Project timeline: March – April 2026
Funding: ESTDEV as part of the EU's support for digital transformation in Botswana, with financial assistance from Expertise France.
As part of Botswana's digital transformation strategy, four priority public registries and use cases were singled out for further investigation, including a novel e-Residency concept. Cybernetica was brought in to conduct an independent assessment of the registries and use cases.
The challenge
No government can afford to fund every digital transformation initiative at once, and spreading money thinly across all of them rarely pays off.
In January 2026, SmartBots, the government's digital transformation unit, and EU project stakeholders sat down to solve the same problem: where would the next investment have the greatest impact?
The real question wasn't which ones were important, they all mattered. It was which ones were ready for investment now. Botswana's authorities needed an independent assessment to make that call.
Our approach
Our team spent two weeks on the ground in Botswana, running structured workshops with the people who actually operate these systems: agency leadership, technical teams, and government coordination bodies. We also consulted experts on the country's e-Residency vision.
We scored each registry against a standardised six-point data-management maturity scale, covering governance, processes, data models, security, integrations, and data quality. This meant every registry was measured against the same criteria, allowing for a fair comparison.
The assessment pointed clearly to one standout that would benefit from immediate investment. This was a well-run, modern system already handling a high volume of transactions, even though it operated somewhat outside government's core digital infrastructure.
Our contribution
At their request, SmartBots went from a list of four equally weighted priorities to a ranked, evidence-backed set of choices, with each option assessed on readiness, tangible impact, and feasibility.
Some registries were already partway through a planned system replacement and some were already modern but only lightly used which would limit the return on investment. The clearest opportunity turned out to be the registry that was already working well but would benefit from more integrations. We recommended three specific integrations for it that would have an immediate and tangible impact.
We presented these findings directly to SmartBots and Team Europe, turning in-depth interviews and system reviews into recommendations that SmartBots could review and act on.
The value of this kind of assessment goes beyond the registries and use-case it analysed. Rather than starting each investment decision from scratch, SmartBots now has a maturity framework it can use again as new priorities emerge.
To read more about the project this work was part of, explore ESTDEV's work in Botswana.
If your government is navigating its own digital transformation challenges, get in touch with our team.