Convergencia Research, Consultoría especializada en Latinoamérica y Caribe
Monday, November 28, 2022

Lessons from EDI pioneers: dynamic governance, horizontal information exchange, and laws accordingly.

Neuquén, which is the most experienced case, is joined by the initiatives of Catamarca and Chaco in the replication of data exchange on X-Road. It is important to generate legislation to support and promote the adoption of this horizontal information exchange methodology. In addition, the trends of a federal and even regional EDI are strengthened.

The event Networks of Government and Smart Cities 2022 - Norte Grande, held in early October by Grupo Convergencia, brought together in Resistencia, capital of the province of Chaco, the three pioneer provinces in the implementation of the Digital Ecosystem of Integrability (EDI, in Spanish). Neuquén, as the most experienced case, and Chaco and Catamarca, as spearheads in the replication of data exchange on X-Road, shared their experience in the cultural, regulatory and technological dimensions and, in particular, the challenges faced by public agencies in their adherence.

In Catamarca, the concept of dynamic governance is applied to get agencies to join the ecosystem and accept the need for changes in traditional procedures. This dynamic governance is expressed in circles in which representatives of the agencies join to determine which procedures can be digitized. There are currently 11 public bodies in Catamarca that have joined EDI: seven of them are connected through the provincial data center and four outside (two through the Internet and the other two by fiber). And the first municipality connected is that of Fray Mamerto Esquiú.

As part of the first use case explored, the provincial credit agency Capresca digitally grants about 1,500 loans per month to public employees, teachers, police and retirees. For this, it uses different authentic sources of citizen information, whose identification was one of the keys to start the process three months ago: the Educational Management Administration System (Sage), the SARH LIQ system for the settlement of state employees' salaries and the General Administration of Social Security Affairs (AGAP). The Secretariat of Modernization is working on two new use cases: one to execute the automatic retirement through the provincial social work ASEP -with four authentic sources- and another one for the death certificate in the electronic civil registry -with three sources-.

Working closely with the entities adhered to the EDI is fundamental for the evolution of the ecosystems. Martha Posse, Director of Liaison and Control of the Integrability Ecosystem at the Ministry of Government and Education of Neuquén, recalled that the province, a pioneer in the country in X-Road, has already connected 50 institutions. With 14 years in force, the provincial system has added ten municipalities and eight private entities last year.

Regarding use cases, in the Neuquén experience there were bottlenecks because organizations do not have their data digitized. "Agencies generate data and do not understand that they are the authentic source. Everything is time and assimilation, not magic; it is strategy and planning," Posse defined.

EDI must consist of horizontal spaces in which interoperative communication is achieved, in the official's opinion, and in which private actors also join in. "Hand in hand with this, necessary laws appeared, such as the one for the debureaucratization of the State, the one for the adhesion to the law on digital security, the one on information security and the one for the creation of the digital system of Neuquén, which creates the governance system as a decision-making environment, a horizontal and participative space", she added. Chaco has an administrative simplification law that served as a prelude to the development of EDI. "We have to work with each of the organizations, to understand how they see their processes, how they think they can improve, with the focus on the citizen," said Mariela Dolce, Undersecretary of State Modernization of Chaco, at the event in Resistencia.

One of the principles of the law is to work with planning and control of results. And it is followed by the validation of digital identity: in this sense, Chaco has "Tu Gobierno Digital", with more than 700,000 users and 36,000 daily interactions; more than 45 services and 150,000 electronic notifications to its credit.

At the same time, the Chaco Digital Ecosystem of Integrability (EDICH) is the Chaco System of Procedures Management, with 100% electronic processing and 6,700 digital legal instruments, and an online start of procedures (there are more than 640 procedures available to the citizen and, so far, 46,000 procedures started digitally).

Next steps. Mendoza and the City of Buenos Aires will be the next districts to move into EDI. Four other provinces will begin work in 2023, adapting the systems already developed in each case to move towards X-Road. Meanwhile, the National Secretariat of Public Innovation is working with interprovincial interoperability tests -in November they will be carried out with Chaco and Catamarca-, in what constitutes the initial phase of the roadmap towards a federal EDI. Progress is also being made in cross-border testing, as 16% of the world's countries are testing or using X-Road. In Latin America, Colombia and El Salvador are using X-Road. Mexico has at least one state with the Estonian system, and Brazil has two others. Panama and Costa Rica have it under analysis. Ecuador is analyzing how to evolve from its current system, while Uruguay will maintain its interoperability bus but will use X-Road for communication with other countries.

According to what Mariela Dolce told Convergencia, IRAM Standard 17.610, which will determine the minimum requirements to be able to deploy EDI throughout the country (discussed in Convergencia Telemática nº 317), could be submitted for public discussion in November. "This will give us a framework to politically manage a regulation, already at national decree level, to give institutional life to federal EDI. By the end of the year, the Nordic Institute for Interoperability Solutions (NIIS) is also expected to approve a reform introduced to X-Road by the Nation: it will give us the security for all ecosystems to operate in a secure environment. Today there is sharing in Web Services, but there is no control over what we are sharing. This provides efficiency in administrative processes," he said.

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