15 Feb 2021

Preparations are at an advanced stage for the roll out of eight e-Services to the general public before the end of this month.

The services, meant to improve efficiency and quality of services, include vehicle registration, applications for Botswana driving license application, customary land rights, common law land rights, plants import permit, selling of veterinary drugs, vaccines, equipment and livestock feeds, BAITS and National Internship Programme. 

Speaking in an interview recently, Minister of Transport and Communications, Mr Thulagano Segokgo said provision of services online would improve uptake, reduce queues in public offices as well as operational costs and enhance overall efficiency.

“Government wants to have the biggest impact in the reduction of queues and as such hopefully in mitigating against COVID-19,” he said.

The minister said the eight services to be launched were considered low hanging fruits, with the highest impact because “the new normal has necessitated the use of ICTs as a way of improving service delivery in a smart and efficient way”.

“We decided to front load the delivery of the eight services at the moment due to financial and infrastructure issues while we work on the remaining services, monitoring progress of the uptake of the uploaded services,” he explained.

Minister Segokgo said the uptake of e-services would be a great achievement for government as a whole.

“Due to the increase demand for online services, people working remotely from home, home schooling and e-commerce, automation of government services comes at a critical time,” he said.

He said there was need to provide customers with diversity and easily accessible options to help transform the economy.

“As government we should leverage the provision of services online to advance the attainment of the sustainable development goals, contribute significantly to a globally competitive, knowledgeable and information society as per our Vision 2036 aspirations,” said the minister.

Like many governments around the world, Botswana is quickly adopting a robust and more effective business approach of seeking advanced forms of technology-backed solutions and tools that will help citizens conduct business-related activities anytime and from anywhere.

Plans are underway to capacitate personnel and provide an enabling ICT infrastructure environment to ensure alignment of this transformation.

One of the major efforts is the connection of 200 villages with high speed, quality internet connectivity this coming financial year.

Some of the major transformation initiatives which government is currently working on include re-engineering processes to remove duplications and re-configuring ICT infrastructure to cater for public officers working from home.

“The target is to lead to the whole economy hopefully going online, while government acts as a facilitator of taking the whole economy online,” said the minister.

A 2016 study on Digital Government Strategies for Transforming Public Services conducted by OECD, which Botswana is a member, states that governments are increasingly required to understand and respond to complex and competing issues including providing services tailored to individual needs and aligned with national priorities.

Botswana, just like countries such as Denmark and Sweden which featured in the OECD report, believes digital transformation will play a key role in modernising public services, increasing service productivity and reducing labour intensity, increasing the level of satisfaction with and effectiveness of services as well as increasing the openness of, trust in and engagement with government.

Access for the services will be through a mobile SmartBots GovApp created by a young citizen software developer through last month’s hackathon. 

The eight services are the first step by government to digitize its services. BOPA