# Government and public sector > Sovereign data and AI foundations for identity, revenue, procurement and service delivery, built so agencies share facts without losing control of who sees what. Vertical ontology, workflows and compliance notes for government and public sector in Africa. Canonical URL: https://www.boltcliq.com/industries/government-public-sector Part of: https://www.boltcliq.com/llms.txt Sovereign data and AI foundations for identity, revenue, procurement and service delivery, built so agencies share facts without losing control of who sees what. - Sector pack: Starting ontology for citizens, services, revenue and procurement - Registers + ERP: Typical sources: civil registers, tax systems, financial management and case files - Sovereignty first: In-country hosting and public data rules in scope - Counter to SMS: Channels: service counters, portals, SMS and WhatsApp ### The challenge - Ministries, agencies and local governments each run their own systems. Civil registration, national ID, tax, land, health, education and social protection often use separate databases, sometimes procured years apart from different vendors. Public financial management and procurement run on specialized platforms, with paper approvals around them. Citizens meet the state at counters, where staff re-enter the same details for each service. - Without a shared and permissioned model, agencies cannot confirm basic facts about a person or a business without letters and queues. Duplicate and ghost records waste money in payroll and benefits. Revenue agencies cannot easily match tax, customs and land records. Procurement irregularities are found after the fact. Planners work from stale surveys. Many governments also want AI but must keep data in country, which rules out many foreign hosted tools. Trust is at stake: a data leak or an opaque automated decision can damage confidence in public institutions. ### The ontology **Objects** - 14 core things - The nouns of the sector. Each object has an identity, properties and a history, and maps to records in the source systems. - Person - Business - Household - Service - Application - Case - Tax account - Payment - Tender - Contract - Supplier - Parcel - Facility - Official **Links** - 8 core relationships - How the objects connect. Links turn separate tables into a graph that people and agents can walk. - Person owns or directs Business - Person applies for Service via Application - Application becomes Case handled by Official - Business holds Tax account and makes Payment - Tender leads to Contract with Supplier - Contract is paid through Payment - Parcel is owned by Person or Business - Facility delivers Service in an area **Actions** - 6 governed actions - What people and approved agents may do. Each action has rules, an approver where needed and a log entry. - Verify identity or entitlement - Route and track an application - Flag a duplicate or inconsistent record - Open an audit or compliance case - Approve a payment against a contract - Publish a service performance report ### Use cases - Revenue collection - A revenue authority holds taxpayer, customs, land and business registry records in separate systems. Auditors pick cases from lists that do not reflect the full picture of a taxpayer. - The ontology links businesses, owners, assets and filings across sources. It surfaces mismatches such as declared income against visible assets, with the evidence for each flag. - Tax officers decide whom to audit and what to assess. Taxpayers keep their right to respond, and the model gives no verdict. - Service delivery - A citizen applies for a permit or benefit. The application passes through several offices, and nobody can tell the applicant where it is. Staff ask for the same documents again and again. - Applications become cases with status, owner and deadlines. Verified details are reused across services with consent. Delays beyond targets alert supervisors, and applicants receive status by SMS. - Officials approve or refuse. Supervisors decide how to clear backlogs. - Procurement oversight - A ministry runs hundreds of tenders a year. Oversight teams learn about inflated prices or repeat winners long after contracts are signed. - Tenders, bidders, contracts and payments link up. The system highlights patterns such as split purchases or unusual price differences against comparable awards, with supporting records. - Audit and procurement bodies decide whether to investigate. Flags are leads, not findings. - Social protection - A cash transfer program pays households through mobile money and banks. Lists include duplicates and omit eligible families, and updating them takes months. - Household records are matched across registers to find duplicates and likely gaps. Updates from field visits feed the register. Payment status is tracked per household. - Program staff and community committees confirm eligibility and handle appeals. ### Data you already have - We read from your existing systems first and write back only through approved actions. Every source has a named owner. Where connectivity is weak or records are on paper, we plan for queued sync and OCR with human review. - Civil registration and national identity databases - Tax, customs and revenue administration systems - Integrated financial management and payroll systems - Procurement portals and contract registers - Land and property registries - Sector systems for health, education and social protection - Case files, forms and scanned archives - Mobile money and bank payment files ### Compliance and residency - Nigeria - NDPA 2023 - Public bodies are data controllers and may need documented controls, impact assessments and breach processes. - Kenya - Data Protection Act 2019 - Government processing needs a lawful basis, and data localization expectations exist for some categories. - South Africa - POPIA - Public bodies must secure and limit processing of personal information, with sector rules on records. - Ghana - Data Protection Act 2012 - Controllers register and follow processing principles, including in public service systems. - Egypt - Personal Data Protection Law 2020 - Rules on consent, cross-border transfer and licensing may affect shared platforms. - Public procurement, access to information, records management and cybersecurity laws also apply and vary by country. Treat this list as examples. Confirm requirements with counsel and the relevant authority. Examples only, not legal advice. Confirm with counsel. ### Boltcliq products **Zeus** - Model plane - Builds the shared model of persons, businesses, services and contracts across agencies, and the dashboards for revenue, procurement and delivery. **Odin** - Trust plane - Controls which officials and systems can see which records, with purpose limited access and full audit, which is central for inter-agency sharing. **Monolith** - Control plane - Keeps assistants and case agents within approved guidance and permissions, so they cannot expose personal records or decide outcomes. **Argus** - Runtime plane - Hosts the platform under government control, in country, in a ministry cloud or local data center, with portable architecture. **Cyclopes** - Observation plane - Provides an audit trail for access and automated recommendations, supporting oversight bodies and citizen redress. ### Frequently asked questions - Can the data stay under government control? - That is the aim. Argus is designed to be portable, with options for your own cloud account, a local data center or on premises. Details are agreed per project. - Do agencies have to merge their databases? - No. The ontology links records across systems and applies access rules. Agencies keep ownership of their data. - How do you avoid automated unfair decisions? - Agents propose and explain. Decisions that affect rights stay with officials, with reasons recorded and a path to appeal. - Can you work with national ID systems? - We plan to integrate with national ID and civil registers through standard interfaces. Support depends on each system and law. - How do citizens interact? - Through counters, portals, SMS, USSD and WhatsApp, depending on service and country.