Online data-sharing system has benefits beyond business registration

Online data-sharing system has benefits beyond business registration

Before June this year registering a business in Cambodia was a lengthy and expensive process. Applicants had to visit the Commerce Ministry, General Department of Taxation (GDT) and Labour Ministry, carrying different documents, dealing with different procedures and waiting months to get an answer.

It wasn’t just a headache for business owners, according to Marina Phal, Innovation Program Manager at the Techo Startup Center, which operates under the Ministry of Economy and Finance. It was a missed opportunity for the government to get a unified picture of busines trends that it could make available to all its departments.

“In order to have effective and efficient policymaking, policymakers are required to have data that reflects the policy of a country,” Phal said. “So it is very important for governments and institutions to have the same data, to have consistent data. Secondly, the IT systems of different ministries, or even within the same ministries, are fragmented. They are not able to talk to one another or they are not going to exchange data with each other easily. Last but not least, there is no real-time monitoring. Especially in the case that the process is offline. If a ministry requires to have offline applications, then there’s no system to monitor the number of applications and monitor different trends in the applications,” she said.

Phal and her team borrowed an idea from Estonia, which pioneered the X-Road system. Now, with a single online application on the Cambodia Data Exchange (CamDX) platform businesses can communicate with multiple ministries in a quick, safe and cost-efficient way. It costs 40 percent less than the old system and takes just eight working days.

CamDX is a secure, real-time exchange backed by the government under the CamDX sub decree of August 24, with a greater legal framework on the way in the near future.

“Now if I want to register my business, I don’t have to go to multiple ministries anymore. I only need to go to the single portal online, log in and then file just one online application. I click submit and then my information, or data that I entered in the application, will be transferred to different ministries for review. I only filed one application and I registered with three ministries at the same time, the Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Labour and the tax department,” Phal said. “When the Ministry of Commerce approves my application, it will send a signal to the tax department that the MoC already approved the application. Then the tax department knows it’s time for me to review and respond to the application. Once approved it will send the information to the Ministry of Labour.”

CamDX connects systems into one ecosystem. It identifies legal entities based on a single ID rather than one from three departments. It also allows the secure exchange of time-stamped data which is not stored and which no third party can access.

The platform has proved popular and gone a long way to persuading small businesses who have been flying under the government radar to go legit and register their companies, Phal said. From June 15 to November 3 there have been 9,156 applications to register a business with 13,332 daily transactions. By registering their businesses, companies also benefit from having the paperwork needed to apply for business loans.

The private sector will see other benefits, Phal said. CamDX may encourage them to come up with their own technological innovation.

Phal and her team may borrow some more ideas from X-Road that should make life easier for Cambodians and the government.

The Estonian system has been expanded to cover healthcare, education and transportation.

Patients have access to e-records that can be shared between multiple hospitals and the data is used by the health ministry to track epidemics. E-schooling provides an online learning system open to pupils, teachers and schools. M-parking lets drivers pay for a space on their mobile phones.

Cambodia has also found one use for its platform that Estonia hasn’t adopted. CamDX provides online information on how to apply for a visa and what other steps are needed in order to visit the Kingdom during Covid. Khmer Times