Egypt’s Government-Led Digital Transformation Tops H2 2021 Technology Trends

·       Oxford Economics: 89% of Public Sector CXOs Agree Data Sharing Improves Citizen Engagement

·       Ministry of Finance, Elaraby Hospital, and UCP Lead Digital Innovation

By : Basel Khaled

Egypt’s government-led digital transformation ranks as the top technology trend of the second half of 2021, supporting business and innovative taking citizen services to a new level, global technology company SAP announced today.

More than four-fifths (89%) of public sector senior executives agreed that data sharing helps them to improve how they connect with citizens, according to a recent Oxford Economics and SAP survey “The Public Sector Transformation Imperative of 3,000 senior executives from around the world.

“The Egyptian government has advanced digital transformation amid the pandemic to better serve citizens,” said Eng. Hoda Mansour, Managing Director, SAP Egypt and New Frontiers. “With 89 percent of public sector executives agreeing on the importance of data sharing, the top three goals for Egypt’s public sector in 2021 are to focus on employee and citizen experiences, leverage data insights for real-time decision-making, and enhance their employees’ digital skills to drive innovation.”

For the public sector, the top three lessons that make a digital “have” and not a digital “have-not”:

1. Employee and citizen experiences will close the gap with the public sector.

Thanks to government initiatives such as Egypt Vision 2030, Egypt’s public sector will continue to lead data-driven innovation to enhance citizen experiences.

Among public sector leaders in the survey, 89% said data sharing improves how they connect with citizens, 83% said data sharing improves their innovation of existing products or services, and 82% said data sharing helps them to exceed performance goals.

Egypt’s Ministry of Finance, with channel partner IBM, and E-Tax, a company affiliated with the Ministry, to fully automate its core taxation system with SAP solutions. The Ministry aims to streamline tax management, improve tax administration performance, transform the Egyptian Tax Authority into the digital arena, and foster Egypt’s economic growth.

2. Data insights will point the way toward actionable insights.

Real-time data insights can help organizations to enhance operational efficiency and craft strong policy. Before government agencies share their citizen data, they need to outline the wider purposes for the data, gain consent from the end-users, and understand how sharing the data both internally and with third parties can deliver new levels of citizen services. Among public sector respondents, 81% effectively shared employee data internally, and 74% effectively shared citizen data internally.

In healthcare, Elaraby Hospital, the largest hospital in the Nile Delta region, is adopting the next-generation Healthcare and Patient Management solution developed by SAP and Cerner. Egypt’s largest pharmaceutical wholesaler, HO Group’s United Company of Pharmacists, with B-Connect are transforming operations with SAP S/4HANA and employee experiences with SAP SuccessFactors.

3. Digital skills capabilities will streamline and expand mission-critical services.

Already, many Egypt and Middle East organizations have embraced collaboration and flexible work policies to enhance employee experiences. But more can be done to enhance employee skill sets and collaboration across different departments. This skills shortage was cited by 61% of respondents as being a barrier to meeting strategic change initiatives.

Supporting Egypt’s workforce of the future, already in 2021, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, and SAP have graduated two more groups of Egyptian youth from SAP’s flagship digital skills build program, the SAP Young Professional Program.

Recognizing SAP Egypt’s success, Hoda Mansour has been ranked among the Forbes Middle East Top 50 Power Businesswomen in the Middle East 2021, and won Best Distinguished Arab Woman in the Field of Digital Transformation and Digital Inclusion by the Arab Council for Social Responsibility.