MConnect: Digitally Transforming Government and Improving Services for Citizens

E-Government platforms are growing in popularity globally and with good reason - when implemented, these platforms help improve transparency, allow data exchange, support data-driven decisions, and lead to cost reduction. In Moldova, the government’s digital transformation agenda and strategy to modernize public services are overseen by the e-Government Center Moldova. This public institution has introduced MConnect - a cloud based interoperability platform powered by WSO2’s Integration capabilities.

“MConnect is the technical solution for the whole framework we do around data exchange in government,” says Artur Reaboi, enterprise architect at E-Government Center Moldova. Artur believes that there are two benefits to data exchange in government - it lowers the number of requests for documents from various government organizations and enables real-time access to data, thereby improving the efficiency of services. From the time that E-Government Center Moldova was initially set up in 2010, Moldova’s government had data-rich registries and the institution’s aim is to use MConnect to link these registries. This process is done via a centralized hub where E-Government Center Moldova is the sole organization responsible for this process, thereby ensuring operations run as smoothly as possible.

E-Government Center Moldova built a National Service Bus, based on WSO2 Enterprise Integrator, which they implemented together with WSO2 Certified Partner iello. Simplicity is a core characteristic of this platform. For example, data providers are encouraged to create generic services, where the National Service Bus is provided with increased data, which is then divided depending on the legal access of data consumers. MConnect consists of the following: interfaces for data consumption and data sources (mediation occurs between these interfaces), the MLog platform based on elasticsearch and has its special connector, and the planned Semantic Catalog (a registry of public data available at various data sources).

MConnect has demonstrated clear benefits since its implementation. Around 30 public authorities (from central ministries) are a part of this platform, and it’s now been expanded to include local public authorities. Artur estimates that E-Government Center Moldova processed approximately 25 million messages in 2017 - which is astounding for a country of 3 million. Furthermore, over 65 web services are in production and it only has an added latency of 100 milliseconds.

“Interoperability is a journey,” says Artur and his single most important piece of advice is that implementation is faster when centralized. Moreover, he encourages implementing generic services, considering the fact that it’s more cost-effective, and building a team of committed integration specialists (willing to stay for the long haul) for a project of this nature. More interesting plans are in the offing for E-Government Center Moldova, which include promoting Interoperability Law, implementing the previously mentioned Semantic Catalog, and modernizing public services to improve service quality for citizens.

Artur’s presentation has more details on the MConnect platform:

Learn more about the capabilities of WSO2 Enterprise Integrator and how it can be implemented in your digital transformation initiatives.