The World Bank board of executive directors approved a US$40 million project to modernize the Dominican Republic’s public administration to better serve citizens and businesses by improving the efficiency, accessibility, and responsiveness of the government administrative services.
“Bringing the government increasingly closer to citizens with new ways of thinking, working, and delivering services combined with digital solutions and innovation, is a priority for the Dominican Republic,” said Darío Castillo Lugo, Public Administration Minister.
The project, entitled Support for the Implementation of the Public Administration Reform and Modernization Plan, will be implemented by the Ministry of Public Administration in collaboration with other government agencies.
The project introduces the Service Delivery Innovation Labs. This mechanism will enable regular feedback to make government services more responsive and incentivize collaboration between public officials and citizens. The project will also allow citizens to experience fewer steps and travel time to request services such as certifications, permits, or licenses. At the same time, the government will benefit from reduced transaction costs for administrative services and improvements in the quality of information available.
“Transforming development policy at scale demands ambitious reforms to public administration and this project’s innovative approach will further build the capacity to transform and digitalize all services, which will place the Dominican Republic at the forefront of modern human-centric governments”, said Alexandria Valerio, World Bank representative in the Dominican Republic. “The World Bank will continue to support the country’s efforts to achieve real and sustained development that goes hand in hand with open, effective, and accountable public institutions.”
The project focuses on reducing by at least 30% the time to resolve 500 central government administrative services in education, public health, agriculture, environment, and water. Expected results include improving 400 digital services based on the evidence from the Service Delivery Innovation Labs to better serve the needs of citizens with a focus on women and vulnerable groups, including those living in remote areas affected by climate change. Additionally, the project will increase the number of users of government digital services by 40%. The project seeks to get more females to use gob.do, the government-citizen portal. Currently, usage is 27% female versus 70% male.
The project adds to the World Bank’s efforts to support governments in Latin America and the Caribbean in using digital technologies to transform public administration.
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World Bank
29 November 2023