Customer Stories
CASE STUDY
Data Driven Decision Making for Citizen Centric e-Government Services in Bhutan
HIGHLIGHTS
Used
by
18
government
agencies
Improved
transparency
- A single source of truth via data hubs used by 18 government agencies
- A sustainable technology acquisition process that improved transparency
- A better integrated system for improved productivity and faster service delivery times
CHALLENGES
Government agencies and decision makers across Bhutan found it difficult to access digital data in their journey to provide e-Government services to citizens. Although initiatives such as Government to Citizen (G2C) introduced a data sharing mechanism, a seamless process to share and consume data regardless of the language that the IT systems were developed in was greatly needed. Due to the lack of such a process, there was a duplication of data collection and storage, incurring high costs when taking into account the infrastructure and human resources.
Furthermore, in the backdrop of increasing online citizen services, a central citizen user store for identity authentication was required. Siloed IT systems and distributed data impacted productivity, specifically public service delivery, planning, and policy development.
Industry: Government
Country: Bhutan
About the Department of IT and Telecom, Bhutan
- The Department of IT and Telecom (DITT) is a part of the Ministry of Information and Communications in Bhutan
- DITT has 7 divisions - Application Development, Application Management, Infrastructure, Tech Industry Development, Telecom & Space, Cyber Security Division, and ICT Management
- DITT’s mandate encompasses the framing and regulation of ICT policies, driving innovation, promotion and adoption of ICT, and sustainable and affordable development of ICT facilities and infrastructure
SOLUTION
DITT initiated the Datahub platform project for better integration and sharing of data, thereby providing improved support for data driven decision making. The project was funded by the Royal Government of Bhutan and Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF). DITT decided to build a national information exchange layer that will function as the central source of data access and consumption for government agencies. In such a collaborative system, protecting the privacy of users was another important aspect.
The national information exchange layer was built using WSO2 API Manager and WSO2 Enterprise Integrator, with WSO2 Identity Server used for authentication and identity management. This project enables data custodians to develop their APIs and publish them on the API store in both staging and production environments. Government agencies can then discover these APIs on the API store for consumption. DITT has eliminated the duplication of data in this manner. Agency users and developers must now customize their IT systems to integrate with the data hub platform. Furthermore, the citizen user store that authenticates users securely protects the privacy and confidentiality of end users. This user store is integrated with citizen data (sso.dit.gov.bt).
RESULTS
- Following the introduction of the data hub platform, there is better collaboration, efficiency, and interaction between data custodians and end users to understand which data supports decision making; then exposing this data through the data hub for the use of other agencies.
- Data quality improved over time, since data custodians received regular feedback from agencies if there were inconsistencies.
- End users also have greater confidence in the data hub as they see its value for the long-term.
- As data is available for validation, discovery, and analysis. Government agencies are now able to make better decisions based on integrated data.
- Operationalized data hubs for citizens, land, business, vehicles, public finance, and tax to the data hub and integrated all cirital government IT systems.
- DITT has a plan to achieve a single source of truth, thereby avoiding duplication of same data across multiple agencies.
(Case study contributors: Shaveen Kasturiarachchi from WSO2 and Dawa Tshering from DITT)
Our need for multiple heterogeneous IT systems running in different government agencies and fast message exchange was critical. Compared to most vendors, WSO2 has a lightweight and high performing product suite with near zero latency, fully configuration driven, and open source applications that can be set up easily. WSO2 has hundreds of connectors, enabling us to set up our business use case requirement easily with various third parties. Furthermore, apart from the products’ performance, the support provided by WSO2 during and after the deployment are the main reasons that we chose WSO2."
Dawa Tshering, senior ICT officer at DITT
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