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Fez eGovernment Project
Arrondissement Agdal, Fez, Morocco
Morocco

The Problem

The municipality (local government) of Fez in the developing country of Morocco has had a constant concern of how to concretely improve local governance. Since the late 1990s, our local government carried out several actions; but the resulting changes were usually slight and limited. We realized then we needed assistance. At that time we had heard of the prestigious institution: Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane and its ICT-for-Development Laboratory (ICT4D Lab). Entering into contact with the ICT4D team was a turning a point in our governance practices, and hence, governance quality. The team gave us presentations and demonstrations of innovative ICT solutions it developed in order to contribute to Morocco’s challenges in development and governance in general. The lab ambitious young team explained to us how introducing and effectively using ICT can generate revolutionary results transforming the functioning of the administration and its relations with citizens it serves. Talking to the lab team enabled us to be aware of and gain insight and understanding of ICT opportunities with regards to governance issues. Accordingly, we agreed to collaborate in order to overcome the challenge of building the first pilot local e-government system in Morocco. We supported the lab team in elaborating and submitting a request for funding proposal to the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The IDRC approved the proposal and provided us with the needed funding for what we call “eFez project.”

eFez successfully accomplished its objectives in building a functioning pilot e-Government system, and thereby, succeeded in initiating the introduction and use of ICT within the country’s pilot local government of Fez. Building such an e-Government system aimed to electronically enable the service delivery of a set of actively used citizen-oriented services: “Etat Civil” services, delivered at local government offices known as “Bureaus d’Etat Civil” (BEC) in charge of keeping official records of citizens’ declared life events, such as birth, marriage, divorce, and death. Specifically, the project automated the BEC back office and electronically enabled the front office via a web portal and a related touch screen kiosk, available for public use and adapted to illiterates.

This pilot project has been a true success with excellent feedbacks and noticeable satisfaction expressed by all stakeholders. For instance, a survey conducted during May and June 2006 with more than 500 citizens showed that 95% of them used the kiosk located in the BEC office. The satisfaction was exceptionally high: 91.2% of respondents were very satisfied (7% were satisfied) and 93% respondents qualified service delivery as excellent (3% rated it as good).

Furthermore, the project was acknowledged at the national level by wining the national prestigious prize “eMtiaz 2006.” In addition, the project benefited from continuous periodic press coverage. Having such success story that is highly visible at the national level, empowered us (as a local government) to participate in this important contest. Our main wish is to win the 2007 UNPSA as it will further our experience visibility and facilitate its diffusion within our country’s local governance structures.

Solution and Key Benefits

 What is the initiative about? (the solution)
In partnership with the research team of the ICT-for-Development Laboratory (ICT4D Lab) at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco, the municipality of Fez, Morocco, was able to lead and complete Fez e-Government project (eFez ) funded by the IDRC. eFez project proved to be a local e-Government success story in the developing context of Morocco. The last few years, Morocco started realizing the urgent need to promote the diffusion of e-government; yet, regardless of its national strategies, e-Government implementation remained very low, with no evidence of concrete positive impact on ordinary citizens. In response to this national context, eFez worked towards succeeding the design, implementation, and deployment of a replicable local e-government system transforming Fez archaic municipal service delivery to enable the electronic delivery of some of the widely used citizen oriented services: “Etat Civil” services. Designing, implementing, and deploying the project in a citizen-centric, participatory, and iterative manner, enabled the research team to build a local e-government system that matters to our local community, responds to the locally perceived needs, contributes concretely in facilitating citizen-friendly service delivery; and thereby, fostering local good governance. Following such a participatory and iterative methodological approach, eFez succeeded in building a citizen-centric e-government system that is accessible, usable and acceptable among Fez local community members, regardless of their degree of basic literacy and/or familiarity with ICT use. In addition, eFez conducted action research to investigate the effect of e-government deployment on governance quality. Through its outcome analysis method, eFez succeeded in gathering empirical evidence on the influence e-government has on governance towards good governance.

eFez success has facilitated a growing interest in implementing Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) projects among political decision makers, civil servants and ordinary citizens. The general public is becoming more and more aware of the urgent need to promote ICT diffusion within Morocco’s governance structures, especially at the local level. For instance, citizens at Fez are voicing their needs to benefit from a similar electronically enabled service delivery in the remaining 33 BEC government offices. BEC employees and officers are requesting we extend the automation to additional BEC services. There is a growing interest in ICT projects among Morocco’s decision makers at the city levels. An increasing number of decision makers in several cities of the kingdom have approached the research team with regards to their interest in having BEC electronically enabled service delivery deployed within their respective BEC governance structures. In this sense, eFez success has been communicating clearly the feasibility of building e-government system in a typical Moroccan context.

Actors and Stakeholders

 Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
Fez e-Government project (eFez ) lasted around two years. It officially started in March 2004, launched its various research, development, and implementation activities in September 2004, deployed its integrated/comprehensive e-government system (which automates the back office and electronically enables the front office of BEC pilot government office ) in November 2005 and celebrated its successful completion in June 2006.

(a) Strategies

 Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
 a.      What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
Morocco is a developing country; since the late 1990’s, the state has been expressing its intention to facilitate ICT diffusion in effort to meet its different challenges. These challenges fall into two main categories: international, the need to make the transition towards Information Society and its related knowledge based economy; and national: the need to foster human development and improve governance quality to achieve “Good Governance” (eMaroc, 2006) .To put its intention into action, Morocco started with modernizing and liberalizing the Telecommunication Sector in 1997 and then proceeded to set the needed structures, institutions, policies, and strategies to facilitate ICT diffusion in public sector via e-government projects . Regardless of the country’s ICT related actions launched since the late 1990’s, there has been no concrete positive influence on the daily lives of ordinary citizens. ICT diffusion remained unsatisfactorily low and E-Government projects’ deployment remained concentrated at the central government level . Such Morocco’s ICT related context has led an increasing number of Morocco’s development practitioners and decision makers to voice concerns and worries.

In response, the municipality of Fez collaborated with the research team of ICT4D lab at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane in order to take concrete actions to contribute to Morocco’s ICT related concerns. The project team (i.e. Fez municipality and ICT4D lab) realized from the very beginning the need to lead a real life pilot e-government project in order to effectively and concretely investigate and explore ICT related issues. It needed to build an experimental ICT platform for a real life e-government system. Accordingly, the project team, successfully completed in July 2006 a pilot e-Government project (eFez) funded by the IDRC and deployed at the local government of the city of Fez. eFez success was acknowledged at the national level, and awarded with the national prestigious prize “eMtiaz 2006” for being judged to be the best e-government project in Morocco

(b) Implementation

 b.      What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
In line with Morocco’s priorities related to ICT diffusion within governance structures at the national and local levels, eFez project aimed to accomplish three main objectives: 1)develop a pilot E-Government system that enables online delivery of citizen-oriented services to the local community; 2) propose a method that may be used to replicate the experience in other Moroccan cities; and 3) assess the influence of such systems on Moroccan’s everyday life and on enhancing governance in general.

In this sense, the project goals were two-fold. eFez project aimed to build, implement, and deploy a pilot e-Government system for the city of Fez allowing the local community to have speedy, transparent, and easy access to municipal information and services. With such a real life e-government deployment, the project attempted to answer a number of research questions of high significance to national concerns. The research questions concern mainly the project’s social influence and political implications, as well as the acceptability, adoption and ways of generalizing and diffusing e-government within Morocco’s local governments. In this sense, eFez is a technological deployment project, intended to build a local e-Government system while conducting Action research to investigate related research issues.

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

 c.      What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
Since all the services provided by the city of Fez could not be automated in two years, the project team decided to concentrate on improving citizens’ access to one of the mostly requested municipal services: “Etat Civil” services, delivered at local government offices known as “Bureaus d’Etat Civil” (BEC) in charge of keeping official records of citizens’ declared life events, such as birth, marriage, divorce, and death.. Regardless of having daily and direct contact with the local community, BEC offices have remained archaic: service delivery was conducted in a manual paper-based manner. Consequently, the project aimed at automating the BEC back-office and electronically enabling its front-office. As a first service, the project worked on computerizing the BEC citizens’ records. The BEC back-office was automated through the digitization of all BEC’s Citizen Record Books into a database accessible to BEC employees through networked desk-top computers. The front-office was automated by developing a portal and a related kiosk available for public use and adapted to illiterate end-users in order to facilitate the request of birth certificates and related documents. Hence, since the eFez System deployment in November 2005, citizens can use three different modes for the submission and processing of a birth certificate request: 1) going as usual to a BEC employee’s desk; 2) using an interactive kiosk with an easy-to-use touch-screen interface with vocal instructions and feed-back (in Moroccan language) such that even illiterate citizens can use it; 3) using an interactive portal accessible through the web from which the document request can be sent. In all cases the citizen has to go to a BEC’s counter in order to obtain the printed certificate signed and stamped by an officer.

(d) Use of Resources

 d.      What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
eFez project did transform the pilot administration. For instance, at the organizational level , eFez revolutionized the functioning of the BEC government office. eFez introduced ICT and modernized BEC internal operations; and hence, service delivery is no longer archaic: conducted in manual and paper based manners. Rather, eFez developed and deployed an intelligent and context-sensitive ICT system automating and streamlining service delivery. Shortly after such deployment, employees started noticing unprecedented concrete improvements. Now, employees do not have to perform the tedious and time consuming tasks in processing citizens’ requests of BEC services; employees are able to serve citizens with only a couple of mouse clicks related to entering the identifiers of the needed certificate and printing the needed copies. As a result, serving a citizen became an effortless, instant task which increased employees’ productivity, and hence, responsiveness. eFez introduction of automated service delivery eliminated also common health problems employees suffered from because of the previous tedious manual service delivery.
At the social level, eFez improved BEC governance tools and practices; and hence, enabled an unprecedented citizen-friendly service delivery. eFez did not only electronically enable BEC front office; rather, eFez created and diversified electronic delivery channels. Citizens have now three electronic media to choose from:
- approaching as usual the BEC employee in charge to submit one’s request
- Using the interactive touch screen kiosk to instantly request and obtain the needed certificates and their related copies without resort to BEC employees. The kiosk is available for public use and adapted to be easily used by Fez community members, including illiterates. The kiosk facilitates “client orientation” by having voice recordings providing step by step instructions and feedback in dialect Arabic. It facilitates also “courtesy” as there is an assistant who is in charge of sensitizing citizens.
- logging to eFez web portal (www.portaildefes.ma ) to instantly request and receive the BEC needed certificates anytime and anywhere.
These new electronic modes of BEC service delivery allowed citizens to have a simplified request/receipt of their needed certificates. Citizens now receive printed (as opposed to handwritten) certificates; these printed certificates are higher in quality because they are elegant, visually appealing, easy to read, and more importantly free of errors (usually introduced with manual copying).
Automating service delivery enabled citizens to gain access to BEC services in a cost effective way. For instance, citizens obtain BEC certificates in less than five minutes, as opposed to days required with the use of manual delivery. This eliminated queuing, standing in line, and the need to have more than one physical trip to the BEC. Consequently, ills of queue jumping were also eliminated thanks to the timely and instant receipt of the requested certificates, which reinforced ethical practices in our local governance structures.
The main originality of eFez project rests on introducing a context-sensitive “self-service technology”: touch screen kiosk and web portal. This decreased dependency on bureaucracy (i.e. employees) to have access to the needed certificates. This makes eFez self-service to be by design predictable and instantly responsive to citizens’ needs at their convenience.

Sustainability and Transferability

  Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
eFez Sustainability:
eFez project has had a far-reaching capacity-building impact on Fez local government. Now, it has a viable IT infrastructure and benefiting from revolutionary transformation in its governance practices and tools. After it had been relying on pen and paper in serving local community, Agdal BEC government office acquired and adopted a context sensitive e-Government system that automates BEC service delivery. With such adoption, BEC personnel abandoned the tedious manual way of service delivery to adopt the effortless and instant electronic way of service delivery. Since it lacked digital literacy, eFez provided the BEC personnel with training programs on initiation to ICT to acquire the basic skills and on how to use the newly deployed system. The personnel of Fez IT department benefited also from several training opportunities to upgrade their respective ICT skills and acquire new skills in network installation and maintenance. Accordingly, since November 2005, the personnel have been totally autonomous in maintaining the deployed system. Furthermore, the personnel successfully led network installation in two additional BEC government offices. In this respect, eFez sustained its actions and achievements.

eFez Dissemination
eFez disseminated and shared information on its activities, results, and findings via various mechanisms. For instance, eFez Project supervised and produced at least six Master’s Manuscripts that have been shared with Morocco’s highly ranked decision makers and academics. eFez organized also two main workshops: eFez kick-off Methodological workshop held in July 2004 to officially lunch the project; and eFez Closure Workshop held in July 2006 to disseminate the results and findings generated with eFez implementation. In addition, eFez was invited to present the project in around eight important national and international meetings. The project participated also in at least three scientific conferences. eFez generated also around 12 scientific publications, including two are still being peer reviewed for publication. eFez produced also bilingual CD ROMs and brochures informing about eFez initiative and being distributed to Fez local community and Morocco’s decision makers at the local and national levels. It benefited also from continuous TV, Radio, and Press coverage. More than 20 articles reporting eFez achievement appeared on national newspapers and several interview and documentaries were broadcasted on Morocco’s TV channels and Radio. e-Fez participated in the national contest with more than 30 competitors and won the national award (eMtiaz) for the best ICT4D system in Morocco. The Prime Minister of Morocco congratulated the team (live on TV) and handed the award with the promise to promote the project.

eFez Replication:
With eFez success communicating clearly the feasibility of building e-government system in a typical Moroccan context, many regional decision makers approached the project team to replicate our experience within their respective governance structures. Provinces advancing in replicating our experience include: El Hajeb, Larache, and Ifrane. Furthermore, couple of weeks ago, the IDRC granted funding to the project team for scaling up eFez experience so that it can be replicated and benefit the whole city of Fez. This newly IDRC funded project is widely known as: eFez, 2nd Phase.

Lessons Learned

 What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
eFez successful implementation and deployment of a functioning e-Government platform at Fez local government led to highlighting a number of findings:

Building and deploying e-government systems at the local level proved to be technologically feasible. It is true that such deployment involved doing work from scratch. Improving the capacity building of local government via introducing and installing electricity and connectivity infrastructure was perquisite for the e-government platform to be deployed. Therefore, E-government deployment cannot be conducted while overlooking issues related to infrastructure. eFez experience shows also that building a functioning e-government system at the local level in a developing country context requires the local government catches up with its digital delay by digitizing and automating the back office, and then enabling electronic/web-based delivery channels.

eFez project showed also that designing and building an e-Government project at the local level is challenging because of lack of qualified employees who are supposed to provide the project team with user requirements determining and shaping the parameters of the e-government system to be implemented. Most of BEC personnel could not provide such requirements because they are working in BEC service delivery without prior formal training in BEC legislations. This highlights the crucial need for fieldwork to discover, identify, and gather the needed system requirements.

eFez experience revealed another structural challenge related municipal servants lacking digital literacy. Therefore offering training programs to meet employees’ diverse ICT deficiencies should not be overlooked; rather they should be carefully designed and planned in order to ensure the employees’ use and continuous maintenance of the system deployed at the local government.

eFez experience in transforming Fez archaic municipal service delivery highlighted the crucial role of the local government in enabling, succeeding such ICT experience and ensuring that the system (i.e. technology) is developed to serve the purposes of the local government and the local community it represents.

eFez experience shows clearly that ICT diffusion is not a technology problem; rather it is a political issue. For instance, when we first met the ICT4D team, many of our local decision makers expressed their ignorance of ICT possible uses and related opportunities. In many cases elected politicians in Morocco lack basic literacy skills let alone digital skills, knowledge, and understanding. Such low ICT related awareness among political actors has had many implications, including politicians’ low interest in ICT projects; and thus, ICT projects absent from political agenda and being allocated no significant budget.

eFez experience highlighted also the need to bring the local government and central government to work together. eFez experience shed the light on the importance of establishing linkages between the national and local levels in order to gather the favorable conditions facilitating the win-win collaboration between national and local government actors. It succeeded in initiating a pilot local government (of Fez) to adopt and elaborate an ICT related vision resting on thinking internationally and nationally and acting locally. It proved to be a model to follow since it incites combining simultaneously the Top-Down and Bottom-Up approaches.

Contact Information

Institution Name:   Arrondissement Agdal, Fez, Morocco
Institution Type:   Public Organization  
Contact Person:   Driss KETTANI
Title:   Project Leader  
Telephone/ Fax:   +212 6148 2723
Institution's / Project's Website:   +212 3 586 2030
E-mail:   d.kettani@aui.ma  
Address:   School of Science and Engineering, Alakhawayn University in Ifrane, P.O.Box: 2122
Postal Code:   Ifrane 53000
City:   Ifrane
State/Province:   Ifrane
Country:   Morocco

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