Government of Timor-Leste

On October 13^th, 2026, in Lisbon, the Minister of State Administration, Tomás do Rosário Cabral, met with Manuel Dias, President of the Board of Directors of the Agency for State Technological Reform (ARTE – acronym in Portuguese), to define priorities and next steps for cooperation between Timor-Leste and Portugal on administrative streamlining and modernisation.

The meeting followed up on the cooperation protocol signed in Lisbon on June 29^th, 2026, by the Minister of State Administration and Portugal’s Minister Adjunct and for State Reform, Gonçalo Matias. The agreement covers the modernisation of public services, digital transformation, and improvements to the efficiency and accessibility of services provided to citizens.

During the meeting, both parties reviewed priority activities to be carried out by the Directorate-General for the Simplification and Modernisation of Local Administration of the Ministry of State Administration and by ARTE, together with the corresponding implementation schedule.

Cooperation in this area supports the implementation of One-Stop Service Centres in Timor-Leste. Since May 2024, the Government has established 14 One-Stop Service Centres across the country, which have handled 81,368 service requests up to August 2026. These centres bring together various public services at a single point of service, reducing travel, costs, and the time required to access services.

The next phase of this process provides for the progressive integration of new public services into the One-Stop Service Centres and for the development of the service channels outlined in the model, including digital services, telephone support, and Mobile One-Stop Service Centres.

In this context, the Timorese delegation has scheduled a visit to a Citizen Shop (Loja do Cidadão) in Portugal to learn from Portugal’s experience in consolidating and integrating public services, operating service spaces, and ensuring interoperability across entities and systems. This experience will contribute to developing the One-Stop Service Centre network and to preparing the future Centre for Administrative Modernisation under the Ministry of State Administration.

During the meeting, it was also agreed that a technical team from ARTE would travel to Timor-Leste in the fourth quarter of 2026 to monitor the work carried out by the Ministry of State Administration and to continue preparations for the actions set out in the cooperation protocol.

Representatives of the Embassy of Timor-Leste in Portugal and technical teams from the Ministry of State Administration and ARTE also attended the meeting.

Both institutions will maintain technical coordination to implement the activities set out in the cooperation protocol.