The public sectors of African Portuguese-speaking countries and Timor-Leste (PALOP-TL) have made significant progress in mobilising digital technologies to promote internal efficiency, simplify government procedures and improve the delivery of public services.

The digital transformation of public sectors, economies and societies is generating challenges as well as opportunities for governments. Robust public governance is needed to respond to these challenges, reap the full benefits of digital and data-driven government, and encourage a holistic, systemic transformation.

This report presents a conceptual model for service design and delivery that challenges governments to develop a design-led culture and ensure access to the enabling tools and resources necessary to deliver services that improve outcomes, efficiency, satisfaction and well-being. This model is used to analyse the situation in Chile and provide recommendations about how the ChileAtiende service delivery network can bring the state closer to citizens through a simpler, more efficient and transparent approach.

Like most OECD countries, Brazil has been taking steps towards digital government to ensure that public policies and services are more inclusive, convenient and designed to meet citizens’ needs. This report takes stock of the progress made by the Brazilian government, based on good practices ...

This review explores how Panama can enhance and harness digital government to achieve broader strategic goals at both national and local levels. It looks at institutional governance, legislation, and inter-departmental co-ordination, including institutional capacities and skills for delivering quality public services. It identifies opportunities for making public service delivery more efficient and inclusive, as well as for expanding the strategic use of data. The review provides policy recommendations to help Panama enable and sustain the digital transformation of the public sector.

Digital transformation is revolutionising economies and societies with rapid technological advances in AI, robotics and the Internet of Things. Low and middle-income countries are struggling to gain a foothold in the global digital economy in the face of limited digital capacity, skills, and fragmented global and regional rules.

Sub-Saharan Africa is uniquely positioned significantly increase its current agricultural productivity to lift the region’s more than 400 million people out of extreme poverty and improve the livelihood of approximately 250 million smallholder farmers and pastoralists in the region. To achieve that, substantive digital transformation of the agriculture sector is required through improved infrastructure and increased access to and use of digital technologies for agriculture. To improve the current understanding of sub-Saharan Africa’s digital agriculture landscape, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) undertook this study in 47 countries. The report is composed of 47 desk-based country case studies against six thematic focal areas, the aim of which is to present a snapshot of the status of digital agriculture in each country. This is followed by highlights of the main findings of the analysis of the country profiles with suggested steps for future action. The findings of the study are presented to FAO and ITU Member States, as well as all relevant stakeholders with the purpose of advancing and supporting investment in digital transformation of the agricultural sector in sub-Saharan Africa.

This book constitutes selected papers from the 18th European, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern Conference, EMCIS 2021, which took place during December 8-9, 2021. The conference was initially planned to take place in Dubai, UAE, but had to change to an online event due to the COVID-19 pandemic. EMCIS covers technical, organizational, business, and social issues in the application of information technology and is dedicated to the definition and establishment of Information Systems (IS) as a discipline of high impact for IS professionals and practitioners. It focuses on approaches that facilitate the identification of innovative research of significant relevance to the IS discipline following sound research methodologies that lead to results of measurable impact. The 54 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 155 submissions. They were organized in topical sections named: Big Data and Analytics; Blockchain Technology and Applications; Cloud Computing; Digital Governance; Digital Services and Social Media; Emerging Computing Technologies and Trends for Business Process Management; Healthcare Information Systems; Information Systems security and Information Privacy Protection; Innovative Research Projects; IT Governance and Alignment; and Management and Organisational Issues in Information Systems.

The public sectors of African Portuguese-speaking countries and Timor-Leste (PALOP-TL) have made significant progress in mobilising digital technologies to promote internal efficiency, simplify government procedures and improve the delivery of public services.