Serbia's inaugural GovTech program, Pakistan's data governance, and Romania's six billion euro bet
Edition #73 Bucharest has invested 6 billion in boosting its digital capabilities, while elsewhere countries around the world are turning towards Digital Public Infrastructure with a renewed focus...
In our previous edition of interweave, we announced the launch of interweave.africa, a sister newsletter where we will cover the latest developments in the digital government landscape across the continent. Expect interviews, thought pieces and roundups from Tunisia to South Africa, Cape Verde to Mauritius.
This week, our attention is firmly back on Europe and Asia, and we are thinking about Digital Public Infrastructure. One of our main stories from the Atlantic Council covers the G7 and G20’s contrasting approaches to DPI, while elsewhere we cover the potential of the technologies in Bangladesh and Pakistan. We were also struck this week by a quote from UCL’s David Eaves - in the modern age, “there is no digital government; there’s just government”. While we won’t be changing our newsletter name just yet, it is clear that governments around the world are starting to agree…
Our main stories this week:
Boosting Europe’s digital leaders: a new momentum for the D9+
Should countries build their own AIs?
What should Digital Public Infrastructure look like? The G7 and G20 offer contrasting visions
Don’t forget to check out our GovTech news in brief, the theory behind the practice and upcoming GovTech events.
Boosting Europe’s digital leaders: a new momentum for the D9+ - Lucinda Creighton & Clara Riedenstein, CEPA
As representatives of Europe’s digital frontrunners, the D9+ group ought to take the lead on setting an anti-protectionist and open approach to digital development, Lucinda Creighton and Clara Riedenstein argue.
Europe’s smaller countries - including the Baltic and Nordic digital leaders- banded together back in 2016 to provide a pro-tech leadership, without being anti-regulation.
Fast forward almost a decade and the moment is right for them to once again take leadership, the authors argue. In a report based on a dozen interviews, they suggest that it should become a more effective pro-tech voice in Europe, through participation and engagement with non-government bodies.
Among the paper’s recommendations, it argues for a mandate and structural upgrade to the body, including focusing on impact assessments and becoming a leading voice against European protectionism.
Should countries build their own AIs? - Chris Stokel-Walker, Coda
According to Goldman Sachs, the Generative AI revolution is expected to increase global GDP by 7% in the next decade. But - with profits being concentrated in just a few private sector companies - Stokel-Walker asks whether countries can flip the script by creating their own sovereign AI models.
Famously, OpenAI declines to share information regarding the data its models are trained on, citing safety risks and the “competitive landscape”. A sovereign AI model would allow countries to know how their model was trained and what it was trained on, making it safer for Public Sector use cases.
A particularly pertinent example here would be building a so-called Policy AI, fed by previously published policy papers going back decades, which civil servants could use to inform present-day policy decisions.
The key questions around such projects lie in their practicality. The UK had announced $1 billion in funding for the development of an exacale computer as of June last year, providing just 1/27th the computing power of OpenAI. Having the money, resources and know-how to develop sovereign competitors is no easy feat.
Our Take: This article is not a new one, but came back across our radar as we prepare for an upcoming interview with the Dutch government about their own sovereign AI. The benefits of such a project for a state are clear - but the practicalities, regulatory practices, and concrete use cases are not much more established 10 months on from this article being published.
What should Digital Public Infrastructure look like? The G7 and G20 offer contrasting visions - Anand Raghuraman, Atlantic Council
The G7’s recent entry into the global Digital Public Infrastructure debate has demonstrated contrasting visions of the future of DPI compared to that of the G20, as defined during India’s 2023 presidency.
The G7 set out their vision of DPI through the Industry, Technology, and Digital Ministerial Declaration earlier this year in March.
While there is significant overlap between the G7 and G20 on DPI, the G20 (which includes the G7 nations, but also several from the Global South) sees DPI as a chance to be more socially transformative than the narrower focus of digital government service delivery as defined by the G7.
One notable callout for the G20 vision is the use of DPI to promote competition in the marketplace, with a greater focus on inclusion for citizens.
Our Take: Digital Public Infrastructure offers a profound opportunity to help provide services and access to those who have been left behind in prior digital government initiatives. “SDGs are not rhetorical targets” noted the UNDP Chief Digital Officer elsewhere this week, citing DPI as a key means of achieving them. While attending the G20 last year one of our authors was struck by the forward-looking way in which policymakers were thinking about DPI, ensuring that it was just the first in a series of steps towards digital transformation.
GovTech News in Brief
Government DX 2024 - as it happened - Richard Johnstone, Global Government Forum
A summary of the Government DX conference by the Global Government Forum, focusing on digital transformation, interacting with the government online, and Digital Public Infrastructure.
Our Take: Also check out a series of short interviews the Global Government Team did around the summit, including this one with Vigdis Joannsdottir, Chief marketing Officer of Digital Iceland.
DPI for the disadvantaged: inside Bangladesh’s inclusive Digital Public Infrastructure drive - Yogesh Hirdaramani, GovInsider
While Bangladesh has become a Digital Public Infrastructure champion, the government still has room to improve service for its poorest residents. This interview with Anir Chowdhury, a Policy Advisor for the Bangladeshi agency Aspire to Innovate, discusses how to close that gap.
Our Take: This article echoes similar sentiments to “Smart Bangladesh 2041: Balancing Ambition with Reality”, which looks at the promise of new technologies in solving the social challenges the country currently faces. Check out our own interview with Anir Chowdhury back in 2022.
#DigiGovSpotlight Serbia’s inaugural GovTech program plays matchmaker for digital government - Si Ying Thian, GovInsider
Serbia’s Director of Digitalization talks about the steps the country is taking to engage the private sector in realizing its digital government ambitions.
The battle of the data strategies - Matt Ross, Global Government Forum
At Global Government Forum’s recent Government Digital Summit, Canada and the UK’s competing strategies for government data went head-to-head, with a unique judge determining the winner.
AI could save lives in the NHS - but a lack of adoption pathways are holding it back - Kai Nicol-Schwarz, Sifted
A deep dive into how AI is (and isn’t) being used to transform the UK’s National Health Service, including the opportunities and challenges with widespread adoption across the organization.
Our Take: To help with the last mile problem and help solutions scale, the NHS has inked a £10m deal with big data firm Palantir to support the rollout of a central infrastructure for connecting health information and service data.
APAC nations move on digital transformation, but at varying speeds - Joel McConvey, Biometric Update
Responding to new Gartner analysis on the top Digital Government Trends, Biometric Update looks at the different contextual drivers accelerating digital government across Southeast Asia.
Enhancing data governance in Pakistan - Tariq Malik, UNDP
This new report from the UNDP looks at how data can help drive development in Pakistan. Its central analysis, from the former Chairman of the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) in Islamabad, looks at how a data governance framework might set the foundations for the country to “deploy Digital Public Infrastructures at dizzying speed”.
EU Digital Wallet and beyond - Erika Piirmets & Carmen Raal, e-Estonia
The latest e-Estonia podcast focuses on what the adoption of the EU Digital Wallet means for the continent, and the precedent it sets for digital infrastructure across the globe.
Romania’s six billion euro bet to accelerate digital public services - Manuela Preoteasa, Euractiv
Romania’s digital public bureaucracy is one of the least developed in the EU. A new 6 billion euro investment is hoping to change that, aiming to tackle structural problems like chronic digital underskilling.
AI-Powered World Health chatbot is flubbing some answers - Jessica Nix, Bloomberg UK
The WHO has developed a human-like avatar trained on ChatGPT 3.5, but it is still in its early days, hallucinating and without up-to-date information provided by later versions of the LLM.
The Hungarian presidency: towards a united European Digital powerhouse - Samia Fitouri, Digital Europe
With Hungary taking over the rotating Presidency of the Council of the EU later this year, DIGITALEUROPE’s Director General Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl offers recommendations for how it might use its presidency to improve the state of European digitization.
Upcoming GovTech Events
Meet the leaders with Minister for Digital Government & Gender Equality Marie Bjerre - AmCham Denmark
The American Chamber of Commerce in Denmark is hosting a session with the Danish Minister for Digital Government and Gender Equality Marie Bjerre, including a look into Denmark’s new digitization strategy.
Luke, you have Serbia in the title but it's not mentioned in the newsletter. Where's that story?