South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir Mayardit on Monday ordered the formation of a high-level technical committee to operationalize the South Sudan Official Gazette and enhance the official website of the Office of the President.
According to an order announced on the state-owned South Sudan Broadcasting Cooperation (SSBC), the move aims to establish a secure, transparent and sustainable national system for publishing official state documents through the operationalization of the gazette and the upgrade of the presidential website.
Under the presidential directive, the committee will be chaired by the secretary-general of the government of the Republic of South Sudan, with the undersecretary of the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs serving as deputy chairperson.
Other members include senior officials from the Ministry of Information, Communication Technology and Postal Services, the National Communication Authority, and the Office of the President.
The committee’s core mandate is to operationalize both the physical and electronic versions of the Official Gazette, including establishing a secure end-to-end workflow that integrates encrypted digital verification to prevent manipulation or forgery of government documents.
The system will be used to publish the Constitution and its amendments, Acts of Parliament, presidential decrees, provisional orders, ministerial regulations, government notices and other legal instruments.
As part of the initiative, the committee will redesign and enhance the official presidential website to serve as the primary host of the e-gazette, providing the public with secure, read-only access to official state documents.
The directive also instructs the committee to address a long-standing publication backlog by identifying, categorizing and preparing for gazetting all critical laws, republican decrees and resolutions enacted since 2011 that require immediate publication to ensure legal certainty.
The committee has been granted authority to co-opt technical experts, legal draftspersons and security consultants as necessary. All government institutions have been directed to fully cooperate and provide original documents upon request.
President Kiir has given the committee 14 days to complete its technical assessment, workflow design and resource allocation plan. Upon completion, the committee is required to submit a final operational report along with the maiden edition, Volume One, of the South Sudan Official Gazette.
Following the submission, the president will formally launch the physical gazette, the e-gazette portal and the enhanced presidential website, marking the commencement of South Sudan’s new official national notification protocol.
The move follows a protocol introduced last week by the Office of the President limiting on-air announcements on government broadcaster SSBC to the appointments or removals of governors, national ministers, deputy ministers and vice presidents.
Under the new directives, all documents bearing the president’s signature are classified as “privileged executive communication” and cannot be photographed, scanned or shared online. Presidential decrees effecting changes must now be delivered confidentially to the relevant authority—such as a parliament speaker, minister or governor—for internal execution, with the Office of the President barred from serving documents directly to appointees.