28 September 2023
iESE, a leading UK-based authority on public sector digital transformation, has awarded Siren a Certificate of Excellence for its work developing Lebanon’s first e-governance platform, IMPACT.
The certificate comes as part of iESE’s 2023 Public Sector Transformation Awards and recognises the “exemplary standard of work” the IMPACT initiative demonstrated in transforming Lebanon’s public sector. It was also given to the Central Inspection oversight agency, Siren’s governmental partner for the IMPACT initiative.
John Comber, one of the judges, explained during a showcase event Thursday for international recipients of iESE awards and certificates, that the aim is to highlight the best examples of innovation and transformation from across the sector.
“It’s really about finding best practice in public service from around the world and sharing that with the community. The standard has been very high,” he said. He added that the winners were selected based on the innovation of each project, how they were delivered, and on the outcomes achieved.
Connectivity, oversight and public sector digital transformation
Explaining the idea behind IMPACT to the event audience, Carole Alsharabati, Research Director at Siren Associates, said that it was about using the talent of Lebanon’s youth to revive the corruption-riddled public sector.
“We set out to foster interconnectedness between state institutions, and between civil society and the state,” she said. “IMPACT was also about bringing back effective oversight, as Central Inspection was completely unable to access information needed to carry out its oversight role.”
World class digital transformation initiatives to inspire action
Two other organisations showcased their work alongside Siren and Central Inspection.
Fahmin Hajizada, representing the State Social Protection Fund of Azerbaijan, presented the Fund’s work using AI to examine household conditions and better target social assistance at low-income families. He explained that the solution implemented led to a 35% reduction in written complaints, a 22% increase in customer satisfaction, a 21% decrease in workload for household examiners, and an 80.5% increase in examinations in the second semester of 2022 (compared to same period of 2021).
Khalil Andraos, representing the Department of Financial Affairs in the United Arab Emirates’ Interior Ministry, presented two winning projects. The first employs robotic process to automate the ministry’s financial systems and is now processing 19,800 transactions annually and saving more than 1 million Dirhams per year by reducing processing times and freeing up human resources previously bogged down by lengthy manual processes. The second is an e-payment system for the ministry’s business services. According to Andraos, this was implemented with zero costs, has digitised payments for more than 980 services and is now processing more than 613,000 transactions every six months.
With more that 1,500 public institutions in Lebanon, and over 2,000 governmental services – a fraction of which have been digitised – much can be learned from such examples. The IMPACT experience has made a modest start, digitising COVID-19 vaccination, cash social assistance, performance inspection in the public administration and more. With no end in sight to Lebanon’s financial, political and socioeconomic crises, the urgency of expanding such initiatives has rarely been greater.
Read a full case study on how IMPACT is contributing to anti-corruption in Lebanon while bringing about digital transformation of the public sector.
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