Digital Government Review of Panama
Enhancing the Digital Transformation of the Public Sector
This review explores how Panama can enhance and harness digital government to achieve broader strategic goals at both national and local levels. It looks at institutional governance, legislation, and inter-departmental co-ordination, including institutional capacities and skills for delivering quality public services. It identifies opportunities for making public service delivery more efficient and inclusive, as well as for expanding the strategic use of data. The review provides policy recommendations to help Panama enable and sustain the digital transformation of the public sector.
Strengthening governance
This chapter analyses the governance of the digitalisation policies in the Panamanian public sector, based on the analytical framework provided by the OECD Recommendation of the Council on Digital Government Strategies and the experiences and practices of a number of OECD member and non-member countries. The chapter reviews the digital government strategy – Digital Agenda 2014-2019 Panama 4.0, considering its strategic lines and values, key actions and goals. It then focuses on the institutional framework in place to drive the digital transformation of the public sector, namely the mandate and role of the National Authority for Government Innovation (AIG). A third section looks at the mechanisms in place to coordinate public sector efforts and assure the enforcement and compliance of the policy across different sectors and levels of government. The last section focus on the legal and regulatory framework as a critical building block for a sound digital government policy.