Digital strategy
Last updated
Last updated
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.
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
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).
