Good Practices and Innovations in Public Governance 2003-2011

Good Practices and InnovATIONS in Public Governance
Africa
Morocco
2007 Category 2 Winner
eFez projec,
Arrondissement Agdal
Fez, Morocco
Description
Ensuring access of all citizens to civil records services through the creation of an
online portal.
Summary
In partnership with the research team of the ICT-for-Development Laboratory
(ICT4D Lab) at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, the Municipality of Agdal in Fez,
Morocco, has built a local e-government system to provide electronically a range of
services to the public, transforming municipal services into a modern citizen-centric
system accessible and usable by all, regardless of citizens’ degree of literacy and/or
familiarity with ICT use.
The Problem
In Morocco most government services, such as getting a passport or acquiring the
papers required for voter registration can only be accessed through government offices
in the capital, Rabat, or in big cities like Casablanca. By African standards, the
country has high rates of telephone and Internet use and relatively high incomes, and
the government is already using ICTs to improve program coordination, tax administration,
and auditing, public investment planning and monitoring, and spending
management. According to the World Bank, ICT use has cut in half the time the government
needs to prepare the national budget. During the last few years, Morocco
started to realize the potential of e-government. However, regardless of its national
strategies, e-government implementation, especially at the local level remained very
low, with no evidence of concrete positive impact on ordinary citizens. Accessing
information and administrative services in the city of Fez was not easy, especially for
disadvantaged groups.
The Solution
In response to this challenge, a team composed of researchers from the ICT-for-Development
Laboratory (ICT4D Lab) at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco
and public officials from the municipality of Fez, worked together to design, implement,
and deploy a replicable local e-government system transforming Fez’s archaic
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