A week ago, Ethiopia Ministry of Trade and Industry release its first online Trade Registration and Licensing System [ORLS] for purpose of registering, making change or cancelling customer’s business and association entities.

The initiative is a great start for enabling the evolution of the e-service in Ethiopia as long-term goal. Providing continuous e-service needs a lot of work in order to give a holistic service to customers without any manual process.

I understand the current situation in Ethiopia the level of e-service and not expecting all process is ready at once. However, I would like to give my feedback as a development contributor. I refer to my feedback with the system I use here in Finland for the same purpose.

Create with the end in mind.

In any e-service solution, identifying the customers without any doubt is a first step to provide the service. This needs simply the e-service must be integrated with identity provider service that certified the customer from the master citizens Population Information System that has data such as Personally identifiable information (PII). The data might be a personal information or any asset in the country.

This is true in the case of Finland patent and registration office [1]. The system is well designed and integrated with the master Population Information System (VTJ), Identification methods, tax office, bank payment system and other several systems that are related with the business life cycle. All forms of registration served online from start to the end. Throughout the process, there is no need to visit the authority in any point and the communication between customers and officials proceeding through within the system or via email. This is one of the major technique to control the corruption.

The process is the ultimate goal

My point here is that data movements from one system to another and between several systems throughout the process is the ultimate goal when one decides to provide e-service. This allowed the government to have a full control on the data.

Designing the holistic process needs well-organized cooperation work between all the governments and private organizations that are a part of the entire process. In the case of optimizing the process, it may also need legislation reform from the government on the service providers in order to achieve the smoothness of the end-to-end process.

That is why here in Finland the patent and registration office is responsible for evaluating and approving any application related to the establishing, changing or cancelation of any business or association entity. The authority leans to other private and government authorities’ processes and databases so that it can provide the service without any difficulties and seamless.

Data is both asset and liability, especially in the form of data lifecycle and possible interaction between different entities. However, integration privacy and protection safeguard in to the systems from the earliest stage of designing is a crucial element.

I admiring the current ICT initiative in Ethiopia

I admiring the current ICT initiative in Ethiopia and I find it a good start. However, it would be nice to take the service to the next level, so that all entities who are a part of the entire process work together in a conjunction spirit as “design end in mind”. As Neil Armstrong inspired all the human kind, I would like to crystallize my wish to this wonderful initiative that this is one small step for e-Service in Ethiopia, towards multifunctional and real-time interactive e-service solution!

Teddy Guday, Finland

System Manager and Certified Information System Auditor