Digital Government Review of Luxembourg

Executive summary

In an increasingly digital context, governments are faced with the challenge of adapting and inventing new ways of better serving citizens. Whether it is paying taxes, proving an identity, or claiming financial support – government services are essential to the lives of people and businesses, and therefore, the digital transformation of these services is too.

This Digital Government Review of Luxembourg was conducted at the request of the Government of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg with the purpose of supporting digital government transformation in Luxembourg and the ambitions of the Government to deliver more digital, innovative and inclusive public services.

With the launch of the Electronic Governance Strategy 2021-2025 and the creation of the Ministry for Digitalisation (MDIGI), the High Committee for Digital Transformation, and the Inter-Ministerial Committee for Digitalisation, Luxembourg has established a solid foundation for governing and coordinating digital government policies. This new governance approach can play an important role in aligning priorities among ministries and raising awareness about the need to further prioritise digitalisation in a sustainable and coherent manner.

The Government IT Centre (CTIE) continues to play a key role in providing common IT infrastructure, coordinating the central IT budget, and managing digital projects in support of public sector organisations. Although this centralised approach has positive benefits, a more sustainable and effective approach ahead would require increasing ministries’ ownership of their digitalisation journeys and decreasing their reliability on the CTIE’s resources. The Govtech Lab is a good example of an initiative aimed to help ministries in this process, similarly to the digital advisory service run by MDIGI, and the digital training courses hosted by the National Institute for Public Administration (INAP).

Knowing that data is one of the most important assets of digitalisation, Luxembourg is working to improve the management and use of data through policies and standards such as the National Interoperability Framework (NIF) and tools and platforms provided by the CTIE. However, a dedicated data strategy could help further clarify roles and responsibilities on data management across the public sector. Moreover, actions such as designing a national data architecture framework and improving the visibility of existing data standards and tools could help promote data quality and exchange, which would support data interoperability and implementation of the Once-Only Principle.

Finally, being a digital government implies rethinking public service design and delivery in the digital age. Initiatives such as the website and app MYGUICHET.LU and LET’S SIMPLIFY TOGETHER!.LU demonstrate the ambition of Luxembourg to improve the user experience with public services, ensure services are inclusive, and simplify access. At the same time, more focus could be directed towards designing integrated services, increasing the awareness of user journeys, adopting agile methodologies, and establishing communities of practices to work together in teams across government.

Key policy recommendations

Contextual factors and institutional models for digital government

• Leverage the contextual factors of Luxembourg’s political and administrative culture and structure to support the digital government agenda, including its digital maturity, diverse population, and centralised administration.

• Strengthen the mandate and role of the Ministry for Digitalisation as the organisation-in-charge of co-ordinating efforts and building coherence in the development of a digital government.

• Prioritise further co-ordination and co-operation around digital government policies and projects through the High Committee for Digitalisation, the Inter-Ministerial Committee for Digitalisation, and the Govtech Lab.

Policy levers, talent and skills for digital government

• Strengthen the strategy and plan for digital government through the use of key performance indicators (KPI) and develop a publicly available monitoring tool to track progress of the implementation of the Electronic Governance Strategy 2021-2025 and roadmap.

• Use the new digital advisory service to support ministries and public sector organisations in defining their digital strategies to align with national standards and priorities.

• Promote the adoption and use of common policy levers for digital government investments that support alignment and agility in the implementation of ICT/digital projects, including agile project management and innovative public procurement mechanisms.

• Increase transparency of the CTIE's digital project management by publishing its project portfolio and pipeline and providing simple guidance on the prioritisation selection criteria for digital projects.

• Consider developing mandatory trainings both for public sector leadership and digital/data professionals in government on skills that are core to digital leadership and digital government project implementation.

Treading the path towards a data-driven public sector

• Develop and publish a national public sector data strategy with concrete objectives and milestones covering the different elements of the OECD data-driven public sector framework; and integrate existing provisions that currently are spread across the Electronic Governance Strategy 2021-2025, the National Interoperability Framework, the Open Data Strategy, and the national AI strategy.

• Improve the tactical capacity of ministries and public sector institutions to better manage and use data by developing ministry-level data strategies and designating data steward roles within each ministry.

• Develop a national architecture framework for basic data to support data standardisation and exchange of base register data and achieve related objectives such as the once-only principle.

• Support ministries and public sector institutions in generating value through data use by encouraging their application to 1) anticipate and plan; 2) deliver; and 3) monitor and evaluate performance related to services, internal processes, policy- and rulemaking.

• Secure trustworthy management and use of data in the public sector by providing common guidance on data ethics, data quality, transparency, privacy protection, and digital security.

Building user-driven public service design and delivery in the digital age

• Strengthen the strategic vision across the public sector to inspire a user-driven and omni-channel service design and delivery approach across ministries and public sector institutions.

• Foster an agile mind-set and culture that support the development of user-driven services by increasing awareness about the importance of service design, sharing practices and data related to services, and creating communities of practice for service designers.

• Empower ministries and public sector institutions to be more autonomous in the digitalisation of government services by providing common guidelines, service standards and digital enablers that also help secure coherence and alignment across the public sector.