Kyiv's Digital Government Center, Lebanon's Digital ID, and Indonesia's Unified GovTech Platform
Edition #80 WEF has launched its second digital government center in Ukraine's capital, while elsewhere Indonesia's new digital platform is attempting to reduce its proliferation of government apps...
In our previous roundup, we focused on the role of technology in parliamentary proceedings, looking at its impact on the seat of democracy itself. We covered the UK Parliament’s new digital strategy, and Singapore’s LLM-powered search tool for its own parliamentary proceedings.
This week, we’re focused on keeping track of the numerous digital identity projects in flow across Europe and Asia, thinking about the ways in which these technologies might disrupt existing digital government systems. As well as the EU Digital Identity Wallet, which interweave covered last week in a thought piece, we look at progress in Vietnam and in Lebanon, where the World Bank has been supporting in getting Beirut’s Digital Identity solutions off the ground.
Our main stories this week include:
Vietnam’s Digital ID Transformation
The launch of a Global Government Technology Center in Kyiv
Indonesia’s digital platform to simplify government services
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.
World Economic Forum and Ukraine to launch a Global Government Technology Center in Kyiv - World Economic Forum
The World Economic Forum is launching a Global Government Technology Centre in Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv.
This is the second such center in the world after GGTC Berlin opened earlier this year, designed to accelerate international collaboration on public sector innovation, digital transformation, and emerging technologies.
Ukraine was chosen as the location for the GGTC because of the strong performance of the Diia platform, widely seen as a leader in the digital government space. The platform - covered elsewhere in interweave articles - features over 20 million users, 100 government services, and a digital ID that underpins everything from driver’s licences to social benefits.
As well as contributing to multilateral cooperation, the hope is that the center will support the digital transformation of Ukraine’s government, including the development of digital skills.
Our Take: Selecting Ukraine as a location for an international digital government center should come as no surprise to anyone who has been following interweave over the past year. Diia’s success despite the situation facing the country is nothing short of remarkable.
President Jokowi unveils INA digital to simplify Indonesia’s government - Indonesian Government
Indonesia’s President, Joko Widodo, has unveiled a new integrated platform of government services to simplify government bureaucracy and improve Indonesia’s competitiveness at a global level.
The focus of the project seems to be on strengthening digital public infrastructure, which the President called a “toll road for public service digitization”, with priority services identified to be integrated into a one-stop portal.
The new platform, which integrates existing government services, is set to tame the proliferation of government apps which has at times hampered the country’s digital progress. The President highlighted how one ministry has 500+ apps, forcing citizens to wade through masses of information rather than focusing on simple solutions.
All in all, the public service digital platform is set to integrate 27,000 distinct applications and online platforms created by government ministries, agencies and regional governments. This will take place through an API system, utilizing an integrated data center and cloud computing exclusively run by government.
Our Take: “From this year, stop creating new applications, stop creating new platforms. Stop it!”, were Joko Widodo’s words in a speech announcing the new app. It is a familiar refrain in the world of digital government, and on several occasions interweave has covered how the likes of superapps might solve the sort of problem’s faced here by Indonesia and elsewhere by Malaysia.
Digital identity: building the foundations of Digital Public Infrastructure in Lebanon - Abdallah Jabbour & Christopher Tullis, World Bank
The World Bank takes a look at the digital public infrastructure foundations of Lebanon, including the country’s plans to improve upon its current digital identity offerings.
Against the backdrop of a severe economic, financial and political crisis, the 2020-2030 Lebanon Digital Transformation Strategy (DTS) has put digital public infrastructure heart and center, including the prioritization of a reliable digital ID and electronic signature capability.
In delivering this agenda, Lebanon has been working closely with the World Bank, who have recently published reports providing an overview and analysis of the foundational identity ecosystem in Lebanon, with notes on both short-term and longer-term areas of potential improvement.
The reports offer a number of recommendations targeting both quick wins - such as using the existing barcode on the back of national ID cards to reduce data entry issues - together with more comprehensive systemic investments such as the introduction of e-signature technology or the implementation of a digital verification service for the current national ID.
GovTech News in Brief
Vietnam PM orders wider implementation of national ID for digital transformation - Abhishek Jadhav, Biometric Update
Vietnam’s Prime Minister has called for the furthering of the nation’s digital transformation agenda, particularly as it relates to digital identity, off the back of an attempt by the State Bank of Vietnam to improve digital financial services in the country.
Participatory approaches in digital governance: five OGP Examples from the field - Sarah Kennedy & Tim Hughes, OpenGov
OpenGov takes a comparative look at the digital participation landscape across a number of different countries, focusing on best practice from Poland’s child safety work to a Bulgarian university’s use of AI in academic institutions.
Writers and publishers in Singapore reject a government plan to train AI on their work - Nicholas Yong, Rest of World
The majority of Singapore’s literary community pushed back against the government’s requests to use their work to train a new $52 million National Multimodal LLM Programme (NMLP).
Is the UAE Pass Safe? Authorities respond to social media rumors of fraud - Yash Bajaj, Times Now News
UAE officials have been forced to respond to claims about fraud regarding the digital identity app UAE Pass, following the circulation of rumors around Twitter/X.
Our Take: It’s interesting to think about how social media can sensationalize both real and imagined problems of digital government systems, and the impacts that these “false alarms” may have on true digital government emergencies. We also saw how digital government solutions can tackle these challenges a couple of months ago, with Japan’s deployment of AI to detect “fake news” about the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Writers and publishers in Singapore reject a government plan to train AI on their work - Nicholas Yong, Rest of World
The majority of Singapore’s literary community pushed back against the government’s requests to use their work to train a new $52 million National Multimodal LLM Programme (NMLP).
What leaders need to know about the Australian Digital ID Bill - Benjamin Laker, Forbes
With Australia’s new bill paving the way for an economy-wide Digital ID ecosystem, Laker looks at the background of the law, including its implications for privacy and surveillance concerns.
Addressing the deepfake challenge ahead of the European Elections - Nanna-Louise Linde, Microsoft
Microsoft’s VP of European Government Affairs, Nanna-Louise Linde, outlines how the tech company increased its support to address the challenges that deep fakes posed for the European elections.
Sweden wants to let police use facial recognition technology - Euractiv
The Swedish government is considering allowing its law enforcement to use camera surveillance with facial recognition software. In the face of recent EU AI regulations, they have cited criminal investigations as an exception to privacy laws around using such technology.
Our take: While Sweden would be among the first European countries to implement law enforcement facial recognition, this technology is already widely used in American law enforcement, most notably Clearview AI.
Inside Poland’s “CanDoCracy” approach to GovTech - Yogesh Hirdaramani, GovInsider
Poland’s “CanDoCracy” makes use of collaborative digital government efforts to improve the lives of its young people through hackathons, working with startups and providing STEAM education for students. They are even the first country to introduce video games to the school curriculum!
Skills the Irish government CIO uses to advance digital transformation - Ian Campbell, CIO
Barry Lowry shares his “three circle strategy plan” for digital government success: digitalization of public services, ensuring regulatory compliance like the 2019 Data Sharing Governance Act, and demonstrating quick wins.
The Scottish Borders Council has introduced a new digital toolkit to help tackle waste levels across the region - Sam Trendall, Public Technology
The Scottish Borders Council has created a toolkit to help tackle waste levels across the region, providing location-specific details like collection days, advice on how to dispose of packaging, and what items can and cannot be recycled at the curbside.
Saudi Arabia joins BIS’ CBDC Project Bridge as a full participant - Cheyenne Ligon, CoinDesk
Saudi Arabia has joined China, Hong Kong, Thailand, and the UAE on a pilot financial settlement network taking technological inspiration from the cryptocurrency community, promising to more closely integrate international finance through digital government infrastructure.
Upcoming GovTech Events
London Tech Week just wrapped up, featuring an agenda filled with AI, smart transportation, and spotlights from a number of countries that are leaders in digital innovation, including Ukraine and Türkiye.
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