Online but not in service

Somalia ranked 191st of 193 countries in the UN's 2024 E-Government Development Index, yet most of its public institutions now run websites. This study asks what those websites actually do for citizens.

Twenty-one federal, regional and state institutions were sampled in October 2026, and 16 sites could be assessed. Each was coded on 25 yes-or-no indicators grouped under the five dimensions of the UN Online Service Index: institutional framework, content, online services, e-participation and technology.

The result is a web presence that is information-rich and transaction-poor. Sites are technically sound and publish news, but they work as press offices rather than service counters. The gap is not mainly about infrastructure: Somalia already has a national ID system and some of the world's highest mobile-money use. It is about how the sites are designed and who owns them.

Eleven of the 16 sites scored zero on online services. Only four offered any online application or lookup: the Immigration and Citizenship Agency (e-visa and passport applications), the Ministry of Education (certificate verification, exam results and appointments), the Central Bank (registers of licensed institutions) and the Puntland Ministry of Finance (a customs tax calculator).

Information is common by comparison. Thirteen sites describe their mandate, 12 name their leadership, 13 link to social media and 10 had posted news within the last 90 days.

Found on no site at all

The lowest scores fall on the institutions citizens and businesses deal with most: the capital's administration and the ministry responsible for business registration both served only placeholder pages, earning credit for nothing beyond a secure connection and a mobile layout. The Ministry of Interior appears to have gone backwards, showing dated news in 2025 and an "under construction" page in October 2026.

Federal sites averaged 0.43, the two state sites 0.48 and the one regional site 0.08. These groups are too small to generalise from.

Twenty-one institutions were chosen to cover the presidency, the prime minister's office, the main service ministries, the Immigration and Citizenship Agency, the Central Bank, the courts, the Banadir Regional Administration and the federal member states. Five could not be assessed: two sites show nothing until JavaScript runs, and three refused automated access or could not be found. That left 16 sites: 13 federal, 1 regional and 2 state.

The instrument adapts the five subindices of the UN Online Service Index to individual institutions. Each dimension has five indicators, scored 1 when the feature was present and working. A site's score is the share of the 25 indicators it met. All indicators carry equal weight, which keeps scoring transparent but means results can't be compared directly with official UN values.

Homepages and first-level pages were retrieved on 13 and 14 October 2026 with an automated tool and coded by a single coder.

Limits: a small sample, with three member states missing; features behind logins, JavaScript or deeper links may have been missed, so scores are a lower bound; one coder, so inter-rater reliability wasn't tested; indicators record whether a feature exists, not how well it works; and the results describe October 2026 only.

The government's National Transformation Plan targets 80% of services online by 2029, up from 23% today. The foundations already exist: the national ID authority has registered more than a million citizens, and over 70% of adults use mobile money. No site in the study used either.