The public sector needs to embrace digital technology and data to transform the interaction with the users of public services, throughout the whole policy and service lifecycle. This includes policy design, delivery, monitoring and evaluation.
Digital government
Digital government explores and supports the development and implementation of digital government strategies and initiatives that bring governments closer to citizens and businesses. It recognises that technology is a strategic driver to not only improve public sector efficiency, but also to make policies more effective, and governments more open, transparent, innovative, participatory and trustworthy.
Key messages
Achieving a government-wide digital transformation in a coherent and inclusive manner requires a solid governance, including a strategic vision, a clear mandate for digital government, good leadership, and effective co-ordination and collaboration with actors within and outside the public sector.
Governments should adopt clear business cases for the use of resources on identified objectives and monitor results. The necessary capabilities, including skilled people, enabling tools andregulatory and legal frameworks, are required to capture new digital government opportunities while mitigating associated risks (such as those related to security, privacy and inclusion).
There are significant differences in country approaches to ensure ethical management and use of algorithms by public sector institutions. Currently, 53% of countries have formal requirements for the ethical use of AI (e.g. laws or regulations); 40% use policy initiatives such as guidelines, standards or principles; and 7% of surveyed countries do not use any instruments.
Data governance can enable governments to manage data across public sectors in a secure, ethical and efficient way, enabling decision-making based on good evidence. The rise in the use artificial intelligence by public sectors stresses the importance of adopting robust data governance frameworks to ensure inclusive and sustainable public services.
Context
How are countries making progress towards digital government?
The OECD Digital Government Index (DGI) measures the implementation of the OECD Recommendation on Digital Government Strategies, assessing efforts made by governments to establish the foundations necessary for a coherent, human-centred digital transformation of the public sector across OECD Member and key partner countries. Evidence is gathered to support countries in making concrete policy decisions.
How are countries making progress in the design and implementation of national open government data policies?
The OURdata Index benchmarks the design and implementation of open data policies at the central level and highlights the sustained political and policy relevance of this area of work for OECD Member and partner countries and beyond. The results show that OECD countries are increasingly moving towards the development of government-wide data strategies. However, open government data remains a core component of these strategies as essential to strengthen good governance, due to the social and business value created by shared and public data.
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