7 projects draw Egypt’s digital transformation map

CAIRO – 13 August 2021: Egypt has taken actual steps towards incorporating digital transformation into its systems, by ending bureaucracy and corruption, and digitalizing services.

The state’s vision to achieve digital transformation is based on two axes: citizens’ services, and improving the government’s performance. That’s why, there are a number of joint projects that were launched in coordination with different state entities.

In the below lines, et will highlight 7 projects draw Egypt’s digital map of services:

1-   Database:

Integrated database is a concrete factor in achieving digital Egypt, as it helps build an integrated information society, by facilitating the exchange of data between government agencies among themselves, which contributes to simplifying the procedures for performing services for citizens, through the development of the information sector in the country, updating and linking national databases.

The database contributes to combating various forms of corruption, including the purification of the lists of beneficiaries of the support to ensure that it reaches its beneficiaries.

2-   Internet speed

During the stage of building the database, it was necessary to improve the quality of the Internet in Egypt to ensure the availability of the service and its provision at the highest level. Indeed, investments worth more than 30 billion Egyptian pounds were pumped to increase the speed of the Internet through Telecom Egypt’s adoption of a hierarchical system whose base begins with the expansion of Egypt’s infrastructure base.

The second step is to develop and expand networks, and the third step is to build giant data centers that have certificates and licenses from international institutions, and the top of the pyramid is cloud computing and applications. As a result, the average fixed internet speeds in Egypt increased to 42.42 Mbit/s, which is the first time that the average speeds in Egypt exceeded the 40 Mbit/s barrier/seconds last May.

Egypt's global ranking advanced three places to occupy the 91st place globally, compared to the 94th place last May, according to the latest reports issued by the Speedtest Global index in June 2021.

3-   Optical fiber cables

To complete the improvement of the communications infrastructure, copper networks were replaced by advanced fiber optic networks, and these networks were extended inside buildings and facilities, linking 11,000 government buildings to a fiber-optic cable network, at a total cost of 6 billion pounds, to connect all government buildings nationwide with this network.

Fiber-optic cables are a high-speed means of data transmission. They are designed to transmit data over a long distance in a high-performance manner. They also support many Internet, television and telephone systems in the world. Since fiber-optic cables transmit data through light waves, information can be transmitted at the speed of light.

To enhance communication services, the main roads and some areas in the governorates were covered with mobile networks. The mobile phone services provided to citizens are also improved by accelerating the issuance of licenses to build towers for mobile companies.

4-   Post offices

To provide an efficient infrastructure, post offices were developed to provide a range of essential services to citizens, including government services, financial inclusion and postal services, and post offices now function as an outlet for financial inclusion services, connecting customers with service providers. They also offer a range of services, including microfinance and microinsurance services, where citizens apply, register their details, receive financing, and pay insurance premiums.

Egypt Post is also currently looking into launching a digital mobile wallet that will help customers obtain small loans, pay bills, pay purchases and transfer money, in addition to postal kiosks and mobile post offices that have been developed and equipped at the state level to provide all the services provided by post offices nationwide.

5-   Egypt digital platform

The government has worked on digitizing government services and making them available through four outlets, namely the “Egypt Digital Platform”, which was launched on a trial basis, and the number of registered users has reached more than one million Citizen, post offices, government service centers, and the call center 15999.

The services of the first phase of the "Egypt Digital Platform", in cooperation with service providers, include 45 digital government services within the packages of traffic services, catering, documentation and real estate registration, in addition to court services, commercial registry and real estate tax, and the services of the second stage include the launch of 21 services within the packages of courts, social housing and the civil status, in addition to a number of catering and documentation services, licenses and vehicles.

6-   Service projects

The Ministry of Communications implements many service projects in cooperation with state agencies and institutions to achieve digital transformation, the most prominent of which is cooperation with the Ministry of Agriculture to develop the agricultural tenure system and issue a smart card for farmers at a cost of 370 million pounds.

A project to automate the comprehensive health insurance system is also being implemented in cooperation with the Ministries of Health and Military Production at a total cost of one billion pounds.

7-   Development of government performance

The government is moving to the new administrative capital to achieve a qualitative leap in its performance to become a participatory, paperless digital government, by digitizing work cycles and developing its methods using specialized and participatory applications that will be followed in government work, while working on digitizing one billion government documents in circulation.