China's DeepSeek experiment, Estonia's 100% digitization and Iraq's new digital center
Edition #105 China's Tianjin adopts DeepSeek to enhance its smart city infrastructure, while elsewhere other Asian countries are taking bets on digital currencies and payments...
Last week, we were covering some of the new digital government agendas that were kicking off 2025, focusing on the UK’s new blueprint and Abu Dhabi’s plans to become the first fully AI-native government.
This week, our attention is turning to some of the digital currency and payment projects that are currently being scaled in Asia. We look at Sri Lanka’s attempts to supercharge its struggling economy with GovPay, while Papau New Guinea is considering launching its own digital currency. Elsewhere, China is implementing DeepSeek into its digital government, while France is introducing a new suite of cross-government digital tools.
Our main stories this week:
Tianjin implements DeepSeek in an embrace of its domestic AI industry
France’s big bet on digitally modernizing its administration
How Estonia modernized from an ex-Soviet republic to an eGovernment juggernaut
As a reminder, we have recently begun to expand our digital government coverage away from just Substack and onto Linkedin, Twitter and Instagram. For original content, audience engagement, and roundups of all our pieces, feel free to follow us over on those channels. Also check out our sister newsletter, interweave.africa.
China’s Tianjin city adopts DeepSeek as part of rush to embrace domestic AI industry - Xinlu Liang, SCMP
Following the meteoric rise of DeepSeek since the start of 2025, the city government of Tianjin is now incorporating the domestically-grown AI service for both industrial and governance purposes.
The city of Tianjin, with a population greater than that of London or NYC, has incorporated DeepSeek through the Tianjin AI Computing Center.
The Center was opened in 2023 as part of a partnership with the neighboring Hebei district and the tech giant Huawei. The center can process 300 quadrillion calculations per second and features DeepSeek’s largest model of 671 billion parameters.
Partnering governmental and private projects with the center creates space to experiment across smart manufacturing, finance and healthcare, with some already noticing their expenses being cut by using DeepSeek’s famously cheap-to-operate models.
Our Take: As with anything AI, where you look will give you a much different story. Just as China was rolling out DeepSeek across cities around the country, many countries – such as South Korea – were quick to ban the open-source AI for governmental purposes over data use concerns.
France’s government bets big on digital suite to modernize administration - Disha Gupta, Jason Deegan
France’s Interministerial Directorate of Digital Affairs (Dinum) has announced the introduction of a new collaborate suite of digital tools to be implemented across government: with instant messaging, web conference, file sharing and a common workspace.
Dinum, which operates under the Prime Minister’s authority, has previously spearheaded projects like FranceConnect (the modernization of the state’s cloud infrastructure), and has now turned its attention to this interministerial suite for collaborative work.
Unlike proprietary solutions like Microsoft 365 or Google Workforce, the digital suite favors sovereign technologies to ensure data confidentiality, addressing what the French government deems a critical need for security and control of infrastructure.
Our Take: While we recognize the need for secure infrastructure, France’s decision to build sovereign collaborative tools is unusual among governments. It will be interesting to see how they maintain and upgrade this software to keep pace with market leaders like Microsoft and Google.
Finally 100 per cent digital: Estonia’s 30-year journey from the USSR to e-Estonia - Emerging Europe
Estonia has completed a groundbreaking 30-year transformation to become the world’s first fully digital government, achieving 100% online public services by December 2024 - including emotionally complex processes like divorce. This milestone marks the culmination of a journey that began after Estonia’s independence from the USSR in 1991.
Estonia’s Digital ID Cards, which underpin its digital services, serve as universal access points for over 3,000 e-services. Today 85% of births and 56% of marriages are registered online, and 53% of divorces are processed digitally.
Companies in Estonia can be registered in minutes, and tax filings take less than five minutes for 98% of citizens.
Estonia’s approach prioritizes citizen convenience, treating government services with the same efficiency expectations as private-sector platforms like Amazon. The system reduces bureaucratic stress during life’s challenges, with divorce documents automatically including custody and asset division guidance.
GovTech News in Brief
The Bank of Papua New Guinea explores the benefits of digital kina - The Paypers
Papua New Guinea’s central bank is exploring the launch of a digital version of its currency, in collaboration with the Japanese government and private sector, with the goal of improving financial inclusion in the country.
Is GovPay going to be Sri Lanka’s digital leap amidst economic crisis? - Mohammad J Sear, GovInsider
Sri Lanka's GovPay aims to drive digital transformation amidst economic crisis by centralizing government payments through a platform backed by 12 banks and fintech apps.
Icelandic sagas to go digital in landmark cultural project - Michael Chapman, Iceland Review
On the instigation of former Icelandic Minister for Education Lilja Dögg Alfreðsdóttir, the Icelandic sagas are set to be digitized into contemporary Icelandic.
How the rise of AI in Indonesia is expanding financial inclusion - Vincent Henry Iswaratioso, World Economic Forum
Indonesia, which has seen financial inclusion rates rise from 49% to 83% in the last decade, is looking to AI to help improve customer service, reduce fraud, and help foster wider adoption of financial services within the country.
Iraq opens Digital Transformation and Automation Center in Baghdad - Amr Salem, Iraqi News
Iraq has inaugurated a Digital Transformation and Automation Center in Baghdad to modernize government services and advance technological infrastructure.
Our Take: Iraq's 2025 digital government transformation plan aims to modernize public services through new technological initiatives, though website access restrictions currently limit specific implementation details.
Lessons from Taiwan: how digital tools can help governments regain the people’s trust - Alan Boyle, GeekWire
A look at how Taiwan helped regain people’s trust in government through online citizen assemblies, fact-checking, and open-sourcing software.
New Zealand: driving digital transformation in public service - Alita Sharon, OpenGovAsia
New Zealand’s government has launched a 3-year modernization roadmap to unify digital services across agencies through customer-centric design, reusable components, and secure data infrastructure, overseen by the Digital Executive Board.
Ethical AI is turning the Netherlands into an innovation leader - Victor Dey, The Next Web
The Netherlands has emerged as a European innovation leader by blending ethical AI development and climate tech solutions through government-backed initiatives like Kickstart AI and smart city investments, attracting $2.5 billion in tech investments in 2024 (a 39% annual increase).
Thailand’s e-office system to revolutionize government operations - Samaya Dharmaraj, OpenGovAsia
Thailand’s Ministry of Digital Economy and Society is betting big on their e-Office system - which offers a secure and accessible platform for government officials to work from anywhere - by setting a goal of supporting 1M users by the end of 2025.
The Theory Behind the Practice
Act fast on Smart Data to unlock £27 billion in economic growth - Alexander Iosad, Tony Blair Institute for Global Change
TBI’s latest paper looks at how the UK can use the principles and success of open banking to scale a number of digital products across Open Finance, Open Energy, and Open Property.
Open source LLMs hit Europe’s digital sovereignty roadmap - Paul Sawers, TechCrunch
OpenEuroLLM is attempting to create a sovereign, open-source LLM ecosystem for the EU’s 24 official languages. With 20+ participant organizations and a budget paltry compared to that of individual AI organizations in regions like China and the US, questions remain as to how the project will proceed before its anticipated conclusion in 2028.
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