Bringing the Digital Government Revolution to Small Municipalities in Latin America

Many governments around the world are embracing online services, making it clear that moving from in-person to online interactions can have a substantially positive effect on citizens’ quality of life. Online interactions are, on average, 74 percent faster, between 1.5 and 5 percent cheaper, and substantially reduces vulnerability to corruption. In implementing digital government transformations, national government institutions tend to be the most advanced. However, it is subnational administrations that are the face of government in citizens and businesses day-to-day life. Despite this, subnational governments, with some notable exceptions, are far behind on digital transformation, both externally for service delivery and internally for administrative processes. 

The Innovation in Citizens Services Division at the Inter-American Development Bank tasked a student team from Columbia SIPA’s Workshop in Development Practice to conduct a global review of mechanisms used by national government institutions and policymakers to promote the digital transformation of subnational governments, categorize the tools available, assess their degree of success, and evaluate their potential applicability to Latin American contexts. The SIPA team developed a digital government toolkit for the use of national government administrators. The toolkit was primarily derived from interviews conducted with digital government practitioners both in the public and private sectors and across all levels of government and includes relevant learnings that digital government practitioners can use to advance their own digital government transformation. Its purpose is to serve as a guide for central digital officials to help them prioritize efforts and take into account important considerations while promoting digital transformations in local governments.