Portugal: Leapfrogging Digital Transformation

The Portuguese digital transformation trajectory shows that countries can leapfrog forward with the right strategy and political vision, sustained over time. It also shows that such strategies can deliver results. A recent review of Portugal’s journey towards digital progress undertaken for the Development Bank of Latin America and Portugal’s Administrative Modernization Agency is distilling its main lessons learned, after almost two decades of reforms.

Portugal’s “Public Administration Digital Transformation Strategy – ICT Strategy 2020” and its follow-up action plan, Portugal Digital, launched in March 2020, are seeking profound transformations in the way the public administration operates and in the design of public services. The vision is to “to provide better public services to citizens and businesses focusing on the digital transformation of public administrations and using technology as a catalyst of public sector modernization”. The vision of Portugal Digital, as the country's transformation engine, is to accelerate Portugal, “without leaving anyone behind, and project the country into the world”.

To underpin this structural transformation, the government adopted a comprehensive legal and regulatory framework, providing the foundations needed for administrative simplification and digitization processes, while ensuring data protection, cybersecurity, and citizen participation. In addition, the efforts were driven from and by the center of government, creating a politically-empowered governance structure, the Council for Information and Communication Technologies (CTIC). CTIC is the coordination structure in charge of the operationalization of the digital transformation strategy and its actions plans.

Four enablers have been instrumental in achieving the strategy’s objectives: 1) Common technical solutions – three services used government-wide as foundations for the implementation of digital services, namely the digital identity, the digital mobile key, and the interoperability platform; 2) Supporting strategies – like the Open Government Strategy, the National Cyberspace Security Strategy, and sectoral strategies, such as in the Judicial and Health sectors; 3) New technologies – proactively integrating new technologies, like artificial intelligence, big data, and data analytics in the public administration; and 4) Human-capacity – launching initiatives for building human capital in the public sector and in the society at large.

The strategy was composed of critical initiatives that include: 1) Citizen Card – the national identity card as physical and digital documents, 2) Digital Mobile Key - an authentication mechanism using a mobile phone; 3) Zero Licensing – a service simplifying the process for issuing certain business licenses, through the dematerialization of the administrative procedures; 4) Medical e-Prescriptions – a solution enabling fully digitized medical prescriptions; 5) e-Portugal – a platform providing the digital single point for accessing all public services to citizens and business; 6) Citizen Shops, Citizen Spots and Business Spots – a revolutionary approach to deliver face-to-face public services; 7) Interoperability Platform –a service-oriented platform providing shared tools for interconnecting systems; 8) SIMPLEX Program - an administrative simplification and modernization program following a citizen-driven approach relying on participation and service co-creation; 9) LabX – the government laboratory for experimenting innovation in the public sector: and 10) AMA Academy – a program aiming at encouraging new forms of participation of civil servants, promoting their achievements, and developing digital skills.

Measures of impact are impressive and illustrate the benefits of digital transformation. For example:

• The 40 main measures implemented under SIMPLEX+ 2017 produced annual savings equivalent to 0.08% of the country’s GDP, representing a Gross Value Added of 0.04% of GDP and total benefits of 0.12% of the GDP
• The Zero Licensing initiative facilitated that the process for opening a beverage and food establishment has reduced by half the required documents and enables applicants to complete the process online and in less than 48 minutes.
• The Medical e-Prescriptions system contributed to reduce the fraud associated with medical prescriptions by 80%.

Portugal digital transformation strategy provides important lessons for policymakers considering how best to accelerate their digital transition:

• Approach – The core approach of the Portuguese strategy is citizen-driven by design, based on civic participation; it is strongly focused on administrative simplification, de-bureaucratization and digitization; it has adopted new methodologies for service design and implementation; it is based on an institutionalized and empowered governance structure; and it is backed-up with sufficient resources from a central budget managed by AMA, used to fund agency projects.
• Governance – The critical importance of institutionalising a politically-empowered governance structure in the centre of government and established upfront to drive the reforms and unblock resistance to change.
• Implementation agency - The empowerment of a technically-strong central digital agency (AMA) responsible for the coordination of the strategy’s implementation and the provision of the resources needed.
• Common solutions - The provision of common technical solutions to be used by public entities for speeding up the development of digital services.
• Opportunity - The Portuguese experience shows how embracing administrative modernization efforts at the time of financial crisis is a major opportunity for improving the efficiency of public administration and the quality of public services. It also produced a solid readiness for coping with the COVID-19 pandemic issues.