Digital strategy

GovStack approach in the country's digital strategy and roadmap

Over the past years, digital transformation has become a policy priority along with traditional areas such as health policy, economic policy, labor and social protection policies. National Digital Strategies or National Digital Agendas have become guiding policy documents to establish the priorities and focus areas that respond to the country´s context and needs.

In most countries with a Digital Agenda/Strategy in place, digitalization of government services at scale is a pressing issue. Many leading e-government initiatives prioritize the creation of common reusable software components like identity, payments, digital signature, and forms builders, among others, to deliver various government services digitally.

A "Whole-of-Government" approach frequently entails the development of a central digital platform where government agencies across different sectors can build new e-government services without the need to redesign, test, and operate the underlying systems and infrastructure themselves from scratch.

Activities / Resources

A comprehensive National Digital Agenda/Strategy:

• Define activities/action lines, objectives, and goals (KPIs) according to the country's context and needs in an open and collaborative process with all stakeholders of the digital ecosystem in the Country

• Define the governance mechanism to coordinate implementation and responsible entities for each action line

• Define progress reporting and monitoring of KPIs

• Set a digitisation roadmap with time frames for the execution of each action line

• Align the Strategy to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

• Set a public dashboard to share progress in the implementation of the Agenda and its KPIs

Example of Chile Digital Agenda dashboard showing progress on each action line covered in the agenda. Chile participated in GovStack WSIS Special Prize 2023.

• Launch the digital agenda with the highest political support - Coordinate a presidential event to launch the agenda where all stakeholders that participated in the co-design are recognized and encouraged to follow with its implementation

• Start the implementation mechanism right after the launch to keep the momentum

• Make implementation open and collaborative

• Promote the agenda permanently

Examples of Digital Strategies/Agendas:

• In Australia, the Digital Agenda (Digital Transformation Agency n.d.) sets 2025 as the target to have all government services available digitally.

• In Estonia, the e-Estonia Policy (e-Estonia n.d.) leverages all digital capabilities of the Country to support other countries in their digital transformation journeys.

• In Ireland, the Ireland Digital Framework (Department of the Taoiseach 2022) sets life events as the guiding principle for their service design and delivery.

• In Mexico, the 2013 Constitutional Reform recognized the Internet as a Constitutional Right and made an obligation of the State to have a National Universal Digital Inclusion Policy (Please use Google translate to read in your preferred language).

Responsibilities

Who does what:

• Head of the Digital Authority – Leads the Digital Agenda Co-Design process, coordinates the implementation and reporting mechanisms, and enables delivery of the action lines

• Legal advisors – Prepare a regulatory plan to adapt/update Country legal framework according to the Digital Agenda action lines

• The leadership team (chief data officer, cybersecurity officer, chief architect, lead service designer, etc) – Coordinate stakeholder community to participate in the co-design and implementation of the digital agenda

• Digital teams in each government entity - Implement, monitor, and continuously iterate the digital services under their jurisdiction in the user journeys

• Stakeholder community - Private sector, academia, civil society, and international organizations.

Deliverables

• National Digital Strategy/Agenda

• Digitisation Roadmap

• Public dashboard to share progress in the implementation of the Agenda and its KPIs

• Governance mechanism to report progress made on the implementation of the National Digital Strategy/Agenda (This includes a high level advisory board)