Tanzania’s push toward paperless public services hits heights in six document-heavy functions

DODOMA: TANZANIA’S push towards paperless public services is now visible in some of the government’s most document-heavy functions; procurement, financial management, recruitment, National Assembly operations, business registration and local revenue collection. The next phase is harder.

Putting individual processes online is one task; enabling government systems to exchange verified information without repeatedly asking citizens and officials for the same documents is another.

That second task sits close to the mandate of the e-Government Authority, or e-GA, which coordinates government technology initiatives and sets standards for their implementation. Its Director General, Eng Benedict Benny Ndomba, has increasingly framed Tanzania’s progress in terms of building an integrated digital government rather than accumulating standalone ICT projects.

 Commenting in January on Tanzania’s placement in the World Bank’s highest GovTech maturity category, Ndomba said the result was evidence that the country was “on the right path in building a digital government.”

The distinction matters because public procurement is already showing what happens when a paper-heavy process moves beyond simple digitisation. By August 2026, the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority said the National e-Procurement System of Tanzania, NeST, had facilitated 397,395 procurement proceedings worth 40.4tri/-. The platform covers registration, tendering, evaluation, contract management, catalogues, auctions and payments rather than merely publishing procurement notices online.

Its financial impact is clearer over a longer period. A PPRA assessment covering the 2023/24 and 2024/25 financial years estimated that electronic procurement avoided printing about 288.57 million pages, saving roughly  27.64bn/- in paper and toner in addition to saving the environment. It also estimated that suppliers avoided more than 15.4 million kilometres of travel, around 1.7 million litres of fuel and more than 3.2bn/- in transport costs.

Those gains become more significant when procurement connects to financial systems. According to the Ministry of Finance’s 2026/27 budget documentation, MUSE, the government’s financial-management platform, has been integrated with NeST, allowing procurement payments and related contract processes to feed electronically into financial administration.

By April, GAMIS, the government asset-management system, was being used by 644 public institutions, with 4,159,971 assets valued at 39.2tri/- recorded in the platform.

That movement between systems marks a deeper stage of digital government. A digital form can remove a sheet of paper; an integrated workflow can remove an administrative step altogether.

The same principle is beginning to shape business registration. BRELA reported that by April 2026 it had registered 16,864 companies and 30,631 business names, while its online services allow applicants to conduct registration and post-registration transactions without beginning every process at a physical counter. The larger gain comes when identity verification, payments and supporting information can move securely between systems without requiring applicants to repeatedly submit information another public institution already holds.

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Recruitment illustrates both the convenience and the new operational demands created by this shift. The Public Service Recruitment Secretariat recorded 19,802 Ajira Portal users assisted by telephone and 22,968 by email during 2025/26, while another 2,419 people received assistance at offices in Dodoma, Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar. The portal has also been modified to allocate successful health and education candidates directly to facilities at the allocated work stations.

Those support figures show why putting a service online does not make administration disappear. It changes where the work occurs. A portal can save an applicant a journey while still requiring help desks and assisted access for people facing connectivity, digital-literacy or system-access problems.

The same transition is evident in Parliament. Its POLIS platform was publishing Order Papers through September 4, 2026, while Hansards from the August-September sitting were also available electronically. Records that once depended more heavily on physical circulation and filing can now be retrieved by legislators, researchers, journalists and citizens online.

As these institutional platforms multiply, e-GA’s role becomes less visible but more important. When the Government Service Directory was launched in June, it brought together information on 9,777 services from 554 public institutions. By April, e-GA had also reported 723 institutions and service points using NGAO, its multi-factor authentication infrastructure for government systems.

The harder work lies underneath those public-facing services.

 GovESB, the Government Enterprise Service Bus, provides the infrastructure through which separate government systems can exchange data.

Ndomba has previously described the problem directly: public institutions had developed systems that could not communicate or exchange information with each other, prompting e-GA to develop GovESB as the common exchange layer. He said its purpose was to allow information to move from one institution to another according to agreed service requirements, reducing the burden on citizens.

That argument has become more relevant as Tanzania’s digital estate has grown. In January, Ndomba said the practical test of the country’s GovTech progress would be visible in daily service delivery: whether online services work reliably, feedback arrives quickly and government systems connect smoothly enough to make services simpler for citizens.

Local government is where that test becomes particularly tangible. In Ilemela, which approved a 101.75bn/- budget for 2026/27, officials were being trained in September on digital property-tax and vehicle-parking revenue systems. Their value will depend less on the existence of the software than on whether residents encounter fewer steps, cleaner records and more predictable services.

The measure of a paperless government is therefore becoming clearer.

Does a supplier submit fewer duplicate documents? Does an entrepreneur make fewer trips? Can one institution securely verify information already held by another? Can procurement move into payment without being recreated manually?

Tanzania has moved far enough for the debate to change.

The issue is no longer simply whether government services can be placed online. It is whether the systems behind them can work together securely enough to remove unnecessary administrative steps. That will determine whether the digital government has redesigned the state—or merely moved the filing cabinet onto a screen.