Local leadership for digitalising public administration: lessons from property tax reform in Freetown, Sierra Leone

This article was first published by ODI Global.

Editor’s note: This is a chapter in the second edition of ‘Public Finance in the Digital Era: Emerging Themes’ (aka the Emerging Themes Report, ETR). All of the chapters in this year’s ETR can be found here. The first edition of the report, published in April 2025, is here.

Introduction

Amidst rapid urbanisation and growing service delivery pressure, there is increasing interest in, and urgency around, the digitalisation of subnational public administration. The digital reform of tax administration has frequently been at the forefront of these discussions. This reflects the fiscal pressures facing subnational governments, but also the increasingly well-documented potential of digitalisation to improve the effectiveness, transparency and equity of revenue mobilisation (Lee, 2025; Okunogbe and Santoro, 2023; Nose and Mengistu, 2023).

Whereas digitalisation of national government functions has been widely studied and has advanced rapidly in many areas, subnational digitalisation has not. (Mello and Ter-Minassian, 2020; Knebelmann, 2022). The slower progress reflects relatively limited capacity and resources, as well as institutional complexity. Successful digitalisation at the subnational level often requires close cooperation between multiple levels of government – but such collaboration has been contentious, in part because central governments often have fewer incentives, or even disincentives, to actively support subnationally-led digitalisation. It also raises questions of power and control, with debate over which levels of government should lead digitalisation efforts, who should control digital systems and who should have access to the resulting data (Löffler, 2025).

From the perspective of subnational governments and their partners, this is often reflected in a debate over centralised versus decentralised approaches: should digitalisation be driven by the national government and focused on extending national systems across subnational governments, or should subnational governments lead? On the one hand, more centralised approaches can offer benefits in capacity, economies of scale, data integration and central supervision. On the other, centralised approaches may lack priority and urgency, fail to reflect local needs or undermine local autonomy. This trade-off may increasingly be a false dichotomy, however, in an era when open-source tools, modularity, interoperability, flexibility and digital public infrastructure offer governments a wider range of options in designing their digitalisation strategies (Long et al., 2023).

This chapter reflects on these dynamics of subnational digitalisation through a focus on the digitalisation of property tax systems. We first review the common trade-offs between more centralised and decentralised approaches and highlight the generally weak performance to date of efforts to digitise property tax administration. We then consider the experience of Freetown, Sierra Leone, where digitalisation was launched at the subnational level and progressively expanded nationally. The Sierra Leonean case suggests a viable model in which subnational governments, with the right technical design choices and effective political management, can pioneer digital reform that is subsequently adopted, upgraded and scaled nationally.

Central vs. subnational leadership for digital reforms in property taxation: trade-offs and experience

There are a variety of potential advantages to building national digital systems, supported by national agencies, which can then be deployed across a wide range of local governments. Three stand out:

• Capacity: Central government agencies generally have significantly greater technical capacity and financial resources to drive digitalisation. That capacity may allow central governments to more effectively translate local needs into appropriate digital solutions, define the technical specifications and coordinate procurement, systems development and deployment. Some degree of central government involvement may often be necessary to overcome capacity and resource limitations at the subnational level.
• Economies of scale: Centrally developed tools deployed across a range of subnational governments avoid the need for multiple planning and procurement processes and allow the costs of maintenance and upgrading to be shared. They also enable significant learning across localities as systems move into deployment, achieving additional improvements in efficiency and effectiveness.
• Integration and data sharing: Centrally led development of digital tools can strengthen integration with other central government systems by ensuring shared data standards and appropriate technical design – improving prospects for data sharing as well as integration, for instance between property tax systems and central systems such as land administration, public financial management or national tax collection.

To those three advantages some proponents add a fourth: supervision. Within broader debates about decentralisation there has long been a question around how much central oversight is needed to limit local-level political capture and corruption. In relation to local tax systems, centrally led digitalisation offers much more direct oversight, along with the potential to better address system weaknesses and counteract potential mismanagement.

In the context of efforts to digitalise subnational own-source revenue mobilisation, nationally led digitalisation also entails significant trade-offs, risks and challenges for both national and subnational authorities.

• Prioritisation: The most significant risk frequently surrounds prioritisation. Will central governments effectively drive subnational digitalisation, or will reliance on central leadership lead to delays and inaction? Research has demonstrated that central governments often do not view strengthening subnational revenue mobilisation as a priority, primarily because those funds do not flow to the central government budget (Fjeldstad and Heggstad, 2012; Goodfellow, 2015; Goodfellow, 2017; Franzsen and McCluskey, 2017; Moore and Prichard, 2017; Fjeldstad, Ali and Katera, 2019; Ohemeng and Mohiuddin, 2022). A lack of central government enthusiasm for driving subnational digitalisation may also reflect competition: a reluctance to support expanded fiscal autonomy for subnational rivals, or fear of revenue competition reducing compliance with national taxes (Bahl and Bird, 2008; Jibao and Prichard, 2015).
• Control and local autonomy: Where central governments do support the digitalisation of subnational own-source revenue mobilisation, it may be precisely because of a desire to strengthen oversight and control through the deployment of centrally developed systems. Subnational governments – and supporters of decentralisation – may view that same characteristic as a disadvantage or threat. While greater control can offer improved technical support and stronger constructive oversight, it can also reduce local autonomy, constrain local flexibility in controlling costs and shaping administrative practices and increase vulnerability if central governments fail to deliver effective systems. At worst, centrally directed digital systems may be a precursor to the further centralisation of property tax administration.
• Local appropriateness: By virtue of their relative distance from subnational administrations and contexts, centrally developed solutions risk offering a poor fit with local needs. Central governments may prioritise complex, costly systems suited to their own capacities and resources, rather than the more tailored, flexible and user-friendly solutions suitable for capacity and resource-constrained subnational governments.
• Politicisation and corruption: While centrally led digitalisation may help to mitigate the risk of local political capture or corruption, it can increase other political and corruption risks. Central government leadership of new digital development tends to mean larger and more financially valuable projects led by administrators with less direct stake in project success. That may increase the risk of project planning being captured by corruption or inter-institutional conflicts (for example, disputes over which political figure should be credited for success, or which agency should lead the process), undermining project quality or leading to delays. Whether such risks are larger at the subnational or central government level varies across different cases and contexts.

There is no single right answer to whether digitalisation should be led at the central or subnational level: the appropriate approach will reflect the balance between different risks and benefits within the specific institutional and political context.

Experiences with the digitalisation of subnational PFM systems offer a well-studied point of reference, as the PFM sector has seen significant deployment of centralised Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) solutions. These systems have been designed to give central governments greater direct oversight of subnational financial management, and to leverage greater technical capacity at the central government level. However, the largest independent evaluation of these efforts concluded that projects have often fallen significantly short of their objectives, owing in part to incomplete implementation and adoption at the subnational level (Hashim and Piatti-Fünfkirchen, 2018; World Bank IEG, 2021).

The digitalisation of property tax systems has been much less researched, but available evidence suggests that centrally led digitalisation efforts have been substantially more limited. Instead, ad hoc and locally led digital solutions appear to have been more common, leading to slower adoption of broad, systemic digitalisation of local revenue practices. The most likely explanation for this is a lack of central government political interest in, and support for, strengthening subnational revenue mobilisation.

Centrally led digitalisation initiatives have been most common, and ambitious, where the central government either exercises direct control over property tax administration on behalf of local governments, or has wished to take over administration entirely. Rwanda, for example, centralised property tax administration under the Rwanda Revenue Authority in 2014, building on a comprehensive national digital land registry (Goodfellow, 2015; Goodfellow 2017; Kopanyi and Murray, 2016). In Ghana, the central government launched a (since abandoned) property tax platform in 2023, alongside a decision to centralise significant administrative control under the central revenue authority (GRA, 2023). There are also examples, primarily in Francophone African countries, of centralised systems of property tax administration (Knebelmann, 2022).

In other contexts, the lack of central government initiative has led to greater reliance on subnationally led digitalisation efforts. However, evidence suggests that those efforts have struggled to generate significant impact given challenges with system quality, implementation, financing and operationalisation (Knebelmann, 2022). In turn, we are not aware of any successful examples – beyond the case described below – of subnational success then being scaled up nationally.

An instructive example has been the deployment dLRev, a subnationally-led (district-level) local revenue software system in Ghana that began adoption in 2014, with support from GIZ. An evaluation found average revenue growth of 54% in the year after implementation in a sample of nine participating assemblies (Copenhagen Consensus Center, 2020). Those results speak to significant potential where the system was implemented, but revenue gains were still modest compared to the scale of underperformance, and success was tempered by limited and uneven uptake. Deployment was interrupted in 2023 by the centralisation push noted above, highlighting the broader challenges of scaling subnational success nationally.

Successful scaling from subnational to nationwide digitalisation in Sierra Leone

In many respects, the preceding review paints a discouraging picture. Central governments have shown limited interest in supporting effective digitalisation of subnational property tax systems. Confronted with this lack of interest, subnational governments have pursued digitalisation but struggled to sustain success, and there is little evidence of successful subnational digitalisation of property tax systems then driving broader national progress.

Recent years have, however, seen the emergence of a success story in Sierra Leone. In the capital city, Freetown, a subnationally-led digitalisation effort has generated large performance improvements, and was subsequently adopted in additional cities before being taken up, and upgraded, by the national government (Jibao and Prichard, 2015; Prichard et al, 2025).

Earlier reform efforts in Freetown, initiated in 2007, had produced only limited and uneven results, hindered by inconsistent political leadership and a reliance on manual systems that were outdated and prone to irregularities (Jibao and Prichard, 2015). By 2018, Freetown’s property tax base had not been formally revalued in over two decades, and revenue remained well below its potential (Jibao, 2017).

The current reforms took root with the election of a new Mayor of Freetown in 2018, whose campaign had promised to strengthen local tax collection to finance improvements to local service delivery. The new mayor had been elected as the representative of the main opposition political party, and had a strained relationship with the central government’s ruling party. Anticipating reduced or unreliable central government fiscal transfers and doubting that she could rely on support for subnational property tax reform from the central government, the mayor pursued a comprehensive property tax reform relatively independently.

Reflecting limited local capacity and financial resources, the new mayor secured support from international technical partners – the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD), the Local Government Revenue Initiative (LoGRI) and the International Growth Centre (IGC) – and from external donors (the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO)). Working with these partners, Freetown City Council (FCC) planned a comprehensive overhaul of the city’s property tax system, including (a) comprehensive digital, geospatial property mapping; (b) a simplified form of computer-assisted mass appraisal (CAMA) for valuation; (c) digitally supported billing; (d) a new payment platform via banks; and (e) the broader digitalisation of the entire administrative process.

The reform has been widely cited as a leading example of successful reform in lower-income countries. Within a year registered properties had doubled, revenue potential had quintupled and actual collection had tripled. Most revenue gains were achieved through improved valuation and taxation of high-value properties, strengthening the progressivity of the tax: the least valuable 60% of properties saw their average tax liability remain stable or decline, whereas the most valuable 20% saw their average increase by 242% (Prichard et al., 2020). It also introduced much more transparent and rules-based administration, with a follow-up survey finding that roughly 70% of property owners supported the reform, despite the increase in tax bills.

The reform was underpinned by a new digital platform for property tax administration, Moptax, developed collaboratively between Baloosoft – a private firm with experience in the country and region – the FCC and the technical partners (ICTD, LoGRI and IGC). Following initial system development, and significant learning undertaken during the first year of deployment, LoGRI partnered with Baloosoft to support the development of an upgraded version, Moptax 2.0.

Critically, Baloosoft and LoGRI shared an early and continuing commitment to building the system using technical tools and architecture that would enable future scaling up and deployment to new locations, rather than focusing exclusively on a single city deployment. The system was a commercial product, owned by Baloosoft, built for long-term usability, affordability and sustainability in lower-income country contexts. That included using an open platform architecture, and an emphasis on simplicity, modularity, interoperability, scalability, configurability, flexible hosting, data security and local ownership. This design ensured the system could be adapted to different local contexts, integrated with other government platforms and maintained at a cost that did not require ongoing international donor support.

That early investment in designing for scalability began to pay off in 2023–2024, when the reform model and digital system were adopted by a second Sierra Leonean city, Kenema, and by the city of Kananga in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A more decisive shift came in 2024–2025, when the national government of Sierra Leone, with support from the World Bank, launched an initiative to develop a national property tax administration system, deployed at the local level but managed and supported centrally.

Following an open procurement process, the government adopted Moptax 2.0 as the foundation for the new national Municipal Property Tax System, which is slated to be deployed across all Sierra Leonean cities. That process began with upgrading the system in Kenema and Freetown and deploying it in a third city, Makeni, with plans advancing for further rollout.

Lessons for subnationally-led digitalisation

The digitalisation journey followed in Sierra Leone offers an intriguing model for other subnational governments seeking to raise revenue more effectively, equitably and sustainably through the digitalisation of local property tax and revenue-raising systems. For those supporting digitalisation efforts, it also holds a critical lesson about the value of pursuing subnational digitalisation using tools and approaches that can allow future scaling up.

On one hand, the experience reflects the benefits of subnationally led reform: strong political motivation through urgency, a corresponding ability to move quickly and a clear focus on developing a low-cost, locally appropriate solution that could be improved incrementally. Local leadership allowed urgently needed digitalisation to move ahead rapidly despite limited prioritisation (at the time) by central government.

Many of the challenges associated with subnationally led digitalisation were equally clear. The city faced substantial technical and financial constraints, which it could only overcome with significant external support. Even with a digital system focused on low costs, simple administration and sustainable support, limited local capacity and resources meant that the city administration faced significant challenges sustaining the system over time. Meanwhile, although the system was designed to allow for data sharing and interoperability with other government systems, achieving that integration proved difficult in the face of institutional fragmentation and political tensions across levels of government.

Reflecting these challenges, the expanded role of the central government in upgrading, supporting, managing and scaling up the new digital system offers important potential benefits. The relevant central government agency – the Ministry of Finance’s Fiscal Decentralization Division (FDD) – provided additional resources to support upgrading and maintenance of the system and has greater technical capacity to support sustainability over time as international donor support winds down. (Other central government entities that were involved include the Ministry of Finance’s Directorate of Financial Management Systems and Technologies and the Ministry of Local Government and Community Affairs.)

Through its involvement, the FDD is now better able to engage with cities to address areas of administrative difficulty or underperformance. The involvement of the FDD has also enabled, and accelerated, the exploration of opportunities to draw on property tax data – particularly GIS property mapping – to strengthen parallel government functions, including urban planning, national land administration, national disaster risk management and national tax collection.

That said, while recent centralisation carries significant potential benefits, it also entails potential risks and areas of conflict that are still being negotiated. From the perspective of cities, particularly larger ones, greater central control over digital systems poses a potential threat to local autonomy. Local governments lose some control over system functions and become dependent on central government for maintenance. The central government gains greater access to local government data and detailed information about local government revenue performance. Long-term success in Sierra Leone – and elsewhere – is likely to require building effective trust and cooperation that respect local autonomy, while drawing on the benefits of central capacity, resources and oversight.

Key lessons for designing and implementing successful reform include:

• Planning for scalability and interoperability: The eventual national adoption of the Freetown digital system depended on having built the initial system using a flexible, modular, interoperable and scalable architecture. This required a long-term view from the Freetown leadership and international partners during the earliest phases and additional resources to build a more robust system.
• Navigating political conflicts: The initial reform was threatened at various stages by resistance from some parts of the central government, who were wary of the pace and independence of subnational reform leadership. In turn, the progressive expansion of the central government’s role required reciprocal cooperation from the subnational leadership in Freetown. Relatively conflictual partisan dynamics made this more challenging during the course of reform, but managing these political relationships was a necessity for enabling success (van den Boogaard, 2025).
• Overcoming inter-institutional competition: Securing cooperation also required navigating potential competition between subnational governments, the FDD and the national agencies responsible for the digitalisation of PFM in Sierra Leone. Agencies that typically lead digitalisation initiatives may resist systems led by other agencies or other tiers of government – sometimes for principled reasons, sometimes reflecting narrower concerns about influence, control or corruption. Navigating those concerns and building cross-agency cooperation is critical to this model of digitalisation.
• Negotiating resource needs: Questions of resources – and credit claiming – also loomed large. From the perspective of the FCC, one of the key benefits of cooperation with central government was potential access to technical support and financial resources to sustain the system. One of their key concerns was that they had led the initial development of the system and wanted that origin story to remain visible. A pragmatic lesson is that local leaders may need to be willing to share credit for the reform – accepting that the central government may claim part of the story – in exchange for the support that makes implementation and scaling possible. Success required some measure of FDD resourcing support to Freetown and mutual accommodation in sharing credit.
• Sustaining adequate local autonomy: Finally, success has meant navigating the potential tension between central support, and the desire to maintain an appropriate level of local autonomy, particularly in Freetown. Finding the right balance is likely to be essential to long-term sustainability and effectiveness, and these discussions remain ongoing.

The details of similar reform programmes will inevitably look different in distinct institutional and political environments. Sierra Leone nevertheless offers an encouraging illustration of how successful digitalisation may be built from the subnational level upward and outward. It also illustrates how the dichotomy between centralised and decentralised approaches to digitalisation can be a false one, as the initial subnationally-led reform eventually enabled a national system that combined central capacity with local priorities.