Digitalização dos serviços municipais. avaliação da implementação da secretaria municipal virtual no município da vila de Quissico

Abstract

In the path of improving the provision of public services, as one of the main objectives of the reform of the Mozambican public sector, the strategic use of information and communication technologies (ICTs), in particular the internet, has become an important vector for the realization of main guidelines for administrative reform (CIRESP, 2001; CPinfo and CIRESP, 2005). In Mozambique, the Global Public Sector Reform Strategy (EGRSP) was an important milestone in the digitization of public administration. However, the main actions of this digitization process, in a first phase, were concentrated on central administration, excluding local administration. With the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, public administration in its entirety reinvented itself to continue providing services to citizens, with the main tool used to achieve this objective being ICTs. In this context, this dissertation sought to explore the digitalization of municipal services and its challenges in the Municipal Council of Vila de Quissico (CMVQ). The dissertation also described the dynamics of the implementation process of the Virtual Municipal Secretariat in the Municipal Council of Vila de Quissico, as well as we analyzed the nature of the SMV services provided to citizens in the CMVQ, and identified the gains, challenges and perspectives of the SMV in the municipality of village of Quissico. In order to reach the objectives of the dissertation, we resorted to a qualitative and quantitative approach, which allowed us to collect elucidations and fundamental data for the research. From the analysis carried out, it was possible to verify that the digitization of municipal services, despite being a new phenomenon in the Mozambican municipal administration, brings numerous benefits to the provision of municipal services. However, it still faces many challenges for its implementation, namely the lack of financial resources on the part of the municipalities to give sustainability to the digitization process; the lack of human and institutional resources, the digital illiteracy of most civil servants, as well as the lack of popular culture in the use of ICTs, among others. In order to reverse this scenario, it is important to have a policy for the digitization of municipal services, as well as to carry out civic education campaigns on matters related to ICTs.