WASHINGTON, United States (CMC) — The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) on Friday approved a US$16 million grant to improve policy implementation and service delivery to citizens in Haiti through digital transformation of public management.

The Washington-based financial institution said the Programme for Strengthening the Foundations of Digital Transformation of Public Management to Improve Government Effectiveness, approved by the IDB board of directors, seeks “to increase the institutional capacity of Haiti’s digital government agency”.

It also aims to improve the efficiency of core management systems run by the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) as well as cybersecurity monitoring and management capacity of public agencies, the IDB said.

“Haiti is a low-income, fragile state that has been struggling with sociopolitical and economic challenges for decades,” it said. “Ongoing instability and security crises have severely affected the country’s economic performance and state capacity.”

“In this context, digital transformation of public management will tackle the issue of insufficient capacity of the state to deliver on its functions and basic public services, thus helping address Haiti’s fragility,” the IDB added.

By fostering digital transformation of public management, it said the project will contribute to improve effectiveness of policy design and implementation, efficiency, quality and inclusiveness of service delivery, and public sector transparency and integrity.

“This project will benefit the citizens of Haiti, who will be able to access better and more inclusive public services thanks to the digitalisation of MEF’s internal management, the strengthening of institutional, regulatory and technological capacities, and the development of talent of public sector digital transformation,” said Claudia Mendieta, public sector management specialist at the IDB’s Innovation in Citizen Services Division.

“Furthermore, the project will address the MEF’s critical need of improving the resilience of its operation and business continuity in the current complex country situation, contributing this way to the resilience of the whole public administration operation,” she added.

The IDB said the project is structured in three components, each designed to address specific aspects of the government’s digital transformation.

The first component will strengthen public sector digital governance and the institutional capacity of the Statistics and Information Technology Institute (IHSI) as the digital government agency, the IDB said.

It said the second component will promote the digital transformation of Central MEF internal management by financing improvements in digital infrastructure including connectivity, energy and cloud, and in key digital solutions such as interoperability, digital document management, digital signature, digital payments, and hybrid work, among others.

The IDB said the third component will improve public sector cybersecurity capacity. It will focus on developing public sector cybersecurity governance and the capacity to protect, monitor, detect, respond to, and recover from cybersecurity incidents, the IDB said.