Digital Government is an area of public administration in which the OAS Member States have generated commitments and resolutions in the framework of the OAS General Assemblies and the Summits of the Americas. Through these commitments, it is urged to accelerate digital government transformation and support the simplification of administrative procedures and modernization of public services, as well as strengthen the quality of digital literacy and digital citizenry, always taking into consideration the protection of citizens’ personal data.
The GEALC Network is an initiative of the countries of the Americas supported by the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), constituted as a systematic horizontal technical cooperation mechanism through which they promote, multiply, strengthen and stimulate exchanges aimed at developing, disseminating, and implementing the best e-Government practices in the Americas in support of institutional development processes and progress in the region.
The GEALC Network was born in 2003 with the aim of promoting and maintaining spaces for reflection, mutual knowledge, horizontal technical cooperation, training and exchange of experiences between the agencies of electronic government of the region, with the purpose of contributing to the strengthening of digital government practices, as well as build links between governments and civil society organizations and international agencies.
This Network is made up of the government institutions at the national level with the highest technical or regulatory responsibility related to the implementation of digital Government in each OAS member country.
The composition of the GELAC Network makes it a unique mechanism to promote horizontal cooperation, support for the development of participatory public policies in this field, the training of public officials, knowledge of key aspects of the construction of a national strategy of digital government, and the exchange of solutions and experts among the countries of the region.
Such an effort is consistent with the OAS policy on the relevance of integrating Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in political, economic and social development efforts, as has been established in the context of the Summits of the Americas since the Miami Summit in 1994, which was later emphasized by the Declaration on Connectivity of the Third Summit of the Americas held in Quebec in 2001, to be later re-emphasized by following Summits including the IX Summit of the Americas of Los Angeles in 2022 through the commitment of a Regional Agenda for Digital Transformation.
Besides having the OAS Technical Secretariat available to it, Red GEALC counts on the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) as another promoter both from a technical cooperation point of view (the IDB is part of Red GEALC’s Executive Committee) as well as by means of specific projects under the Regional Public Goods Initiative of IDB. For more information visit the GEALC Website.