2017•06•06     Tblisi

As part of ongoing research on IT and technology-enabled public sector service delivery and administrative burden reduction, UNU-EGOV took part in a two-day network and seminar event between 5-6 June 2017 in Tblisi, Georgia, through its Academic Fellow Morten Meyerhoff Nielsen.

The events were organised by the Twinning Project Support to Strengthen eGovernance in Georgia II between Georgia’s Data Exchange Agency, Estonia’s eGovernance Academy and Italy’s CIS Piemont. The event is attended by experts and key civil servants working with ICT in public administration from Austria, Denmark, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Italy, and Portugal.

Georgia has, in less than two decades, moved from the brink of a “failed state” with endemic corruption throughout society, to one of the easiest places to do business and high levels of transparency. Using business process re-engineering and organisational change, front office service delivery and back office service production has been separated, payments and processes have been streamlined, digitised and automated, thus increasing service quality and government productivity while eliminating corruption in public sector service delivery. The Georgian approach to eGovernance, ICT-enabled administrative burden reduction and public service delivery provides valuable insight to the mechanisms and success criteria for ICT use in public administration. The Georgian case is part of UNU-EGOV’s projects on Public Service Delivery and Administrative Burden Reduction.

While in Georgia, Morten took also the opportunity to validate research, collect statistical data on public sector service delivery and conduct interviews with a number of government actors including the Cabinet Office’s team for eGovernment coordination unit, the Data Exchange Agency, as well as the agencies responsible for the national network of public service halls, municipality community centers and public sector service development.