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Because of short time to market for software systems, suboptimal design and implementation choices are sometimes made by software teams. Technical Debt (TD) is the term used to describe software quality flaws that are caused by time-saving shortcuts. Previous research has focused on the identification, causes, and management of TD. However, most of previous studies on TD have been informed by private and open source software projects, lacking insights from the public sector. Researchers have argued that software systems in the public sector are different from software systems in the private sector and open source projects, because organizations in the public sector are subjected to specific restrictions and requirements. Thus, TD causes, challenges, and the strategies to manage TD might differ between the public sector and the private sector and open source projects, which calls for the need to study TD in the public sector. To make a start in filling this gap, we studied 102 software systems and surveyed 73 practitioners from 13 public organizations in Tanzania, to understand the extent and causes of TD in the Tanzanian public sector. A substantial amount of TD was found in the studied systems. Architectural TD was the most accumulated type of TD, followed by Design TD and Code TD. Moreover, modularity violations and project management issues were found to be the leading causes of TD in software systems of the studied public organizations. We, thus, recommend the investigation of TD management strategies that are suitable for software systems in the public sector. From a public sector viewpoint, we contribute empirical …