Talatona- The Minister of State and Chief of Civil Affairs Office to the President of Republic Adão de Almeida said Thursday in Luanda that the efficiency challenges facing public administration need to be permanently transformed, to adapt at every moment and a revolution whenever necessary.
Speaking at the International Conference on Digital Transition in Public Administration, he said that the digital transition of public administration is one of the challenges facing the State today to improve the provision of public services to citizens.
Adão de Alemida explained that the transition from traditional and conventional public administration, characterized by the physical presence of the user in the public service and paper bureaucracy, to the digital one is unavoidable and undeniable.
According to the minister, the diagnosis of the Angolan Public Administration and the perception that citizens have of administrative efficiency leave no doubt as to the importance of State Reform and, in particular, the imperative of adopting and implementing a digital transition agenda for the sector.
The official explained that, regardless of the ideological construction of the more or less liberal state model, most nations face the permanent challenge of responding to citizens' demand for more and better public services.
“This demand is permanent, growing and infinite,” he said.
Adão de Almeida added that a growing, permanent and infinite demand for public services has to be answered with a growing, permanent and infinite presentation of solutions.
"More than ideological elaborations, dogmas and prisons to standards, the Public Administration needs ambition, audacity and pragmatism in the search for solutions, otherwise its relationship with the citizen will become an endemic disillusionment", he said.
According to him, the history of the State and its relationship with the citizen is marked by a permanent connection between service provision and service demand, between the ability to provide and demand provision.
He said that throughout the period the relationship between the state and the citizen is marked by disillusionment in relation to the service provided by the state, factors that have become the main motive for the permanent need to reform the state and seek new solutions.
Training
On the other hand, the minister defended greater investment in the training of civil servants and administrative agents, adding that the new profile of administrative agents must be increasingly adapted to the demand for services by citizens.
For Adão de Almeida, however much quantity there may be in the public administration, if there is no quality, it will not be efficient.
The Minister of State added that it is necessary to ensure that quantity and quality go hand in hand and become inseparable.
Meanwhile, Adão de Almeida states that it is necessary to continue to improve the mechanisms for entering the Public Administration, with more rigour and transparency in public tenders.
On the other hand, the Minister of State said that at the moment the country has the necessary ingredients to think about an agenda for the digital transition of public administration.
Among the ingredients, the official mentioned the existence of about 9.5 million citizens with access to the internet, some19 million with access to mobile phones and the fact that the internet service reaches 276 locations, among municipal, urban district and communal seats.
To Adão de Almeida, there is no more time to waste. “A digital transition of public administration made in an integrated, rigorous and coordinated way is the most important condition if we want to go further, faster and more efficiently,” he said.
Taking into account the territorial extension of the country of 1.2 million square kilometers and with Angola being the twentieth largest country in the world and the seventh largest on the African continent, he considered it a challenge to bring public services to all citizens.
On the other hand, taking into account that citizens are the recipients of services, Adão de Alemida considers it essential to look at the demographic variable, which presents challenges to be faced and opportunities to be taken advantage of.
The official said that designing the public administration for today, considering only the current demand, does not allow it to be prepared for the needs of the future, nor to anticipate the best solutions for it to be efficient.
“The demographic projections presented, on the other hand, offer us a potential for opportunities that we should be able to take advantage of”, he said.
At the Conference, which ends on Friday, issues related to the digital transition in Angola, debates and presentation of solutions and promotion of crucial reflections for the modernization processes, are being addressed.
Sponsored by the Administrative Modernization Institute (IMA), the two-day conference aims to collect the experience of other States in the field of digitalization of the provision of public services.
