[TRIBUNE] – In just over seven months after taking office, President Felix Tshisekedi embarked on a major project to roll out digital public administration in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by 2025.

Pending the composition of the government team which will, of course, be responsible for leading and coordinating the implementation of this ambitious reform, the staff of Felix Tshisekedi have not lost their time because of this delay. They immediately set to work to build a digital nation plan, which ministers responsible for this issue will find on their drawing boards.

The national digital plan is in line with President Tshisekedi’s desire to modernize the Congolese public administration, progressively migrating to digital, to make it more professional and more effective and to adapt it to the requirements of modern governance, in an increasingly interdependent world. All this in order to ensure greater transparency in the management of public affairs and finances, on the one hand, and to fight corruption effectively, on the other hand.

Felix Tshisekedi wants all state officials to use information and communication technologies as much as possible to computerize records management, to eliminate the mountain of paperwork that clutters offices and to gain access to information. real time information. A daunting challenge in the context of an administration where most civil servants do not even have a computer on their desk.

However, the digital shift has a triple objective: to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public services and to provide quality services at a lower cost. This digital shift is part of Félix Tshisekedi’s desire to modernize public management, in order to guarantee transparency, improve decision-making processes and ensure rigorous management of public policies.

But the big question is obviously whether this will be possible, given that most of the ministries that are supposed to implement this reform will be led by the ministers from the Common Front for Congo (FCC) of the former – President Joseph Kabila, who does not necessarily share the same way of seeing things and who may not be in the same state of mind as President Tshisekedi, even though they are in a coalition.

One thing is certain, beyond the will of President Tshisekedi to take the digital turn to modernize the Congolese public administration, the realization of this ambitious reform will also depend on the political will of its FCC partners.

However, the transition to the digital age is a huge change that absolutely requires that we take into account all the internal and external parameters that can compromise the project. Indeed, the deployment of such a transformation is inevitably accompanied by certain operational inefficiencies. In this case, the major challenge for effective implementation of this transition to digital governance is the weakness of the Congolese public administration. Hence the need to strengthen the management capacity of senior state officials responsible for implementing this reform.

Admittedly, a series of administrative reforms had been initiated in previous years to improve the efficiency of the Congolese public administration, but judging by the results achieved, notably their failure to meet the need for efficiency, effectiveness and efficiency. of economy, it is necessary to ask whether there are no systemic problems within this administration that must absolutely be identified and corrected.

This is why we believe that the digital switchover requires the Congolese government to undertake a comprehensive reform of its public administration, including the organizational structure and the appropriate management bodies necessary for the implementation of the program. government action to increase the quality of citizen services and foster results-based management.

Structural reform is therefore necessary and will have to change the working methods and also contribute to an organizational culture that is conducive to professional development, to promote sound management in the public sector. The Congolese government will have to know how to make the best of all the expertise, internal and external, including those of the diaspora, who offer themselves to impulse a new dynamic in its public administration.

Isidore KWANDJA NGEMBO, Political scientist and public policy analyst