The Big Picture: Transitional Maturity
The consolidated Digital Maturity Index (DMI) reveals that the majority of MDAs (around 70%) are in the Basic/Foundational cluster. Only a quarter are in the Emerging segment, with a small group of Leaders beginning to demonstrate advanced digital practices.
Fig 1.1: Distribution of MDAs by Maturity Cluster
Average DMI: 2.1 / 5.0
The overall score reflects a public sector that has digitized many "front offices" but still relies heavily on manual, paper-based "back offices." The gap between potential and reality is driven by legacy infrastructure, limited integration, and weak records management.
- ✓ Leaders (~5%): A small group with stronger infrastructure, governance and higher e-service completion rates.
- ! Emerging (~25%): Growing digital footprints, some automation and pilot integrations.
- ⚠ Basic/Foundational (~70%): Fragmented systems, heavy manual reliance, and low records maturity.
Pillar Analysis
Breaking down maturity into four distinct pillars confirms that Records Management (RMI) is the critical anchor dragging down overall performance, with E-Services and Governance sitting at basic-to-emerging levels.
Infrastructure (TRI): 2.4
Connectivity is widely available, but many MDAs still rely on single ISP links and have limited, untested Disaster Recovery.
E-Services (ESMI): 2.1
Many MDAs offer basic online front-ends, but back-office processes remain largely manual and fragmented.
Records (RMI): 1.5
The weakest link: the vast majority of records still originate from, or depend on, physical registries.
Governance (GCI): 2.2
ICT leadership and committees exist in many MDAs, but policies are inconsistently adopted and weakly enforced.
Infrastructure: The Hidden Risk
While connectivity is generally available, the hosting and recovery environment exposes the government to significant operational risk. A substantial portion of mission-critical systems still run on-premise or in hybrid setups without robust, tested Disaster Recovery.
System Hosting Model
A large share of MDAs have no formal DR plan and rely on ad-hoc backups with limited testing.
Almost a third of systems still run primarily on-premise, increasing downtime and cyber risk if not modernised.
E-Service Reality Check
Not all "Online Services" are created equal. While simple document authentication and payments have high digital completion, complex welfare and high-volume permits lag significantly due to manual processing and paper dependencies.
Analysis: High-volume services like Welfare and Licensing often trap citizens in a "Digital Dead End" where they must eventually visit an office or submit paper forms (10–30% end-to-end completion).
The Paper Anchor
Why are services slow? Because the data isn't fully digital. A dominant share of critical service records reside in physical or mixed registries, and digitisation is mostly in the "Proposed" or "Partial" phase.
Impact on Process:
- ⚠ 45% of services cite "Paper Files" as a top operational pain point.
- ⚠ 1–3 days lost per transaction waiting for file retrieval and manual verification.
- ⚠ Nearly all of these records contain PII, creating significant privacy and security risks.
Fig 5.1: Digitization Status of Key Records
Policy Gaps
Basic ICT governance frameworks exist in a subset of MDAs, but modern policies on records, resilience, and cloud are far from universal.
Transformation Roadmap
A phased approach to move the Composite DMI from ~2.1 toward 4.0+, while addressing infrastructure, records, services, and governance in an integrated manner.