Getting started

The Pamodzi Developer Hub is the place to learn, build on and get access to the Pamodzi e-Services framework: the Government of the Republic of Zambia's platform for delivering public e-services through one national portal and the back offices of the ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) that own them.

This page explains what the hub offers, how to sign in, how to complete your profile and where to start.

What the hub offers

Area	Address	What you find there	Sign-in needed
Guides	`/docs`	How the platform works: architecture, integration, identity, payments, federation, modules, registers, testing and security	No
API reference	/apis	The specifications of the platform's APIs, taken from the platform repositories	No
Service catalogue	/services	Every e-service on the platform, with its owning MDA and the evidence from its end-to-end test: the five checks, the generated service documentation and screenshots	No
Training	/training	Self-paced courses with a final assessment and a certificate	Yes, to record progress and take an assessment
Access requests	/access	Ask for data from a national register, a Partner API client, or to join the federation as an MDA node	Yes

Guides, the API reference and the service catalogue are public. You sign in when you want the hub to remember something about you: your lesson progress, your certificates and your access requests.

The API specifications, the register catalogue and the service status list are copied from the platform repositories by the hub's sync job. They are never edited by hand on the hub, so they say what the software does.

The hub does not keep passwords. You sign in with a national identity provider:

Pamodzi Pass, the national single sign-on that is being built to replace ZamPass. Its protocol core, accounts,
second factor and account pages are written; the bridge from ZamPass and the switch-over of the e-Services platform are still to come.
ZamPass, the existing government OAuth / OpenID Connect server.

The sign-in page shows only the providers that are configured for this hub.

Both are used the same way: OpenID Connect with the authorization code flow, PKCE and a nonce. The sign-in is bound to the browser that started it, so a callback address cannot be replayed from somewhere else. The hub validates the ID token it receives (signature, issuer, audience, expiry and nonce) before it trusts anything in it.

What the hub asks for and keeps:

Item	Kept by the hub
Your name, e-mail address and, from Pamodzi Pass, your phone number	Yes, so it can address you and write to you about requests and certificates
Whether the identity provider said your NRC is verified	Yes, as a yes/no flag only
Your NRC number	Never
Your password, tokens from the identity provider	Never

A hub session lasts at most 8 hours and ends after an hour without activity (the default settings). Signing out ends the session on the hub.

Complete your profile

After your first sign-in the hub asks you to complete a short profile. It is required before you can use training or access requests.

Field	Why it is asked
First and last name	Printed on your certificates
E-mail address	Updates on your access requests and certificates. If you change it, it counts as unverified until your identity provider confirms it
What describes you best	Government (an MDA), developer or integrator, vendor, student or trainer, or other. It decides which courses are suggested
Organisation	The organisation you work for, or "Independent"
MDA code	Government staff only, for example `MOH`. Reviewers of access requests for your MDA use it
Job title, experience, interests	Optional. They help the hub suggest courses
Terms of use	Must be accepted
Contact	Optional consent to be told about new courses and platform changes

Your profile never gives you a hub role. The roles that handle other people's requests (reviewer, data steward, administrator) are granted by a hub administrator, and an administrator cannot change their own roles.

Which course to take first

Every course is self-paced. You open a course's assessment when you have completed all its lessons and hold a valid certificate for each prerequisite course. An attempt draws 10 questions at random from the course's question bank; you pass with 80 %. By default you may start 3 attempts per course per day, and an attempt expires after an hour. Certificates carry a public verification code and an expiry date, and an administrator can revoke one.

You are	Start with	Then
Anyone new to the platform: MDA staff, managers, developers, vendors	Pamodzi e-Services Foundations	The course for your role below
An MDA officer or data custodian who handles personal data or register access	Pamodzi e-Services Foundations	Data protection and registers
An MDA officer who designs services in the back office	Pamodzi e-Services Foundations	Service designer
A developer integrating another system through the APIs	Pamodzi e-Services Foundations	The integration developer course in the training catalogue
A developer building a ministry module	Pamodzi e-Services Foundations	Module developer
A developer or tester who proves services end to end	Pamodzi e-Services Foundations	End-to-end testing and documentation
MDA ICT staff who will run their own back office as a federation node	Pamodzi e-Services Foundations	Federation operator
Anyone who will ask for register data	Pamodzi e-Services Foundations	Data protection and registers, which is required (below)

Some access requests need a certificate first:

Access request	Certificate needed
Data from a national register	Pamodzi Certified Data Steward (course `data-protection-registers`)
Partner API client for the test environment	None
Partner API client for production	The integration developer certificate (course `integration-developer`)
Join the federation as an MDA node	The federation operator certificate (course `federation-operator`)

Ask for access

The hub's access request page is the intake for access, not the place where access is created:

You describe what you need, for which organisation, the purpose, the legal basis, the data items, the volume, how
long you will keep the data and your safeguards.
A reviewer checks the request and either asks you for more information or recommends a decision.
A data steward, who is never the person who recommended it, approves or rejects it. Nobody handles their own
request.
When it is approved, the owning MDA issues the real access on the platform itself: a data-sharing agreement for
register data, or a Partner API client. The steward then records that reference on your request, which becomes "Access issued".

The hub never issues credentials or grants. See Registers and data sharing for how the platform issues them.

Next steps