Digital government toolkit

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The OECD Council adopted on 15 July 2014 the Recommendation on Digital Government Strategies.

The Recommendation provides a set of 12 principles structured around 3 pillars. The OECD

Secretariat is developing a Digital Government Policy Toolkit to support OECD member countries and

non-member adhering countries with the implementation of the Recommendation. This practice

was submitted by the government of Colombia to be considered as a good practice in the

implementation of one or more of the principles contained in the Recommendation.

Description of the practice:

Organisation: Vice-Minister of Technology and Information Systems, National CIO,

Ministry of Information Technology and Communications

Name of the practice: E-Government innovation Center

Principles implemented: Principle 2 – Encourage engagement and participation of the public,

private and civil society stakeholders in policy making and public

service design and delivery.

Description: The e-government Innovation Center aims to strengthen an ICT-

enabled public innovation1 ecosystem. To meet this purpose, a portfolio of services was structured

around three main elements based on a transversal approach.

The portfolio consists of:

• Creation and promotion of content (experiences, researches, tools and trends) in order to stimulate inspiration about solving public issues in novel ways.

• Accompanying organizations to create value through innovation exercises that are enabled by ICT.

• Strengthening innovation culture in public agencies.

To massify this portfolio, the Innovation Center is currently implementing a transversal approach,

which is based on the concept of a public digital innovation ecosystem. The ecosystem has two main

elements:

1 Public value generated through the introduction, in a specific context, of novel solutions based on ICT.

Digital Government Strategies: Good Practices

Colombia: E-Government Innovation Center

Digital government toolkit

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A diverse stakeholder community (academy, NGOs, private companies, entrepreneurs, etc.).

A number of tools and spaces that strengthen the relations among the community. The e-government Innovation Center has developed a business case including, background and

justification, user profiles, value proposal and service portfolio, distribution channels, type of

relations with users, preliminary costs of operation, key activities and strategic partners. With this,

the Innovation Center tested the business model and then it was adjusted based on the findings.

In addition, the Innovation Center is developing complementary inputs in order to understand the

relationships with the ecosystem and then improve the service portfolio. Within these actions, the

Center is currently building a map of the actors of the ecosystem to identify areas of work, priority

relations, and possible evolutions.

The Innovation Center has a governance scheme that includes three organizations: Colombian ICT

Ministry, UNDESA and UNDP. To coordinate this project a steering committee was established in

which the three entities are involved. Likewise, the project has a technical committee in which the

three entities are involved. Finally it exist an operative team, part of the e-government Direction of

the ICT Ministry, responsible for the execution of activities. The coordinator of this team is part of

the technical committee of the project.

Results

A website as the main channel for dissemination and services offer.

Having more than 200 contents related to innovation in e-government.

Consolidate the experience; an international event that has taken place on two occasions,

2013 and 2014, where world experts met to discuss the main achievements and challenges

of implementing e-government. In these two editions the event has had the participation of

more than 700 persons (public servants, civil society, entrepreneurs, academy an IT

industry).

13 innovation projects ended and 6 additional innovation projects are currently ongoing.

Nine hackathons have been carried out generating 59 mobile applications using open

innovation schemes. The above cited innovation projects included solutions developed using

open data to develop services in public entities, using mobile technology to improve the

presidential communications protocol, among others.

Has performed innovation culture diagnostic in 20 public entities.

Has sensitized more than 200 public servants in 2015.

Developed disruptive concepts in e-government such as the Citizen Folder (a space to

improve the interaction between citizens and the state through storage schemes and

management of public documents).

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9 alliances that contribute systematically to the strengthening of the public digital

innovation ecosystem.

Development

Design: 2014/March

Identification of potential user profiles, benchmarking, business model canvas, strategic planning,

financial estimates, design thinking, stakeholder mapping, diagnosis of innovation culture.

Among the stakeholders that participated on the design were public entities from the national and

territorial level, public entities abroad, international organizations and private companies.

Testing: 2014/December

Concept validation.

Implementation: 2015/January

Included different key steps:

Creation of a website with deployment of services such as sharing a knowledge base and the implementation of an online collaboration platform.

Development of spaces to increase public servants’ capacities and awareness of the innovation process.

Development of e-learning tools.

Methodological tools to support innovation processes.

Accompaniment for develop co-creation processes.

Establishment of alliances in order to scale up services.

Resources: The project counts with a dedicated team of 9 persons. The investment on the project at this moment is USD$ 1.999.772

Diffusion and scaling: 2014/January

The Innovation Center is working with stakeholders in order to engage them in to the

ecosystem trough thematic workshops and exploratory meetings.

The innovation Center is developing a stakeholder map that helps prioritizing efforts when

choosing who to contact.

The diffusion and scaling started in the design phase. Some stakeholders had contacted the

Innovation Center in early stages to know about how to establish their own innovation

teams.

The process of expansion has not been planned as a replica of the innovation Center in other

agencies, but as a strategy of articulation and appropriation of innovation tools and culture

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in order to develop new solutions enabled by ICT by ecosystem actors. It is preferable to

replicate this initiative in other countries than within the same country.

Partnerships: Civil Society, Academics and Research Bodies, Public Sector Organisations

UN trough UNDP and UNDESA

Social Innovation Center from the Agency for Overcoming Extreme Poverty (ANSPE for the

name in Spanish)

National Planning Department

Panamericana University

Los Andes University

ViveLab (promotes innovation in content creation)

ESAP (Public Administration School)

EAN University

DAFP (Public Service Administrative Department)

Lessons learned

Public entities are seeking for inspiration when investigate the experiences developed by

other entities. Sometimes the product of experiences documentation ends in a form that is

not very accessible. This is why is it required to process the collected data in the traditional

forms to generate more easily assimilated contents, such as chronic, videos, infographic and

cases.

When developing innovation processes, public entities fear the risk because risk implies the

possibility of failure. At the same time this implies the possibility of sanction by control

agencies. This is the reason why it is required to develop services that contribute to reduce

and manage the risk in the process of innovation.

Public entities think that innovation process can be outsourced in units like Innovation

Centers and similarly conceive that innovation is limited to creativity processes. Then, it is

required to strengthen aspects of awareness and innovation culture in the entities to be

recognized that processes are co-creation.

The innovation exercises are very attractive for senior managers. However, when the

exercises go down within the organization’s hierarchical pyramid, must align not only with

the strategic view but also with the operational plans, as it is on these that public officials

are measured and so are those who have more attention and major possibilities to be

implemented.

In Colombia, innovation culture exists in some individual officials and also in organizations

environment. Thus it is necessary to strengthen activities of socialization and capacity

building in teams and senior managers.

ICT enabled innovation in public sector can´t be centralized by a single entity. For this reason

it was recognized that the ecosystem approach contributes to massify public digital

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innovation. The additional surprise is that there are many actors working on this issue

without common north.

Innovation teams must define cost-benefit measure schemes from the beginning, in order to

know the impact of the actions taken.

Governmental innovation units inserted into hierarchical structures should respond to

priorities established by the host organization, and the scope of innovation will be framed in

the strategic goals of it.

Having an organization to sponsor the initiative, with sufficient political and operational will.

Involve public and private partners from the beginning.

Establish a governance scheme for ecosystem approaches.

Seek quick wins in order to demonstrate the value of innovation in e-government strategies.

Built service portfolio bottom-up.

Establish baselines and indicators to measure if you are doing innovation.