DSS Experience in Africa – Cases from Egypt

Decision support systems (DSSs) emerged in the 1970s and have gradually, in different dimensions and through various channels based on emerging information and communication technology (ICT), affected the decision-making process at the individual, organizational, and societal levels. Competition, convergence, globalization, business, and socioeconomic pressures as well as market needs have all contributed to the deployment of cutting-edge mechanisms for rational and effective decision-making processes for government, private, and public-sector organizations alike. This chapter describes the experience of the government of Egypt in spreading the awareness of ICT and its use in managing socioeconomic development since the mid 1980s, through building multiple DSS platforms for governmental decision making with a variety of lessons learnt in the design and delivery of DSS under complex conditions common to developing nations. The experience offers insights into a variety of problems for information system designers, implementers, users, practitioners, and researchers. The chapter focuses on the use of DSSs for development through the experience of a government think tank, the Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC), while demonstrating a number of cases showing the implementation and institutionalization of DSSs for a variety of issues such as debt management, foreign exchange policy, custom tariff policy formulation, and development planning.