Leapfrogging to the digital age: turning the page on remoteness in the Pacific.
Arndt Husar (Deputy Director) and Sam Henry (Intern), UNDP Global Centre for Public Service Excellence (GCPSE)
At the recent Digital Pacific regional conference in Apia, Samoa (7–8 June), government delegates from Samoa and neighbouring states came together to discuss digital transformation with international expert-practitioners, academics, and private sector and NGO representatives.
How would Governments be able to unlock the potential of digital tech in the public sector and foster a digital economy? What had others learned and what pitfalls could be avoided? How would they ensure that change would be inclusive and sustainable?
Increased broadband connectivity (new sub-sea cables) are beginning to level the playing field for these island economies — which otherwise find themselves separated from the economic growth hubs by a vast expanse of Pacific ocean. Distance hardly matters in the digital world of bits and bytes.
Small in land size, many of the Pacific island states cover vast ocean territories (Kiribati is the size of India) and some are extremely tiny (Nauru being the third smallest in the world with 11,347 residents in a 21 square-kilometre area). Digital technology can help bridge many efficiency or accessibility gaps in public services, offers new livelihood opportunities and increases connectivity with the large diaspora in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.
The regional conference was followed by the Digital Pacific Samoa workshop on 11 June, which narrowed down the discussions to the national scale, took stock of current initiatives and produced the initial contours of what we hope will become a national digital strategy with lots of opportunities for regional sharing.
Opening the event, the Minister of Communications and IT of Samoa, Honourable Afamasaga Lepuiai Rico Tupai made his high expectations of digital transformation clear and emphasised the need for partnerships:
“Thanks to digitalisation, Samoa will never be as remote as it once was. […]
Only together will the private and public sectors build the digital Pacific.”
UN Assistant Secretary-General and Regional Director of UNDP for Asia and the Pacific, Haoliang Xu addressed the audience underlining UN’s high level support for the digitalisation in the Pacific.
He highlighted the importance of regional cooperation between the Pacific and Asia, two regions whose relationships will only grow stronger through digitalization.
ICTs create opportunities for both public service delivery, governance and for the economy. His key message was to take the principle of leaving no-one behind seriously and to ensure that the digital divide is reduced not increased.
Professor Jeffrey Sachs (via video-keynote) emphasized the transformational nature of big data with respect to all Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — including health, education, energy, banking, climate change and employment:
“We have no stronger opportunity for breakthroughs in all of the key areas economic social and environmental development than through digital technologies.”
Day 1 was conceptualised to inspire the audience with relevant digital transformation experiences delivered by practitioner-experts from countries that are known to be pioneers, such as Estonia, New Zealand as well as the Caribbean region (to include a SIDS perspective). Five panels covered key aspects of digital transformation, such as digital identity, digital economy, digital government, skills & education as well as cyber security.
Day 2 started with a Tech Showcase featuring 9 solutions from the region and beyond, showcasing the latest in digital technologies and their relevance in the Pacific Island context. This included: remote sensing and unmanned aerial vehicles, blockchain enabled voting and community engagement, broadband and the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI) in the digitalisation of documents, satellite-based connectivity for remote areas, as well as public services delivery in remote communities leveraging mobiles.
The afternoon of Day 2 highlighted regional coordination and collaboration and participants joined an exercise exploring possible digital futures, culminating a vote on the most convincing future vision (the winner was a remote learning event delivered to students in Samoa by Elon Musk via a holographic image). A presentation of the Youth Co:Lab winners closed the day. Parallel to the conference young Samoan entrepreneurs had worked on their pitches for business ideas and were awarded attractive prices.
Key Insights
Digital Identity
A recurring message core of the two days of dialogues was the importance of a Digital Identifier (ID) for individuals and businesses to facilitate digital Government services and the evolution of a digital economy. Hannes Astok, Director of the e-Governance Academy of Estonia, shared the transformation journey of Estonia and its key building blocks: digital (and mobile) ID and x-road (the backbone for data sharing that connects 900 organisations and enterprises daily).
He emphasized that while these were important features of digital Government, transforming the back office (business process re-engineering), enhanced coordination among departments (data and process sharing) and a slow but steady cultural change was a precondition of success.
Mariana Dahan, CEO and founder of the World Identity Network and former coordinator of the World Bank’s Identification for Development programme underscored the importance of digital identity in tackling target 16.9 of the Sustainable Development Goals: “provide legal identity for all, including birth registration, by 2030” but that identity is also foundational as an enabler for most public services and the 2030 Agenda. It is a prerequisite for access to legal rights, social protection, tax payments, financial services, voting and healthcare.
She also highlighted a joint initiative of WIN and the United Nations which leverages blockchain technology in the humanitarian sector, emphasising that the principles of self-sovereign identity can be ensured using blockchain and that this would answer many of the privacy concerns around digital ID.
Whole-of-Government Approaches
Whole-of-Government Approaches (WOGA) were advocated for by a wide array of speakers during the conference. Indeed, many suggested creating a single unit coordinating and leading digital transformation. Cleveland Thomas (ITU Caribbean), Paul Shetler (Accelerate HQ), Helen Jamison (Department of Internal Affairs, New Zealand) and Mohamed Ibrahim (National ICT & Digital Economy Office, Somalia), all insisted on the utmost importance of having a single agency in charge. In doing so, support from the key government departments such as finance, economy and education could be gained, while ensuring political support at the highest level. Often such units were placed directly under the purview of the Prime Minister or President to “give it teeth”.
Speakers also recommended a review and amendment of relevant regulations which would help modernize public service delivery across Government and a review or design of new policies to promote the growth of a digital economy.
The UNDP Global Centre for Public Service recently published Framing Policies for the Digital Economy — Towards Policy Frameworks in the Asia-Pacific: available here.
Public service delivery based on citizens’ needs
Paramount to the success of digital Government is to focus all transformation efforts on the needs of citizens and businesses. This underpinning mindset shift towards human-centered design principles was widely shared among international experts, including Paul Shetler who used to run the Australian Digital Transformation Agency and was Director of the UK’s Government Digital Service. With this in mind, Governments must work in an iterative manner, making simple but significant steps towards highly convenient and satisfactory public services.
An interesting insight from the Caribbean, shared by Cleveland Thomas, was that as digital transformation processes tend to take several years until they bear fruit and that it would be prudent to identify a few “quick-wins” that would ensure support for the change agenda at the grassroots and bring credibility to the political leadership backing it.
Joana Valente (Partner at Ernst & Young Australia) argued that the leap in connectivity witnessed in the South Pacific needed to be leveraged to transform government services and procedures. Done right it could bridge the digital divide, ensuring that the concepts of Digital Equality are respected. However, she insisted on digital not being the only solution and pointed out that non-tech face-to-face interactions were still essential for many interactions between Government and citizens.
The digital economy pathway
Our speakers and resource persons emphasised that any national or regional digital transformation agenda must be go beyond eGovernment. With significant public investments and an up-skilling of the workforce (in the public service and private sector) a new digital economy can emerge and be fostered to create livelihoods in the Pacific.
To signal the importance of private sector participation and partnerships, the conference was combined with two side events, including the Youth Co:Lab Samoa. This 2-day workshop mobilized young Samoan entrepreneurs and determined young minds to ideate and evolve their ideas on tackling sustainable development challenges.
Presented with the results, conference participants, partners and sponsors were hugely impressed by Samoan youth who presented their pitches during the closing session and committed to continue their support to the Co:Lab.
Panelists Mohamed Ibrahim and Professor Chan Mow (National University of Samoa) spoke about the changing needs in the labor market and identified some of the the bottlenecks in ICT training and STEM Education available in the Pacific — both for the active workforce and students.
Many speakers underscored the need for collaboration between the public and private sectors as an essential component of digital transformation. Noting this important ingredient to the secret sauce of success, the organisers has included a Tech Showcase, featuring both local and international ICT solutions. Representatives of 9 companies and organisations were given the opportunity to display their products/services to show the relevance to the Pacific and especially Samoan context. Companies included SkyEye, Horizon State, Trimble Solutions/AllTerra, Kacific, Digicel, Bluesky, MK3/ABBY as well as the National University of Samoa and UNDP Fiji with it’s REACH project.
Regional collaboration, coordination and leadership
Given their size, collaboration among Pacific Island States is not just fiscally sensible given the economies of scale, but could also enable a regional digital economy that would be benefited by common — or at least compatible — regulatory frameworks. Existing regional knowledge sharing platforms (such as the Council of Regional Organisations of the Pacific), shared institutions and available expertise are ready building blocks for any transformation process. Speakers and respondents agreed that, to save resources and to achieve scale quickly, duplication and a re-inventing of the wheel should be avoided.
Data is the fuel for both digital government and a digital economy, with digitalization (and clean-up) of data being a prerequisite. Greater capacities in the field of data science would enable evidence-based policy design and successful marketing strategies in the private sector. This may not necessarily mean a digitalization of all existing files, but can be achieved through a firm decision to move to digital at a certain date. Johan Berghoef (Secretariat of the Pacific Community) informed about an upcoming launch of a regional data portal which would significantly improve data sharing and access.
Carsten Rudolph (Oceania Cyber Security Centre) and Ian Thomson (University of the South Pacific) shared the wide range of cyber security activities currently under way in the Pacific and highlighted efforts to link up and build up competencies.
Although countries like Samoa now have access to high-speed connectivity, reliable and more affordable broadband internet, Chris Sampson (Digital Society Foundation and the “Connect the Blue Continent” Initiative), reminded the audience that providing such connectivity in all islands through infrastructure investments is the first layer of digitalization and requires regional collaboration. The opportunity is immense if the potential is leveraged through cooperation and coordination among the relevant actors of governments.
Ensuring continuity and relevance
As a take-away for the leader’s breakout session, the Minister of Communications and IT of Samoa and Simona Marinescu (UNDP Resident Representative) announced the Digital Pacific conference would be repeated annually to enable continued dialogue and that for the next iteration they hoped to see more regional representation. Representatives from the region had expressed their interest in continued involvement, but also concern that many solutions with relevance to larger SIDS would require adaptation to low population contexts or differing geographies.
Many of the attendees were either part of or would be attending other regional fora including PIFS, PRIF ICT Working Group, the Polynesian Leaders Group, or the CROP ICT Working Group among others. Staying engaged and connected would hopefully contribute to making the Samoa’s digital transformation efforts and those in the region more coherent, scalable, collaborative and more economical.
To leverage the enhanced broadband connectivity for common people, it is necessary to continue to mobilize the whole broad network of actors involved in ICT. The Minister closed by challenging conference participants:
“Let us unite and work together to leapfrog and ensure our people benefit from digitalisation”.
The events were co-organised by the Ministry of Communications and IT (MCIT) of Samoa, the UNDP Multi-Country Office for Cook Islands, Samoa, Niue and Tokelau and the UNDP Global Centre for Public Service Excellence, Singapore.
Event sponsorship was provided by Australian Aid, Digicel, Bluesky and Huawei.
For further details on the conference, presentations and video recordings, please visit the following links, including the Conference Report:
