Single Window Systems
In the OIC Member States
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slightly more difficult and over-reliance on technical assistance is not recommended for the
following reasons:
 Capturing the regulatory and institutional situation in the country is difficult for an
external consultant when the work is conducted in isolation;
 Knowledge and capacity for Business Process Analysis (BPA) and Business Process
Management (BPM) needs to be built in-house in order to use BPM throughout the life
cycle of the Single Window;
 Funding of BPA from development partners tend to be not adapted to the complexity of
a SW project. A BPA should be conducted by a team of three people with dedicated
knowledge and experience for a) user requirements analysis based on the regulatory
and operational practices, b) business process analysis and simplification, c) business
process re-engineering and reverse engineering. The results of the BPA, including
simplification and re-engineering need to be shared and discussed with the parties that
will be integrated into the SW. Technical assistance commonly tends to bring all three
functional aspects of BPA together in one role and assigns them to one person, who
rarely has knowledge of all three aspects.
The Cameroon solution cited above, whereby technical assistance is used to build in-house BPA
capacity and coach the project team throughout the analysis seems to be a very good example
of technical assistance that builds capacity, delivers an output that reflects the reality of the
situation, and achieves adherence of all stakeholders.
Review and Gap Identification
External technical expertise can also make an important contribution in situations where rapid
change or transition is required, e.g. when Single Windows need to address bottlenecks or
strategic issues.
An outsiders view can assist identifying needs and gaps, and formulate proposals on how to
solve the problems. Some development partners for example fund experts to review the
performance of existing systems and recommend changes.
Capacity Building
Technical assistance can contribute to capacity building of the Single staff and agencies, when a
Single Training Plan is in place. Technical assistance can then fund or deliver targeted training
and awareness raising activities. In practice it is more frequent to have ad hoc training requests
that are not embedded into an overall framework and objective to build a structured training
plan and intervention and to identify relevant technical experts to deliver the training.
The type of skills and knowledge that could best respond to the technical assistance needs often
reside in the public sector or consultancy firms that specialize in IT projects and modernization
of the public sector. Often, staff from other countries’ SW projects would be the ideal resources
and expertise to use. It is not easy to access this expertise through traditional technical
assistance projects. In many countries, the law applying to civil servants or public employees