Telecommunications), MFDP (Ministry of Finance and Development Planning), PPCC (Public Procurement and Concessions Commission), Liberia Telecommunications Authority (LTA), Libtelco, Office of the President – President’s Delivery Unit, Governance Commission , and Cable Consortium of Liberia (CCL). In fiscal year (FY) 2019, representatives from the Civil Service Agency and University of Liberia joined the PAC, reflecting the expanded project scope. SNAPSHOT BREAKING DOWN SILOES IN GOVERNMENT IT SYSTEMS: LIBERIA’S NEW CIO COUNCIL IT professionals from across the government now find efficiencies through collaboration and shared services. Liberia’s new Chief Information Officer (CIO) Council sets standards and coordinates IT initiatives across government – saving money through efficiency and improving services to citizens. Prior to support provided by USAID under the Digital Liberia and eGovernance activity (Digital Liberia), each Government of Liberia entity pursued its own IT initiatives without coordination with others. The result was a splintered, siloed and duplicative set of systems that were wasteful and inefficient. An instructor trains IT professionals as part of the CIO training course held from March to July 2019 “The heads of IT at the [ministries, agencies and commissions] are now focused on leveraging existing GOL ICT systems to make their MACs more innovative, efficient and responsive. This is a remarkable improvement”. - Hon. Sekou Kromah, Chief Information Officer, Republic of Liberia Digital Liberia supported a new coordination body – the CIO Council – that convenes IT officials from across government to address this problem and build centralized competency for e-government. The council has created government-wide standards and procedures for new IT systems. Digital Liberia also provided an intensive CIO training course that was successfully completed by 46 government IT specialists. The result of these interventions has been significant improvements in the government’s use of technology to work efficiently, deliver services and engage with citizens. One example of such an improvement is in the area of IT help desks. In the past, each ministry tried to buy and maintain its own system for responding to IT support requests. These often failed due to budget shortages and turnover of trained personnel. The CIO council addressed this problem by creating a centralized help-desk platform shared by all ministries. The platform is a single point of contact where users from various MACs and working with online government services can log their issues. This helps save time and efforts as the users do not have to login to different applications for different issues. CIO Council Digital Liberia also established the eGov Technical Working Group, comprised of senior ICT practitioners from across the GOL, to offer technical guidance to the PAC, operational alignment of project activities to national priorities, assist in coordination, and accelerate the adoption of standards across all ICT initiatives in government. MOPT demonstrated ownership of the eGov Technical DIGITAL LIBERIA FINAL REPORT | 4