Digital transformation: a critical enabler
The potential and benefits of digital transformation are far-reaching and widely recognized. At the macroeconomic level, digital transformation positively impacts economic growth and development, improves market outcomes, and boosts productivity. From a governance perspective, digital technologies have the potential to enhance transparency and accountability and empower citizens. For society, they hold promise to enhance education, facilitate social inclusion and communication, and improve the deployment of healthcare and government services. Finally, digital tools and technologies can also act as a catalyst for advancing implementation of the SDGs and sustainability initiatives more broadly.
Championing digital transformation through a national strategy
At the national level, digital transformation is a complex process involving many stakeholders that cuts across nearly all domains, including healthcare, education, transportation, energy, environment, administration and more. It involves significant investment, a commitment to addressing complex ethical and legal issues, and demands continuous adaptation to keep pace with the ever-changing digital landscape. Thus, navigating digital transformation at the national level requires the use of comprehensive approaches to achieve policy coordination and coherence. A well-defined national digital transformation strategy (DTS) can serve as a valuable guide, providing a framework for prioritizing national objectives and guiding resource allocation towards desired outcomes. It can also help governments navigate emergent situations and times of uncertainty.
Realizing the potential of digital transformation and the risks of being left behind in the digital era, governments around the world are increasingly putting digital transformation at the front and center of their policy agendas. As of 2020, over half of all countries worldwide had adopted a digital strategy or plan. In this context, we define a digital strategy as the government’s most comprehensive strategy at the national level that exclusively or primarily addresses digital policy issues across domains affected by or affecting digital transformation.
National digital transformation strategies generally have an overall objective and mission statement that is grounded in the nation’s political, social, economic and environmental context and needs. Prominent overarching goals of national digital strategies include making the country a digital front-runner, stimulating digital innovation, spurring productivity and growth, and enhancing well-being. Further, many countries are increasingly adopting strategies tailored to specific technologies, issues or policy domains. Examples include strategies for broadband development, artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), 5G, cybersecurity, digital government (GovTech), and upskilling.
Cultivating resilient strategies
Successful development and implementation of national digital strategies requires effective governance. In 2024, over 50 nations have undergone or will undergo high-stakes elections, highlighting the need for resilience and continuity of national digital transformation strategies amidst changing leadership, especially in multi-party nations. As governments turn over, new administrations may disregard or make significant changes to existing strategies or plans, stalling progress and compromising budget and resources. To sustain progress, it is critical that digital transformation strategies, as well as their priorities and strategic objectives, remain stable throughout changing political cycles.
In developing a resilient, long-term national strategy, the following practices should be considered:
- Prioritization on the national agenda: Digital transformation efforts are most effective with a firm commitment and a vision at the highest level. Today, digital touches nearly all policy domains. Thus, a determination and commitment to digital transformation from all leaders and key decision-makers involved is critical. Strong political will ensures that DTS formulation is coordinated and integrated across multiple sectors and remains prioritized in the national agenda, even amidst changes to administration.
- Establishing clear strategic governance: The development of a national DTS should be led by a competent authority with the mandate needed to lead and coordinate a comprehensive strategy. The authority should have adequate financial and human resources to drive the DTS development process. Best practices also suggest that the lead institution should be a neutral entity to overcome any inherent bias and avoid intra-governmental competition for resources. Globally, an increasing number of countries are allocating the responsibility for developing digital transformation strategies to a supra-ministerial body or to a ministry or agency dedicated specifically to digital affairs.
- Fostering collaborative governance: To be properly grounded in the national context, a DTS requires bringing multiple stakeholders together to engage in some form of collaborative governance to support, guide and advise the lead institution in the development of a DTS. The goal of such collaborative governance is to foster a sense of ownership, a collaborative culture, and partnership among stakeholders to achieve better outcomes. Two predominant strategies are
- Whole-of-government approach (WGA): joint efforts of ministries, public administrations and public agencies to deliver a common DTS and/or its implementation
- Whole-of-society approach (WSA): extends the WGA approach by placing additional emphasis on the roles of the private sector, academia, civil society and political decision-makers
- Aligning with national and local needs: To ensure coherence, the national DTS needs to be aligned with higher-level national (e.g. national development plan, county’s long-term vision) and supra-national strategies (e.g. EU’s Digital Decade programme, Digital Transformation Strategy for Africa, Arab Digital Economy Vision, ASEAN Digital Masterplan 2025). Successful, long-term strategies address overall national, regional or international development goals, while also taking into account local contexts and needs.
- Ensuring strategic monitoring and evaluation: A national DTS’s strategic objectives need to be measurable, so that progress can be assessed continuously against the same benchmarks for the strategy’s duration, even when administrations change. Governments should set targets, collect data, and use relevant indicators to measure progress against these targets. Further, setting guidelines on how, when and by whom DTS implementation will be monitored should be considered, as the implementation of individual tasks and objectives is usually distributed between different ministries or institutions, which may be on different political cycles.
- Allocating funding effectively: Appropriate resources (both financial and human) are the key to an effective national DTS. Implementation can only be driven forward when an adequate budget is made available. Therefore, it is essential to evaluate, plan and allocate the financial resources necessary. The DTS should not only specify strategic objectives themselves, but also outline the budget required for their implementation. Without a centralized funding approach, ministries and agencies may repurpose existing budgets rather than allocate new funding dedicated to implementing the NDS, or fail to allocate necessary resources at all.
Championing digital transformation through a national strategy is critical for driving social development and economic prosperity. Developing and implementing digital transformation policies is challenging, in part because it involves many interrelated policy domains and actors. Predicting which digital strategies will withstand the test of time is complex, but elements like governance and institutional frameworks, leadership, human and financial resources, and commitments and strength of stakeholders’ partnership all lend themselves to resiliency amidst election years and political turnover.
Sylvie Antal is a Policy Research and Communications Associate at Portulans Institute and an incoming 2024-25 Fulbright U.S. Student Program Fellow. She holds a Bachelors degree in Information Science from the University of Michigan’s School of Information and a Masters degree in Human-Computer Interaction.