Day 0 Event #184 From Compliance to Excellence in Digital Governments

Summary

This discussion focused on digital government excellence and the key factors for improving digital services in the public sector. Dr. Axel Domeyer, a partner at McKinsey, presented a framework for assessing digital government maturity that goes beyond basic compliance to include excellence and impact. He emphasized the importance of having a central digital government agency to drive improvements across the ecosystem of government entities. The discussion highlighted three key elements: compliance with basic standards, excellence in implementing best practices, and measuring impact through key performance indicators (KPIs).

Domeyer presented case studies from the UK, Singapore, and Saudi Arabia to illustrate different approaches to digital government excellence. The UK was noted for its comprehensive functional standard for digital and data, while Singapore was praised for its systematic approach to setting and achieving KPIs. Saudi Arabia was highlighted for its rapid improvement in digital services rankings.

The importance of user satisfaction as a key metric was stressed, along with the need to publish outcomes of digital investments. Challenges in implementing digital excellence were discussed, including the complexity of government ecosystems and the balance between in-house capabilities and external vendors. The discussion touched on the future of KPIs in digital government, emphasizing the need to focus on outcomes rather than specific technologies.

Participants raised questions about the differences between public and private sector digital services, the role of business process management, and the balance between government involvement and private sector innovation in digital development. The discussion concluded with insights on the optimal balance of in-house and outsourced IT capabilities in government entities.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– Moving beyond basic compliance to digital excellence and impact in government

– Components of digital government excellence: strategy, processes/operations, technology, organizational resources

– Importance of measuring and publishing KPIs for digital government impact

– Case studies of digital government initiatives in the UK, Singapore, and Saudi Arabia

– Balancing in-house capabilities vs. external vendors for government IT/digital functions

Overall purpose:

The discussion aimed to explore how governments can go beyond basic compliance with digital standards to achieve excellence and measurable impact in their digital transformation efforts. The speaker presented frameworks and case studies to illustrate best practices in this area.

Tone:

The overall tone was informative and professional, with the speaker presenting concepts and examples in an authoritative manner. During the Q&A portion, the tone became more conversational and collaborative as the speaker engaged with audience questions and provided more off-the-cuff insights based on his experience. Throughout, there was an underlying tone of optimism about the potential for governments to improve their digital capabilities and services.

Speakers

– Noura Alsanie: Director of Digital Excellence and Sustainability at DGA (Digital Government Agency)

– Axel Domeyer: Partner at McKinsey and Company, specializes in helping clients with complex technology transformations across government entities

– Audience: Various audience members asking questions (roles/expertise not specified)

Additional speakers:

– Zoran Jordanoski: From UNU-EGOV (role/expertise not specified)

Digital Government Excellence: Moving Beyond Compliance

This comprehensive discussion, featuring Dr. Axel Domeyer, an expert in complex technology transformations across government entities, explored the key factors for improving digital services in the public sector. The dialogue centered on how governments can progress beyond basic compliance with digital standards to achieve excellence and measurable impact in their digital transformation efforts.

Framework for Digital Government Excellence

Domeyer presented a framework for assessing digital government maturity that encompasses three key elements:

1. Compliance with basic standards

2. Excellence in implementing best practices

3. Measuring impact through key performance indicators (KPIs)

This framework aims to provide a more holistic approach to digital governance, moving beyond mere adherence to standards. Domeyer emphasized that digital government excellence comprises four main components: strategy, processes/operations, technology, and organizational resources.

The Role of Central Digital Government Agencies

A significant point of discussion was the importance of having a central digital government agency to drive improvements across the ecosystem of government entities. Domeyer noted that while these agencies can design, build, and operate common digital solutions, their primary function is to influence the broader ecosystem. This perspective challenges the common perception of central agencies as direct implementers, reframing their role as ecosystem influencers.

Case Studies in Digital Government Excellence

To illustrate different approaches to digital government excellence, Domeyer presented case studies from the UK, Singapore, and Saudi Arabia:

1. The UK was noted for its comprehensive Digital and Data Functional Standard, which covers eight key areas including user needs, data, technology, and security. This standard serves as a best practice example for other nations.

2. Singapore was praised for its systematic approach to setting and achieving KPIs, with 15 specific metrics guiding their digital governance efforts. Singapore’s GovTech, a statutory board that can operate like a private company, was highlighted as a model for in-house capability building.

3. Saudi Arabia was highlighted for its rapid improvement in digital services rankings, now placed fourth in the digital services index. This progress was attributed to a performance improvement mindset and overachieving their Vision 2030 digital government goals.

These case studies demonstrated varying strategies for achieving digital excellence in government services.

Challenges and KPIs in Implementing Digital Excellence

The discussion addressed several challenges in implementing digital excellence and the importance of well-defined KPIs:

1. Public sector services generally lag behind private sector offerings in quality across most countries.

2. Some nations, like Germany, lack centralized technology platforms, which can hinder coordinated digital transformation efforts.

3. Measuring user satisfaction accurately presents difficulties, despite its importance as a key metric.

4. Balancing in-house capabilities with external vendor expertise remains a complex issue for many government entities.

Key points on KPIs included:

1. User satisfaction and cost-effectiveness were identified as crucial metrics.

2. The need for proactive service delivery metrics was emphasized.

3. Challenges in standardizing KPIs across agencies were acknowledged.

4. A focus on outcome-based KPIs rather than technology adoption metrics was recommended.

Domeyer suggested that fundamental KPIs like user satisfaction and cost-effectiveness are likely to remain important over time, rather than metrics tied to specific technologies.

Building Digital Capabilities in Government

The discussion touched on strategies for building digital capabilities within government:

1. Basic digital literacy for all government employees was deemed essential for digital excellence.

2. A balance between internal expertise and external support was discussed, with industry averages showing a 50-50 split between in-house capabilities and outsourced IT services.

3. The importance of business process management in achieving digital excellence was highlighted by an audience member, introducing a more technology-focused perspective.

4. Domeyer emphasized the need for a product management mindset in government service delivery.

Audience Questions and Future Considerations

The discussion concluded with audience questions, raising several points for future consideration:

1. How to effectively measure and standardize user satisfaction metrics across different government agencies.

2. The optimal balance between government involvement and private sector participation in digital governance.

3. Strategies to address the quality gap between public and private sector digital services.

4. Identifying specific technical capabilities that should be prioritized for in-house development in government agencies.

5. The potential impact of emerging technologies like AI on future KPIs for digital government.

In response, Domeyer stressed the importance of having a strong central digital government governance mechanism and the need for a balanced approach in public-private partnerships for digital services.

Conclusion

The discussion provided a comprehensive exploration of digital government excellence, highlighting the need for a balanced approach that considers compliance, excellence, and impact. Key takeaways include the importance of central digital agencies as ecosystem influencers, the value of well-defined KPIs, and the need for a product management mindset in government service delivery. While challenges remain, the dialogue offered valuable insights into strategies for improving public sector digital services and measuring their effectiveness.

Nora Saneh: Are you trying to test it? Okay, it’s good, right? Yeah. I think there’s different channels. Yeah, test, test. Can you hear me? No? Yeah. Test, test. No, no. Maybe they switched it off. Okay. What? Can you hear me, guys? Can you hear me? Testing. No? It’s working? Okay. Where did it go? Okay, thank you. Perfect. Okay, thank you. I think so. Right. I think we may be at. Yep. Yep. Salaam alaikum. Can you hear me, everyone? Salaam alaikum. Can you hear me, everyone? Salaam alaikum. Good evening and welcome everyone to this workshop and welcome to Riyadh. I’m honored to have you here or welcome you here at the 2024 IELTS forum. and for those who are attending online, we’re glad to have you attending as well. My name is Nora Saneh, I’m the Director of Digital Excellence and Sustainability at DGA. Today, I’m honored to welcome Dr. Axel Doniel, he’s a partner at McKinsey and Company, and to introduce Dr. Axel, he’s specialized in helping clients ensure the value of complex and long-term technology transformation across multiple government entities. This includes the implementation of best practices in different dimensions or different domains, for example, architectural design, software development, program management, and stakeholder management. And speaking of best practices, Dr. Axel is with us today to discuss and explain what is beyond compliance for government entities, and how can we uptake, help government entities to take them from compliance to excellence. So, join me in welcoming Dr. Axel, the floor is yours.

Axel Domeyer: Thank you very much, Nora, and thank you very much, Digital Government Agency, for having me at this distinguished event. Maybe a quick, small addition to my background. So, I’ve been working with governments around the world, in Germany, which is where I’m coming from, but also in the rest of Europe, very much in the Middle East, and in basically all other continents, for about the last 12 years to support digital transformation. And the type of client that I actually enjoy working the most with are central digital government agencies. So similar to the DGA in Saudi Arabia. And I’ve worked with a couple of those around the world. So such entities, central digital government agencies, they often face the expectation to fix digital government, right? To kind of like finally get it done. And I think it’s important to realize that yes, they can do quite a bit, right? So they can design and build and operate some common digital solutions for the country, which they often do. But at the end of the day, what they really do is they influence the ecosystem, right? So the ecosystem of ministries, of agencies that constitute the government, and they can’t force the ecosystem to become more digitally mature to perform better, but they need to find ways to influence this positively. There’s essentially three mechanisms how that can be done, right? So number one is you can set policies, right? And you can say, you know, like, look, you have to comply with these policies, number one. Number two is capability building, right? So you can teach people in the ministries and the agencies how to implement best practices, how to do the right thing. And then number three, and this is what I want to talk about today, is to put forward an instrument to assess the digital performance, the digital maturity of the ecosystem of individual entities and to basically point out constructive ways of improving, right? So that’s the instrument I want to focus on today. And what I want to argue is that it’s a good idea here to have a compliant approach, yes. So… Do entities comply with digital government standards? But then to also add several, so two further elements, right? So number one is excellence, right? So have a more detailed view of what actually constitutes the best practice in managing digital in a government entity and help agencies to achieve this best practice. And then I would also argue that as a third element, you will require an impact approach as well, right? So it’s not just enough to say this is how you should do it, but you should also track if you’re actually delivering results. And so these are the three elements that I believe you should have, compliance, excellence, and impact. So let’s start with compliance, right? And I think Saudi Arabia is actually a great example of having a very mature approach to tracking and managing the compliance with digital government standards and policies, right? That’s called the QIA statistic. The governor of DGA actually went welcoming the crowd at IGF today. He shared the latest number of Saudi Arabia in 2024, but 87% compliance of all entities with digital government standards. So it’s gone up significantly since 2021. I think that’s good news, right? And clearly it’s very helpful to track if the agency or the entities are complying with the basics, right? So for instance, do you have a cloud computing unit in your agency? You should, right? So let’s take that box and let’s make sure that everybody takes that box. As you can see, I mean, as we are now approaching kind of like a hundred percent, right? On the basics, right? Not quite, right? But getting there. I think it’s important to also have more, let’s say additional and sophisticated tools to see how you can go beyond the basics, right? This is where I believe the excellence approach comes in. And before I talk about excellence, right? So let’s get some facts about this topic, about this problem, strange, right? So that we kind of get context here, right? So fact number one, digital government ecosystem systems are actually very complex, right? So typically you have like anywhere between 150 and 200 individual entities in the government, which is a whole lot more complex than when you’re running a private sector organization, right? Which, you know, like my friends in the private sector in digital McKinsey, they’re always kind of astonished at like how complex it is to run digital transformation in the government, given how complex it actually is, right? So you typically have like about 10 sectors and a hundred plus government agencies. So that’s why a lot of governments have now implemented a central digital government agency like DGA and Saudi Arabia, right? Which is probably the only way to handle this complexity effectively. So that’s fact number one. Fact number two, is we’re kind of getting, so 10 years ago, right, when I started in the field, yeah, I mean, it was kind of new, right, to government and like most of, I mean, there were a lot of paper-based things happening in the clients I’ve been working with. It’s no longer the case, right? So I think digital government has reached a certain degree of maturity now, right? So that it’s not enough to kind of like focus on the basics, right? So… Almost more than 50% of all countries in the world have fully operationalized digital public infrastructure frameworks. The majority of OECD countries is actually already be leveraging AI. So if you really want to go beyond the basics, then you need yeah, you need kind of like individual entities to do what best practice requires, right? And you need to support them in doing so, right? So just checking the boxes on the basics, it’s not going to be enough. This looks like right in our example here, right? So we said compliance, have a cloud computing unit, right? Excellence in this particular context would mean, so for instance, you could say you need the cloud transformation and adoption plan, right? So there’s a detailed migration plan, there’s cloud adoption monitoring in place. So you basically define kind of like a few things here, right? That go beyond just kind of like the basic thing of having a cloud unit in place, right? And you can add many more things here, right? So you could say you need like a financial cloud financial management or in ops capability, right? Which enables you to actually deliver the financial savings that you typically hope to realize, right? When you start a cloud program. So that’s what excellence looks like on this particular example, right? But then again, it’s not just okay or enough to look at how you’re doing things, right? Like if you’re doing it with the right style and you’re looking good, so to speak, best practice like while you do it. I mean, you really want to make sure that you actually track if you also deliver the goods, right? So in this particular example, right? Like if we stick with the cloud example, you would want to track, are you actually delivering cost savings? Are you reducing time to market, right? For innovations, digital innovations that you’re pushing. Live the day, like this digital governor, central digital government agency, you want to support ecosystem to become more mature, to perform better. These are the three ingredients that will be helpful, right? So basic compliance, excellence, that checks kind of like a more sophisticated view of what the best practice behaviors are for the entity. And then you also track the actual outcomes of investing in digital, right? So are you getting return on investment? Right, so in order to, you know, like also involve the audience here a bit, and, you know, I hope this is going to be a dialogue when we get to the Q&A, but let me ask you this question, right? So in your country, and I see there’s a variety of countries represented here. In your country, what do you think, what is the public administration emphasizing in terms of fostering the overall digital government ecosystem? Is it more compliance? Is it more excellent? Is it more impact? And please go to the survey, and then we’re going to see a few results on the screen in a moment. All right. So this is quite interesting, right? So it confirms a bit the hypothesis, right, that I had when writing this talk, that in most places, compliance is kind of where you start, right? I mean, it’s the most basic of the three ingredients. I mean, you should have it. But it’s also, let’s say, kind of like the, I mean, it gets you so far, right? So it gets you to a certain point. But at the end of the day, it’s not kind of like the most sophisticated element. But it is kind of like where most countries are today, right? So let’s take a moment to decompose, to unpack digital government excellence a little bit, right? So what could be included in your country with your central digital government agency had to develop an assessment rubric? Is your, are the entities, the ministries in your government, are they performing well on digital government excellence? What would be the dimensions, right, that you could include? And in my view, there’s essentially four dimensions here, right? Strategy, right? So most foundational component. And here you can ask questions such as, is the strategy bold enough, right? So are you actually setting ambitious targets? Does it link in a meaningful sense to the business strategy of the entity, right? Or just kind of like a cookie cutter digital strategy that could, you know, like as well be true for a chocolate factory, right? So does it link to the business strategy of your entity? Is there a clear business case? in the strategy for the investments that you’re making, right? So are you really putting forward, that’s the ROI that we expect from implementing the strategy? And also does it look beyond the ecosystem, right? So beyond the, into the ecosystem, I mean, right? So beyond the entity into the ecosystem, towards the partners, so that could be other government entities and also suppliers, right, in the private sector. Second element is processes and operations. So this will cover questions about, you know, do you have the right governance framework in place, right? So do you have the right roles? Do you have the right processes defined? Do you use agile ways of working? Funding cycle actually support agile ways of working. And that’s one of the challenges I often see in government entities, right? That yes, we want to do agile, but the way we actually govern ourselves in particular how we govern funding, it doesn’t actually support agile ways of working, right? So in your assessment rubric, that could be a question you could ask. Third category is technology, right? So that would include questions about your architecture. Do you have a modern kind of platform architecture that clearly distinguishes between things that everybody should use in the same way and products, right, that you build on top of the architecture? So are you following what are architecture paradigms here? Are you using cloud in the right way? Do you follow cybersecurity standards? So that would be the technology component. And lastly, we have organizational resources, right? So the most important question in that category is, do you have the right capabilities in-house, right? And do you work with outside vendors in an effective way, right? So that in sum, right, between your… your in-house capabilities and your external capabilities, you have all the right capabilities in place for you to deliver on your strategy. This is just kind of like, it’s one cut, right? Or like one way of categorizing this. I mean, there’s many, many other ways, right? And other governments have done, or different governments have done this in different ways. But this could give you kind of like a basic overview, right, of like what you could potentially include here. Of your assessment framework in place, right? The next question becomes, how do you actually use it? Right, so is it a scoring framework, right? Where you go out to each entity and you score each entity each year, everybody gets a score, the score is published on the websites, and then it becomes a little bit like, you know, like going to school, right, and taking an exam. And I mean, let’s say there’s a certain risk that entity is kind of like over state, right? So their digital performance, right? Because they don’t want to look bad, right? So those are my point of view. And some of the governments I’ve worked with that have such an assessment framework in place, they would rather use it, not as kind of like a schooling device, but as a coaching device, right? Where you have an assessment framework in place that entities can use to self-evaluate, right? To see how they are doing against kind of concrete things that they could be doing better. And then the central digital government agency would kind of coach them on, concite them, so to speak, right? On how to improve on these dimensions, right? But you don’t necessarily get published, right? And you say, oh, you know, like this year, and you know, my experience, not particularly constructive, right? If you’re a digital government agent and you want kind of a good working relationship with the entity. is much better to use that as a coaching device. Impact on the other hand, that’s a different story, right? So on impact, I’m like firmly convinced that you should have a set of KPIs that you’re measuring and then you publish it, right? So if you say, I wanna save 500 million US dollars or whatever currency you are in through using digital, then you should measure if you actually get there, right? And this is something that you should kind of inform the public about in order to make this kind of a firm commitment that is then much more likely to be followed through with. All right, next audience question. I talked a little bit about KPIs for digital government impact, right? So let’s see what you guys have KPIs, right? That you think are kind of constructive to measure and publish kind of nationally in order to track the progress of digital transformation in government. Yes, I think these are a few good ones. And my sense is you probably only get one word to type. So it’s a little bit hard to formulate an actual KPI. But I like these concepts, right? So satisfaction in my view, I mean, that’s the ultimate KPI. So this digital government is all about making life easier for citizens and making it easier to run a business so the economy can grow. And how do you see if you achieve these targets? I mean, you ask people and businesses how they are doing, and I think this is for me like the major KPI that everybody should. Interestingly it’s actually one of the, I mean, there are some governments that actually do this, right? But overall, let’s say the enthusiasm to publish kind of like these national KPIs on how are you actually doing on service delivery is somewhat limited in most places, right? So and I think the places that do best, right? So I mean, Saudi, for instance, it’s made a huge jump in the digital services index on the EDGI. And I think one of the reasons why they’ve made this big jump is because they actually publish the outcomes of their digital government investments, and they hold kind of the ecosystem accountable to actually deliver, right? So in my view, that’s really key. So satisfaction is great, experience is related to this, usage, right? Like another kind of like very important KPI. So in Germany, where I come from, we have a lot of digital government solutions online. I would say the digital adoption, the usage rate is not particularly high, right? And if this was actually published on a regular basis for every service that’s online, my sense is we would probably be doing a little bit better, right? So this is also a great one to publish. But yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for your contributions. I see you guys are kind of like thinking about this very much along the same lines that I was thinking, and thanks for the engagement. So now let’s, let’s take, you know, I’ve given you a little bit of like theory and like a framework. So now let’s, let’s look at some real case studies, right? To show that this is not just something that I, I came up with, right? Like as a theory I want to propose, but this is something that’s actually happening, right? And if we look at excellence, I want to say that the, like one of the countries or the case examples that I like the best is the United Kingdom, right? Which in 2020 published a digital and data functional standard, which is actually not. So this is not, there’s not a scoring framework, right? So this is very much what I described kind of like as a coaching and teaching device, which basically sets forth a number of best practices that digital government or that government entities can follow in the space of digital and data. It’s actually part of a wider web of functional standards in the government, right? So there’s one for HR, there’s one for finance, there’s one for project delivery, there’s one for property management. So the UK government basically has such a standard for basically all the functions that are common across the government, right? So things that are not unique to a particular agency, but that are common across entities. And what they cover in the standard are, so not four areas, but eight areas, right? So they look and they very clearly prescribe. So these are the roles, right? That you should have in your entity, right? You should have a chief digital officer. You should have a chief data officer. You should have some person that’s accountable. all of digital within the wider government ecosystem, right? So, one neck to choke, so to speak, right? For digital performance. So, that’s the governance section. There’s also something in there about the processes, is, you know, like how, what I find interesting in the UK is that they’re very focused on assuring the value of projects and of investments they make. So, they have in the governance section of the standard, they have some very clear guidelines on how do you do this, right? Should do this, right? Some parts of it are mandatory, by the way, right? So, they would have language in there where it says you must do this, right? It’s not optional. And then there’s a lot of language in there where it says, depending on your situation in the entity, you should consider a particular way, right? So, in that sense, it’s very much not like a sloppy like a sloppy check device. The other things that are included in there are service management, right? Which is very much about like, how should you deliver the services in the government, right? So, how do you make them user-friendly? Like, what’s the setup that you should have in place to manage a service? There’s technology management, which covers architecture and IT operations management. Some standards included in there, right? So, for specific technical topics, the digital and data standard would reference some of the detailed standards, right? So, such as the cloud policy and standard, right? Or the cyber security standard. So, in this way, you know, like if you are an IT or digital officer in an entity, really know exactly what to do, right? So, in this way, I think the central digital and data office, right? So, this is the central digital and data agency in the UK. What they seek to accomplish here is to like, really, IT, the digital and data profession in the UK government in a kind of like standardized way. So that everybody rises kind of to the same level for people to kind of like interact with each other, right? So they’re all speaking, so it’s that we should be following some forwards that we should have, right? So I’m the chief digital officer and you are chief digital officer, you know, like we know what each other’s kind of responsibility is, right? And in that way, it becomes much easier to collaborate across the government in a professional way, right? So that’s how they think about this. As far as I can see, this is probably the most apprehensive effort, right? To drive the government excellence that I’m aware of, which is currently in place. I mean, I haven’t studied all 180 countries, so there might be, and I’m, you know, looking forward to the Q&A as well, like what you think about kind of your countries or other countries that are relevant here. But I think the UK is, in my view, that’s kind of like most mature in terms of driving an excellence perspective. The second example I want to highlight is Singapore, right? And I think Singapore is a great example for how to act in a very systematic way, right? So their digital government strategy, which is called the digital government print, I think the cycle just finished, right? So they came up with it in 2018. It was finished kind of to be implemented until 2023. And I suppose they’re working on the next cycle now, but in that blueprint, they put forward 15 KPIs, right? So about 120 KPIs, 15 KPIs. And then they got very serious about making sure they deliver all these KPIs, right? So 70% satisfaction with resident and business services, resident and business services, right? 100% online payment, right? So no entity allowed to not have an- online payment for service, every civil servant, at least basic digital literacy, the way that’s actually been checked, right? So like people actually go through the training and the certification to make sure that this is the case. I did some more technical things, right? Which are, would be equally important. So example of this 90 to 100% of data fields, which are included in government IT systems, machine readable and accessible by an API, right? So if I think about the governments I know, incredibly ambitious goal, right? So I would say the European governments I work with would probably be much lower than this, right? But Singapore kind of set this target and by and large, they got there, right? So they didn’t hit every KPI in 2023, but by and large, they got there. And over the five years, they saw some very significant improvements on many of these dimensions. And they published this, right? And they held themselves accountable to it and stayed honest, so to speak, on the strategy they wanted to deliver. And then, yeah, let me close with Saudi Arabia, our host today. Thank you very much for having all of us. So we’ve talked about kiosks, right? And like your very systematic approach to ensuring compliance, right? Which I think is very inspiring and mature. I also think, so in terms of KPIs, I actually know, I have no other clients in my line of work where the people I work with are more enthusiastic about KPIs, right? So Saudi Arabia, for me, is the land of KPIs. And as I said, I think this is the reason why you guys have made these amazing strides, right? Over the past few years, right? And you are now number four, right? So world class in the digital services index on the EDGI. So on impact, you’re also doing very well. And I understand you guys are working on how to address this in the future, right? So in my perspective, we can probably, you know, like with all of these ingredients in place, we can probably see more progress, right, in digital government. So we’re excited about, you know, what Saudi Arabia is going to do in the next couple of years in digital government, keep inspiring us. And thanks very much for having me, having us today at IGF. Thank you.

Nora Saneh: Simple questions, but allow me to ask first, you have covered several dimensions across the government entity. So what do you think would be the main key areas, critical areas that entities need to focus on and what would be the challenges from Saudi Arabia?

Axel Domeyer: So I think the four areas I talked about are probably a good starting point, right? So strategy, organizational resources, technology management, and operations, more services and operations. I think on these, what you have to think, I mean, the main challenge here is like, how granular do you get, right? So when you set up an assessment framework for individual entities, I mean, there’s a lot of things that people can be doing in the right way or on the wrong way. But you can’t, I mean, the UK digital and data standard, it has 40 pages, right? And when you read it, it actually still feels like sometimes a little bit high level. And then they refer to kind of like individual substandards, right, such as the cloud standard and the cyber standard. So I think the main challenge here is to kind of like hit the right level of abstraction, right? So it’s, you know, it’s still digestible, right? It’s that you’re working with. If you hit them with kind of like a 500 page manual and you kind of like try to regulate kind of like every single thing they’re supposed to be doing, I mean, like people are not going to enjoy this, right? I mean, the independent professionals, I mean, they know how to run their IT and their digital function. So you need to kind of like find a level of abstraction that’s kind of informative enough, right? So that people actually learn something out of it, but you’re not kind of like, let’s say, like overdoing it, yeah? So that I would say is kind of the main challenge when you address this.

Audience: Okay, sorry. Should we say that compliance should be always related to the regulatory framework? That is, if we judge compliance, somehow we should find ideas and in all indices in the legal aspects and so that regulatory framework really are the framework that we measure. Yeah. I think that’s a nice way of thinking about it, right? Because you,

Axel Domeyer: I mean, there are some things where you don’t want to coach people to do it. You want to make people do it, right? And if they don’t, then you have a problem, right? So, but I mean, this again, shouldn’t be like a catalog of like 500 pages where you say, you know, like to the last detail, this is what the regulation requires. You want to give some people, you want to give people some freedom to run their digital function in a way, you know, like that’s suitable to their organization. But then there are some things you want to put down in a regulation, right? So for instance, I mean, cybersecurity, I think is one of those areas where you want to be very precise. descriptive, right, about how people should approach it, and you don’t want to give too much space for interpretation, right? What exactly should be done? And then in my view, it should be a regulation. And everybody, I mean, you don’t, I mean, you should have a hundred percent compliance, right? I mean, you’re not going for 80 or 90 percent, you’re going for a hundred percent on those. Everything else, right, where it’s more of a, you know, like this would be good. This would be professional. That would be nice if you had this. I would put this into the excellence category. Oh, a lot of questions.

Audience: Okay. Okay, I have the mic, so. Yeah. Thank you. Okay, thank you. My name is Zoran Jordanoski from the UNUIGAF. We’ve been dealing with all these online services for approximately more than 20 years. And my first key question is, we have online services provided by the private sector and the public sector. And the public sector services are not, in general, even 50 to 60 percent of the quality of the private sector services. So my first question is, what is the piece that miss in the public sector services? And let’s break the dilemma. I won’t accept the argument that the government lack money or maybe modernization in public administration. Because we know that even some of the high income countries, I will take the example of Germany, can afford the latest new technology, can afford to modernize the public administration. And yet in Berlin, to register a newborn will take you two weeks just to register into the registry. So what is the piece that is missing for public services to have the same quality of the private sector services? And my second one, here it comes, what do you think is the role of the soft regulation? regulations, like you mentioned the standards. If you read one of the rules of the UK service standard is understand your user’s needs. Do you think that the government understand what user wants and what user needs?

Axel Domeyer: Great. So it’s kind of the $30 billion question in Germany, right? So 13 billion is how much we spend on public sector IT with huge amount of money. And I think it’s a very legitimate question to ask what are we actually buying, right? And you gave a good example of why we would want to be skeptical about what we’re buying, right? With these $30 billion roundabout. So the answer to that question is of course, not simple, right? Given there’s many reasons, right? Like why this isn’t working as well as we would hope to. And by the way, this is not like an uncommon phenomenon, right? So we studied a few years back, we studied, I wanna say like around 10 countries around the world and all world regions. It was not a single country where the public sector did better than the private sector in terms of service quality, right? So this was a common finding everywhere. I think there might be, so I recently read something about a digital government ranking here in the Middle East, right? Where it was actually quite close, closely related, right? So private sector and public sector were doing about equally well, right? So I think in general, it’s possible, right? To reach that state. How do you get them? I mean, if you ask me with regard to Germany, the main challenge I would say we have is on the technological platform side because we don’t have one, right? So we have a very complex digital government ecosystem with hundreds of agencies, you know, like the States like Berlin, municipalities, everyone’s working kind of on that. own technology. So the 30 billion euros that we’re spending for each individual service and each individual entity, it actually isn’t that much money, right? Just when you add all of it up, it becomes a lot. But as a result of the subcritical spend and the low maturity at the level of individual entities, the outcomes are what they are, right? So I think that’s one of the main reasons I would highlight, right? So you need some form of technology platform governance at the national level. Once you have that, I think the next important thing is to think about how everyone in the ecosystem can work according kind of like to best practices, develop their services, manage their services, maintain their data, and so on and so forth, in kind of like a best practice way. And I think that’s where a digital government maturity assessment or excellence framework comes in quite handy, right? But it’s kind of like the second most important thing, right? Important, but second most important in my view. Do we know the needs of the users in government? I would say on average, probably less so than the private sector, because if the private sector doesn’t do it, they go out of business. It’s a slightly stronger incentive to look after the user. But I don’t think there’s kind of like a structural obstacle to doing this, right? And there’s many government services around the world, which are fantastic, right? And I mean, they really speak to the needs of their users. So I don’t think it’s like structurally impossible, right? But I think empirically speaking, you’re right, that it’s not the case as much as we would like it to be.

Audience: I’d like to ask about the future of KPI in government, you know, with the fast pace of technology at a really rapid speed. And until now, I think they’re a little bit stagnant, or, you know, sort of the digital maturity was pegged against 100% services, end-to-end, digitized, right? UX, UI, platformization. What is your sense? What are the next batch of, let’s say, KPIs for digital government, given that AI is there? I mean, it’s a big buzzword, but I mean, what are we really talking about in the future of government, digital government?

Axel Domeyer: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think in some sense, I mean, like the good things in life, right, they kind of like stay stable over time, right? I mean, they don’t change that much. So I would expect the ones that we have right now continue to be important, right? So user satisfaction, cost, right, of investing in digital and what do you get out of it. So I think these will remain important KPIs. I think there’s a certain temptation for governments to kind of measure the adoption of specific technologies, right? So like a while ago, it was, you know, like how many blockchain projects do we have in government, right? Which I happen to think about, I mean, this is not like a super important KPI, right? So I wouldn’t go for measuring the adoption kind of individual technologies. What I would always try to do is to measure kind of like some actual outcome that like the ultimate recipients, right? So people, businesses, government entities themselves like actually care about, right? So one thing that I’ve seen becoming kind of more prominent is kind of the question of like, how many services have we moved to kind of like a completely proactive mode of delivery, right? Where you have kind of like zero touch delivery. You just get the service when you’re entitled to it, right? I think that’s a great KPI, right? And then of course, if you want to kind of like make sure that you stay innovative, I mean, you can measure things as like, you know, like how many projects are we doing in AI? Like how many people have been kind of skilled, right? In AI, I think these are kind of temporary things, right? That for a certain period of time might be useful to measure but then for the, like the real KPIs, right? That you put kind of like at the heart of your strategy, I would say kind of like the evergreens are a good start. then like maybe every five to 10 years, you get kind of like a new one. Yes. So I think one of the most important things that are affected by digital advancements or technological advancements in government entities and organizations are business processes. So what’s the role of business processes, processes, management, and digital excellence? I think it’s actually huge. So in business process management, it’s kind of like, it’s not the most exciting kind of like innovative term. And it has been around for a long time. I don’t think so. The public sector entities I have worked with, this is an area where typically they can improve, right? And how can they improve? They often have a process map, but it’s not really focused on what outcomes are these processes delivering for the constituents, right? For residents, for businesses, for other government entities, right? So I think the best entities that I’ve seen, what they have is they have a business strategy, right? Where they say, this is what we actually want and need to deliver. And it goes beyond, we need to implore that apply to us, right? I mean, that’s not a strategy. I mean, that’s a, I mean, like you should be doing it. Yes. But beyond this, you should have a view, right? Like what are you actually delivering right for the community? And then you link kind of your processes to these outcomes, right? And you say, you know, like this process. So I work a lot with labor agencies, right? So the process of matching job seekers with job opportunities, right? So this is a process or a product, right? And you can kind of like break down how it works and you should be doing this, right? And then you should measure how well this process is actually delivering. delivering on these KPIs and you should kind of codify what the process looks like today because a lot of the entities I have seen, they kind of know how they do it, right? But then, you know, like in this location, they do it like this way and another way, they do it another way, right? So the next level is to like really standardize how you’re doing it and then to kind of like continually improve it, right? To have kind of like what I would call a product management mindset, right? Like in private sector, you would say product management, not process management. But to really, I mean, service delivery in public entities is usually process driven, right? So like you start somewhere, you know, there’s transaction that’s initiated by the citizen, for instance, then it goes somewhere in the agency and then goes back to the citizen. There’s a little bit of back and forth. There’s some checking against the rules, right, that apply. There’s often very clear rules that apply to a service or a process. And you should very, you should be very well aware of like how you should model, right? Like what you’re actually doing. And then you should always be on the lookout for ways to improving this, right? So systematic business process management understood in the right way, right? It’s a strategic exercise, not as kind of like, you know, like a way to employ a very large number of consultants. You know, I can take this a little bit self-critically about our industry. Business process management as a strategic exercise is I think key, right? And should be part of a digital government excellence standard.

Audience: Okay. Thank you for your sharing. It’s very valuable and helpful for us. I have a question here. As I saw from the example of the Kingdom of UK, you said, not the Kingdom of UK, Kingdom of Saudi, Saudi Arabic. So the ranking of EGDI is first-ranking. I think it is a very good ranking. very good result. So my question here is, so for the other countries who want to improve the ranking here, what’s the main area they should do? That’s the first question. Second one is for, I saw there is some of the data is for the user experience and for the satisfactory. So I think it’s very difficult to measure for such a KPI. So do you have some good example of practice, how the governance they can measure the user experience and the satisfactory? This is what I want to ask. Sure. So, I mean, Saudi is amazing, right? And I don’t know if

Axel Domeyer: you can replicate kind of like going up 67 ranks and kind of like one, two year cycle on the digital services index. So, I mean, this might be kind of like a historical singularity in a way. Right. So what did they do and like, what can other countries do to kind of get to a similar level? I mean, it will depend a little bit on where you are as an individual country, right? I mean, some countries, I mean, Germany, for instance, is really lacking, I think on the technology platform side, right? Which is what I mentioned in response to an earlier question. Other countries might have different issues, right? But I think what the Saudis did really well over the last couple of years was kind of like this performance improvement mindset, right? So they set themselves a target as part of the Vision 2030. We want to be in a certain place by 2030, right? And I think in digital government, they overachieved, right? And they didn’t just set themselves the target. I mean, they measured it in many, many different dimensions, including kind of like the tough ones, right? Including user satisfaction, including the effectiveness of the money that’s actually being spent, including digital adoption, right? Where a lot of the clients that I have worked with, a little bit similar to what you just said, like, oh, isn’t that hard, right? To measure it. And, you know, like, isn’t it like in this agency, it’s like different from that agency and how can we have a single national KPI? And how do we get these agencies to kind of like report the KPI, you know, like in the first place and, you know, like, let’s not overdo it, right? With a performance mindset. I think Sony is a good, I mean, Sony is not a small country, right? I mean, it’s like almost 40 million people, you know, like a very complex and large government. And they kind of like didn’t follow these precepts, right? Of, you know, like, oh, it’s like hard and let’s not do it. It’s like the ministries won’t go along and so on, right? So I think once you have a strong kind of central digital government governance mechanism in place, then you can follow through on this, right? And you can say, you know, like, look, measuring satisfaction is not that hard, right? I mean, like every company does it, right? I mean, most companies, almost every company does it and many government entities do it, right? And there’s established methods of doing it. I mean, some use NPS, some use CSED and, you know, you just need to kind of align which one are you using and then you need to make the entities do it, right? I mean, that’s kind of like usually the hard part where, you know, the tricky thing that I have observed in like the clients or the contacts that I have worked with is that, yes, you have somebody who is centrally responsible for driving digital government maturity, but they don’t actually have kind of the competences, the powers to, you know, like make those decisions and make kind of all of the entities to contribute in a certain way, right? So I would say, I mean, in line with the, so last year there was an amazing report, I think it was called the digital leaders report. And I think one of the key findings of that report was like all the countries that actually do like reasonably well on digital government have a central. digital agency in place and they gave, and they give the central digital agency enough power to kind of move the ecosystem, right. Instead of, you know, like just running around and, you know, like telling people kind of obvious things, right. So I think like the, the things that I’ve been talking about today, I mean, they’re not particularly complicated or sophisticated, right. They’re kind of obvious. The challenge is to actually implement it in like a complex government ecosystem. Hello.

Audience: Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. So in your presentation, you mentioned capabilities is an important factor to support. What are some of the digital or technical capabilities that we should focus on to propel excellence and to building it in-house?

Axel Domeyer: Right, right. So I think the approach that Singapore has with, you know, kind of like everybody should have basic literacy. I think that’s very important, right. Everybody should have it in particular people in leadership positions, right. So, so having kind of like a solid curriculum of, you know, like understanding the basics, you know, like how do you, how do you do an IT project, you know, like why is it useful to kind of like do certain things in the cloud and, you know, like others not. So a certain level of digital literacy, I think everybody should have. I think the more tricky question is about how much kind of technical, real technical capability do you build in-house versus how much do you rely on outside vendors, right. And I mean, there’s people who say, you know, like, look, like governments are like too dependent on system integrators and, you know, like outside vendors. And I mean, that’s probably true, but you also shouldn’t kind of like go overboard, right. In terms of trying to do everything in-house, because nobody does that, right. I mean, like even the most successful. I mean, like they work with vendors, right? I think the typical share of like external and internal spend is somewhere between, so on average it’s 50-50, right? And I would say kind of like some have 60-40 and others have 40-60. But there’s always like a very, you know, like big share of like outside capabilities that you’re accessing. That’s logical, right? I mean, like you’re not in the, I mean, like government entities and like also most businesses are not in the business of, you know, like having like the most up-to-date digital capabilities on everything. Like they’re in the business of their business, right? So they should access kind of external vendors to a certain degree. But I also think that, I mean, like every company or every organization is a digital company organization today, right? So there is a certain degree of in-house capability that’s helpful to have. And I think, again, I mean, Singapore is for me kind of like they’re the KPI champions and they are the capability champions, right? So what I really like about, another thing that I really like about Singapore is Gaftec Singapore, right? Which is their kind of IT delivery arm in the government. And Gaftec Singapore has actually been set up, I think they call it a statutory board, which means it’s not a public sector agency, right? So they’re not bound by kind of like the same restrictions as a typical public sector entity, but they can essentially operate like a private company. And they operate like a digital company, right? So like Google or Accenture or what have you, right? So they would hire kind of like the same level of talent. They pay them the same amount of money, but they also manage them in the same way, right? Like how a Google would manage kind of like their star architect, right? So if you deliver your projects, right, great, right? I mean, you could continue your job. If you don’t, right, maybe time for you to look for a position somewhere else, right? So Gaftec Singapore is a very interesting, it’s a public sector. in-house capability organization, but it’s run like a private sector organization that performs much, much better than all the other IT delivery organizations I know of. So having that level of capability is really crucial. But getting there the traditional way. Let me put it that way. All right. I’m getting some signs that I need to kind of like wrap up from the back. I don’t know. Maybe you can do one more question. Yeah.

Audience: Okay. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. And you only, we got to have some idea about the economy. So you know that I’m from China and we know that economy is just a two category. One is market economy, and another one is common economy. And for currently, you also mentioned about digital governance. We also know that there was a balance about technology development and also economy. If the government involved too much, maybe the technical development will be slowing. So my question is, what did you think about what kind of the KPI of the digital combined and why? Sorry, can you repeat the question? I’m not sure I quite caught this. Yeah. My question is, what did you think about the KPI of the digital governance to side to management? Because as we think there was a two category market economy, commodity economy. Yeah. So what’s kind of the right balance between kind of the government and the private sector? Yes. Yeah. It’s kind of a complicated question, right? I mean, my sense is

Axel Domeyer: that what most government entities do like in their core mission, I mean, they’re running a fairly simple business, right? I mean, they’re getting some highly structured and regulated services to the end user. And I don’t think you need to kind of, I mean, it’s not like you’re building a spaceships, right? So my sense is as long as you have kind of like a reasonable level of in-house architecture capability, you have like some software engineers, right? You can kind of like build this and direct kind of the private sector contractors that you work with. Then you’re in good shape, right? So you don’t need to go like a hundred percent, right? Like in-house capability. But you also shouldn’t go kind of like 5% in-house capability and 95% outsourced capability, which is stick, right? But it’s something that I’ve seen in many places, right? So kind of like a very kind of lopsided balance between government and private sector in terms of delivering IT, right? For public sector entities. But my, you know, like in terms of, you know, like if you really want to get a number, I think 50-50 is actually quite good, right? Because I mean, that’s kind of like the industry average, right? If you look at kind of like Gartner IT spend data, that’s kind of like where you typically end up with, right? Across kind of like all industries, 50% is kind of like your own people and like investments that you make directly. And the rest is kind of like working with whoever is your preferred private sector IT provider. So I think government is not kind of like structurally different from this, right? I mean, they’re not kind of like, they don’t need to be kind of like super innovative, like Google, right? And they’re also not like in a place where you could say, oh, you actually don’t need anyone in house, right? So I would say, you know, just go for the industry average, which would be like roundabout 50-50. Great, great discussion and thanks for having me. Thank you. I think I might still be on, right? Did you help me get unplugged? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Nora Saneh: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Agreement Points

Importance of KPIs in digital government

Axel Domeyer

Audience

Singapore’s systematic approach with 15 KPIs

Saudi Arabia’s progress in digital government rankings

Importance of user satisfaction and cost-effectiveness

Focus on outcome-based KPIs rather than technology adoption

Both Axel Domeyer and audience members emphasized the importance of well-defined KPIs in measuring and improving digital government performance.

Need for balance between internal and external capabilities

Axel Domeyer

Audience

Need for balance between internal and external capabilities

Importance of business process management in digital excellence

There was agreement on the need for a balanced approach to building digital capabilities in government, combining internal expertise with external support.

Similar Viewpoints

Both Axel Domeyer and audience members recognized the challenges faced by public sector digital services, particularly in countries lacking centralized technology platforms.

Axel Domeyer

Audience

Lack of centralized technology platform in some countries

Public sector services lag behind private sector in quality

Unexpected Consensus

Difficulty in measuring user satisfaction

Axel Domeyer

Audience

Importance of user satisfaction and cost-effectiveness

Difficulty in measuring user satisfaction

While an audience member raised concerns about the difficulty of measuring user satisfaction, Axel Domeyer unexpectedly agreed by emphasizing its importance as a key performance indicator, suggesting a shared recognition of both the challenge and necessity of this metric.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The main areas of agreement centered around the importance of KPIs, the need for a balanced approach to digital capabilities, and the recognition of challenges in public sector digital services.

Consensus level

There was a moderate level of consensus among speakers, particularly on the importance of measuring and improving digital government performance. This consensus suggests a shared understanding of key challenges and potential solutions in digital government implementation, which could facilitate more targeted and effective strategies for improvement.

Different Viewpoints

Approach to digital government excellence

Axel Domeyer

Audience

Three key elements: compliance, excellence, and impact

Public sector services lag behind private sector in quality

While Axel Domeyer proposes a framework for digital government excellence, an audience member points out that public sector services still lag behind private sector in quality, suggesting that the proposed framework may not be sufficient to address the quality gap.

Unexpected Differences

Role of technology adoption in digital government excellence

Axel Domeyer

Audience

Focus on outcome-based KPIs rather than technology adoption

Importance of business process management in digital excellence

While Axel Domeyer emphasizes focusing on outcome-based KPIs rather than technology adoption, an audience member unexpectedly highlights the importance of business process management, which could be seen as a more technology-focused approach. This difference in perspective on the role of technology in digital government excellence was not explicitly addressed in the main arguments.

Overall Assessment

summary

The main areas of disagreement revolve around the approach to achieving digital government excellence, the feasibility of measuring user satisfaction, and the role of technology adoption versus outcome-based metrics.

difference_level

The level of disagreement appears to be moderate. While there are some differences in perspective, they do not fundamentally contradict the overall goal of improving digital government services. These disagreements highlight the complexity of implementing digital government excellence and suggest that a multifaceted approach, considering various viewpoints, may be necessary for successful implementation.

Partial Agreements

Both Axel Domeyer and the audience member agree on the importance of user satisfaction as a key performance indicator for digital government. However, they disagree on the feasibility of measuring it, with the audience member highlighting the difficulties in measurement.

Axel Domeyer

Audience

Importance of user satisfaction and cost-effectiveness

Difficulty in measuring user satisfaction

Similar Viewpoints

Both Axel Domeyer and audience members recognized the challenges faced by public sector digital services, particularly in countries lacking centralized technology platforms.

Axel Domeyer

Audience

Lack of centralized technology platform in some countries

Public sector services lag behind private sector in quality

Key Takeaways

A comprehensive digital government excellence framework should include compliance, excellence, and impact elements

The UK’s Digital and Data Functional Standard and Singapore’s systematic KPI approach are considered best practices

Saudi Arabia has made significant progress in digital government rankings through a performance improvement mindset

Public sector digital services generally lag behind private sector in quality across most countries

Centralized technology platforms and governance are crucial for successful digital government implementation

There should be a balance between building in-house digital capabilities and leveraging external vendors

Outcome-based KPIs focused on user satisfaction and cost-effectiveness are more valuable than technology adoption metrics

Basic digital literacy for all government employees is essential for digital excellence

Resolutions and Action Items

None identified

Unresolved Issues

How to effectively measure and standardize user satisfaction metrics across different government agencies

The optimal balance between government involvement and private sector participation in digital governance

How to address the gap in quality between public and private sector digital services

The specific technical capabilities that should be prioritized for in-house development in government agencies

Suggested Compromises

Aim for a 50-50 split between in-house capabilities and outsourced IT services in government agencies, as this aligns with industry averages

I think it’s important to realize that yes, they can do quite a bit, right? So they can design and build and operate some common digital solutions for the country, which they often do. But at the end of the day, what they really do is they influence the ecosystem, right?

speaker

Axel Domeyer

reason

This comment reframes the role of central digital government agencies from direct implementers to ecosystem influencers, challenging the common perception of their function.

impact

It set the tone for the rest of the discussion by emphasizing the importance of influence and ecosystem management in digital governance rather than just direct implementation.

And what I want to argue is that it’s a good idea here to have a compliant approach, yes. So… Do entities comply with digital government standards? But then to also add several, so two further elements, right? So number one is excellence, right? So have a more detailed view of what actually constitutes the best practice in managing digital in a government entity and help agencies to achieve this best practice. And then I would also argue that as a third element, you will require an impact approach as well, right?

speaker

Axel Domeyer

reason

This comment introduces a comprehensive framework for assessing digital governance, moving beyond simple compliance to include excellence and impact.

impact

It structured the subsequent discussion around these three key elements – compliance, excellence, and impact – providing a framework for analyzing digital governance initiatives.

And the public sector services are not, in general, even 50 to 60 percent of the quality of the private sector services. So my first question is, what is the piece that miss in the public sector services?

speaker

Audience member (Zoran Jordanoski)

reason

This question challenges the status quo and prompts a critical examination of public sector digital services compared to private sector offerings.

impact

It shifted the discussion towards a more critical analysis of public sector digital services and prompted Axel to discuss structural challenges in government digital transformation.

I think in some sense, I mean, like the good things in life, right, they kind of like stay stable over time, right? I mean, they don’t change that much. So I would expect the ones that we have right now continue to be important, right? So user satisfaction, cost, right, of investing in digital and what do you get out of it. So I think these will remain important KPIs.

speaker

Axel Domeyer

reason

This comment provides a perspective on the enduring nature of certain KPIs in digital governance, emphasizing fundamental metrics over trendy technological measures.

impact

It refocused the discussion on core, user-centric metrics rather than getting caught up in measuring adoption of specific technologies, providing a long-term view on digital governance assessment.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by moving it from a basic understanding of digital governance to a more nuanced, ecosystem-focused approach. They introduced a comprehensive framework for assessment, prompted critical examination of public sector digital services, and emphasized the importance of enduring, user-centric metrics. The discussion evolved from describing digital governance to analyzing its complexities and challenges, ultimately providing a more holistic view of the subject.

What is the piece that is missing for public services to have the same quality as private sector services?

speaker

Zoran Jordanoski

explanation

This question addresses the persistent quality gap between public and private sector digital services, which is crucial for improving government service delivery.

What is the role of soft regulations, like standards, in improving public services?

speaker

Zoran Jordanoski

explanation

Understanding the impact of non-binding guidelines could provide insights into effective ways to improve government digital services.

Do governments truly understand what users want and need?

speaker

Zoran Jordanoski

explanation

This question highlights the importance of user-centric design in government services and the potential gap between service providers and users.

What are the next batch of KPIs for digital government, given the advent of AI and other emerging technologies?

speaker

Audience member

explanation

This explores how to measure digital government progress in the context of rapidly evolving technologies, which is crucial for future planning and assessment.

How can governments effectively measure user experience and satisfaction?

speaker

Audience member

explanation

This addresses the challenge of quantifying qualitative aspects of service delivery, which is essential for improving government digital services.

What are the key digital or technical capabilities that should be focused on to propel excellence and build in-house expertise?

speaker

Audience member

explanation

This question seeks to identify the most critical skills and knowledge areas for governments to develop internally to improve their digital services.

What is the appropriate balance between government involvement and private sector participation in digital governance?

speaker

Audience member

explanation

This explores the optimal mix of public and private sector roles in digital governance, which is important for effective and efficient service delivery.