By Bernadette Deka
1. What is Smart Zambia?
Smart Zambia is an initiative established under Government
Gazette No.836 of 2016 as an E-government division in the
office of the President. The initiative is aimed at
transforming the country through information and
communication technologies and deployment of electronic
Government services and processes for effective public
service delivery.
2. What is the Mandate of Smart Zambia?
The Smart Zambia Initiative has a mandate of co-ordinating
and harmonizing the implementation of electronic
Government services and processes in order to improve
service delivery across all Government Ministries and
Spending Agencies.
3. What are the functions of the Smart Zambia?
In order to achieve its mandate Smart Zambia has the
following specific functions:-
• Promotion and management of e-Government policies and
programmes;
• Development of strategies and standards that enhance
usage and application of information and communication
technology innovations in the public sector;
• Promotion of inter-government agency collaboration in
providing e-Government services by integrating related
functions and systems;
• Development of supportive and enabling shared
infrastructure to ensure equitable access to effective and
appropriate information and communication technologies
among others.
4. Implementation of the e-payslips.
In its efforts to actualize electronic governance, Smart
Zambia has introduced electronic payslips for all civil
servants. In the first phase of the e-payslip capturing
exercise 109,000 civil servants were captured on the e-
payslip platform and these are able to receive their payslips
through emails out of 169,000. The 60, 000 remaining are
mostly in rural areas and are scheduled to be captured in
the second phase once the districts are connected to the
system. The implementation of the e-payslip system has a
number of benefits to the Government.
In the first instance, through the e-payslip system,
Government has been able to save K72 million on payslip
printing and K68 million on the cost of paper annualy (Smart
Zambia). Secondly, the e-payslip system has helped
Government curb fraud and to get rid of ghost civil servants.
This has helped the Government to save up money from
salaries from those who were either dead or out of
employment.
And lastly, the e- payslip system is complementing
Government in achieving its green environment initiatives,
this is because the phasing out of paper payslips entails
reduction in cutting down of trees and low energy usage.
Look out for next PMRC edition on Smart Zambia and the e-
Voucher system.
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About the Author:
Bernadette Deka is the Executive Director of Policy Monitoring Research Centre (PMRC).
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