e-Government Policy for the

Royal Government of Bhutan

[DRAFT]

Department of Information Technology & Telecom

Ministry of Information & Communications

  1. NAME OF POLICY

e-Government Policy for the Royal Government of Bhutan

  1. RATIONALE/PURPOSE

The Royal Government of Bhutan (RGoB) has prioritized information and communications technology (ICT) developments with the vision of “An ICT-enabled, knowledge society as a foundation for Gross National Happiness.” Further, Bhutan Information, Communications and Media (ICM) Act 2006 mandates the Ministry of Information & Communications (MoIC) to set strategic directions for implementing the electronic government (e-Government).

However, the use of ICT in government agencies is currently limited to systems developed by agencies in isolation and on ad-hoc basis. The uncoordinated implementations of such ICT initiatives have resulted in duplication of efforts, waste of scarce resources and difficulty in integration of systems. Further, the revised ICT Roadmap 2015 highlights the key challenges such as low adoption, lack of adequate budget and human resource capability in implementing the e-Gov initiatives.

To overcome these issues, the government has developed and approved the implementation of e-Government Master Plan in 2014. However, the effective implementation of masterplan has been a challenge in absence of a broad policy framework that provides clear guidance to the implementation of e-Government initiatives in the country.

Therefore, the e-Government policy is expected to streamline, optimize the use of existing as well as emerging information and communications technologies to enable Government to leverage fully on ICT to enhance competitiveness, increase productivity, and improve service delivery and good governance in our pursuit of Gross National Happiness.

2.1 Objectives:

The main objective of the policy is to provide a clear guidance to the implementation of e-Government initiatives in the country. The specific objectives are as follows:

  1. Ensure universal access to safe and secure Government e-services;
  2. Facilitate provision of multi-channel and citizen centric online service delivery;
  3. Ensure interoperability of the government systems, adoption of new emerging technologies and enforcing adoption of ICT standards across the government;
  4. Inculcate the Single Entry, Multiple Use of data/information;
  5. Ensure proper screening of e-Government projects through a holistic approach and budget accordingly to avoid duplication;
  6. Encourage collaboration and information sharing among RGoB entities;
  7. Facilitate enhancement of ICT capacity of both the ICT and non-ICT personnel including citizens and user;
  8. Strengthen the ICT Industry to support e-Government initiatives;
  9. Ensure migration of government systems into a Government Data Centre to avoid duplication of work, economy of scale, security, more optimal storage management and better performance/service level.
  10. Ensure adoption of government-wide shared application systems such HR, Finance and Procurement where all Ministries can make use of such shared systems to perform their business operations.
  11. Promote migration of e-Government initiatives into the cloud platform and prepare for m-Governance.
  12. Ensure the security and integrity of government data and promote the use of secure national government data centers.
  1. DEFINITION OF TERMS
  1. Change Management Request: Predetermined procedures to manage the change in scope and process flows of the ICT initiatives.
  1. Common IT Services: Data, infrastructures or services, which are generic in nature that can be reused by other agencies.
  1. Citizen Centric: A government approach of keeping their citizenry at the center of development during all phases of service innovations. Citizens are engaged during design and development till continuous improvement of the service(s) that are generally driven by the principle of what citizens want and operate on the scale that is relevant to them.
  1. Cyber Security: The protection of computer systems from theft or damage to the hardware, software or the information on them, as well as from disruption or misdirection of the services they provide.
  1. Data duplications: The redundant collection of the same data (for e.g. customers’/citizens) by multiple stakeholders.
  1. Digital by Default: It is a principle of adopting digital/electronic channels as the primary means to deliver any new service to the meet the evolving expectations of citizens and businesses.
  1. e-GIF: Electronic Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF) is a Government Enterprise Architecture portraying the overall blueprint of how government is structured and determines how government agencies can collaboratively achieve national objectives.
  1. Single Source of Truth: The practice of structuring data/information which are stored exactly once in a single source to maintain consistency of data and to prevent inconsistent data duplications.
  1. Whole of Government: It is an approach that integrates the collaborative efforts of the departments and agencies of a government to achieve unity of effort toward a shared goal.
  1. POLICY STATEMENTS

To avoid duplication of efforts, waste of limited resources, to enable seamless integration & interoperability and to achieve reduction in ICT investments in multiple agencies,all government agencies should ensure whole-of-government (WoG) and Citizen Centric approaches while implementing ICT initiatives. To achieve the overall policy objective, following specific police statements have been identified.

  1. Digital by default

The information communication technologies are increasingly becoming more accessible and affordable to the citizens and businesses alike. This result in increasing ICT adoption and demand for efficient public services are expected from citizen. To fulfill the growing demands of the citizens and business, RGoB is required to provide quality services efficiently and cost effectively at the convenience of the service consumers.

Furthermore, to supplement the efficiency in delivering of services by RGoB using the traditional “over the counter” method, adoption of digital by default is necessary. This will ensure electronic mediums as the primary means of delivery public services. Therefore,

a.1 RGoB shall go digital by default, while reforming or adding new government service/s.

  1. Re-use and sharing

The RGoB have invested in numerous ICT initiatives to underlie the required infrastructures, platforms and systems in striving to provide reliable, secure and efficient use of ICT tools. This produces considerable ICT assets within the government agencies that are usually underutilized. To optimize and reap the benefits of these investments, leveraging on already invested technical components/assets by sharing and reusing with other government agencies requiring the similar solutions will bring in significant cost saving and change in the way RGoB invest on ICT initiatives. Therefore,

b.1 RGoB will ensure reuse, to all extent possible, existing common services, ICT infrastructure and information, for all ICT initiatives.

b.2 When an agency is in possession of such assets/resources they shall consider sharing with all agencies in the RGoB.

  1. Single Source of Truth

Public services are indispensable to citizen and agencies need to validate the authenticity and legality of the citizens to protect unauthorized and malicious use of the services provided. For this citizen are required to produce documentary evidence, such as CID, and providing personal data which are recorded by the respective agencies. This set forth associated burden to citizens providing same information repeatedly to all the agencies. And it is also a challenge for agencies to update and maintain the collected data. This “spaghetti” model of collection and maintenance of data entails many misinformed decision-makings.

The identification of true source of data and its owners still remains a challenge. However, in order to resolve such issues,

c.1RGoB shall identify a single agency as the owner for that specific data to be collected, updated, produced and shared among other agencies.

  1. Information Security and Privacy

RGoB has boarded into digitization of public services, along with increasing online presence of citizens. The risk of online threats such as identity theft, data theft and confidentiality issues also increases accordingly. In order to protect electronic information/data of citizens and government, the agencies shall be responsible to address such threats/risk. By doing so, the user trust and confidence on online services will be strengthened to promote innovative solutions online. Therefore,

d.1 Agencies shall be responsible for maintaining the security of data and the confidentiality of the users.

d.2 The agencies will ensure the security of collected information and the privacy of the citizens are protected.

  1. Business Driven Initiatives

The ICT initiatives in the agencies are often driven by the factors such as the availability of budget/donor agencies and also adoptions of ICT solutions without proper need analysis. Moreover, any ICT initiatives in the agencies are usually lead by the ICT officials rather than the domain experts. Consequently, required ownership and support for effective implementation of the initiative is hampered leading to failure. Therefore,

e.1 All IT infrastructure procurement and change management request in RGoB shall be driven by actual requirements/needs of the agencies and must come from the business domain experts.

e.2 Ministries/Agencies shall not consider up-gradation of systems or procurement of infrastructure unless there is an explicit business requirement.

  1. Sustainability

The focus on providing immediate solutions by using ICT tools often overlook the long-term investment analysis and sustainability plans. It contributes to poor quality of post implementation services and lacks budgeting to meet recurring expenditures. Eventually, the entire investments on the ICT initiatives may be have poor outcomes and thus, the users confidence in ICT adoptions will be hampered.

Therefore for successful continuity of ICT initiatives, all agencies shall

f.aConsider sustainability planning which at the very minimum shall include a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) assessment right from inception.

f.b adopt sustainability operation models such as public-private-partnership (PPP Model) wherever applicable.

  1. LEGISLATIVE COMPLIANCE

This policy conforms to the following:

  1. Bhutan Information Communications and Media Act 2006.
  2. Public Private Partnership Policy
  3. Information Management Security Policy, internal to DITT

And Policies/Issuances (Directives) that complements e-Government policies are:

  1. Social Media Policy 2016
  2. Bhutan Telecommunications and Broadband Policy 2014
  3. Bhutan ICT Masterplan 2014
  1. IMPLEMENTATION PROCEDURE

The e-Government Policy consists of a supporting parallel document with Implementation plans to exercise the Policy Principles.

  1. MONITORING & EVALUATION
  1. The e-Government Master Plan shall form the basis for Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) of the implementation of the provisions of this policy.
  2. MoIC/DITT in conjunction with private sector, academia, civil society and other stakeholders shall develop an M&E system based on agreed sector indicators
  3. Periodic consultative sector reviews shall be in-built in the implementation process at all levels
  4. The e-Government Policy shall be reviewed from time to time to adapt to the change in technology/people/system through e-Gov Governance processes.