Leading countries have have developed sound strategies and established leadership in digital initiatives.
South Korea leads the top digital government among 33 countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) league table.
The 2019 Digital Government Index (DGI) measures the maturity level of digital government and digital transformation of the public sectors of 29 OECD member states and four non-member partner countries and was released in mid-October 2020,
South Korea was followed by Japan, Colombia and Spain. These countries have developed sound strategies and established leadership and co-ordination structures empowered with strong decision-making responsibilities to embed digital processes in public operations and service design and delivery in a cohesive manner.
These countries have also emphasised the development of standards and guidelines, and prioritised efforts to promote coherent and well-equipped digital development across public sector organisations.
In contrast, low performing countries present less mature ecosystems for embedding digital by design, lacking the right governance and policy levers to secure coherent implementation and the use of shared digital technologies. Overall, countries scored more evenly in this dimension which could function as a proxy for broader maturity in most of the assessed topics.
While all countries have a dedicated entity (e.g. agency, division, or unit) with the authority and mandate to lead and co-ordinate digital government, a considerable gap exists between the advisory5 and decision-making6 responsibilities assessed by the Survey.
Decision making responsibilities of authorities regarding digital government are still limited, notably when compared with assigned advisory responsibilities.
This risk hampers the establishment of a sustainable, comprehensive and whole-of-government digital culture, and could impact progress towards digital transformation in the public sector. Evidence shows that only 48 per cent of countries prioritise investments and approval of ICT projects across governments (decision-making responsibility), while 79 per cent of leading units or agencies in countries are empowered to conduct ex ante revisions and evaluations of ICT projects across central/federal governments (advisory responsibility). This limited level of empowerment may reduce the capacity of these authorities to enforce common standards and services, likely constraining the cohesion of public sector organisations.
In contrast, most countries have respective public sector organisations that co-ordinate the development of a National Digital Government Strategy (NDGS) or similar policy document (decision-making responsibility), with 32 out of 33 (97 per cent) of countries having a dedicated strategy or comparable document for these purposes.
A similar limited level of empowerment is observed in co-ordination bodies for government ICT projects.
While 70 per cent of countries confirm the existence of formal co-ordination instances for government ICT projects, such as a Council of CIOs or related bodies at central or federal levels of government (Figure 7), these act as consulting rather than decision-making mechanisms for digital government policies.
Most of these countries report the use of soft policy levers, including the development of guidelines for standardised ICT infrastructure and the implementation of strategies (81 per cent), rather than hard policy levers like mandating external reviews and providing financial support for digital projects.
