Exchange on e-government within Brazilian-German Digital Dialogue

The BMDV delegation was led by Anke Leue, Head of Digital Administrative Solutions. On the Brazilian side, the meeting was conducted by the Secretary of Digital Government of ME, Fernando Coelho Mitkiewicz. The exchange was moderated by the Secretariat for the Brazilian-German Digital Dialogue.

The exchange session was organised as a result of the first official visit of BMDV to Brazil in August 2022. Then, Director-General of the Central Department of BMDV, Dr Rudolf Gridl, visited Brazil. On the occasion, Dr Gridl and Brazilian government officials agreed on arranging further exchanges to increase bilateral cooperation on digital government.

Brazilian digital platform for public administration

The Director of Portfolio at the Secretariat of Digital Government (SGD), Luana Roncaratti, gave a first input by presenting the main digital platform for public services in Brazil: Gov.br. It was designed as a solution to digitalise all public services, integrating them into one platform with a single login.

Roncaratti explained the process of developing Gov.br. First, the Secretariat of Digital Government launched an internal consultation to gather information from federal agencies on their status of digitalisation. Then, SGD offered packages of digital services to the agencies, depending on their level of digitalisation. The agencies progressively adhered to the services offered by SGD until full digitalisation was achieved.

When Gov.br was launched in 2019, its main objective was a quantitative digital transformation. Currently, as most services have already been digitalised, SGD is focusing on improving the quality of digital services.

German fellowship programmes for software development

Anke Leue from the German delegation presented the digitalisation programme of the German federal government. It was initiated in 2020. The main goals of the programme are developing new work strategies through digitalisation, using agile management principles in public administration as well as integrating processes from different governmental agencies.

As Head of New Work, Change Management and Project Management, Alexandra Mause highlighted the initiatives Tech4Germany and Work4Germany. These are federal fellowship programmes for software development. The initiatives aim to capitalise knowledge from the private sector to optimise internal processes of the German administration.

Under the scope of these fellowship programmes, the federal government invites private sector experts to work on public administration services and to create more efficient processes. For example, one project team is currently working on digitalising public services at a sub-national level.

Both sides agreed on further bilateral exchanges

The first technical exchange on e-government within the Brazilian-German Digital Dialogue was perceived as very positive. Therefore, the authorities from both countries agreed on continuing the series of technical exchanges. The second session is expected to take place in the first half of 2023.

In the next exchange sessions, the participants suggested to focus on user experience of digital platforms for public services as well as on improving communication with citizens about the digital services. In-depth exchanges on the Brazilian HR-management tool SOUGOV.br and the German initiatives Tech4Germany and Work4Germany were also mentioned.