess e-service uptake and use. This data is essential to inform government efforts for inclusive services and accelerating last-mile efforts.
