This chapter outlines the GovTech Enablers that create the environment needed to foster the growth of an active GovTech ecosystem and facilitate the expansion of good practices. These enablers ensure that the whole GovTech ecosystem operates in a co-ordinated way and progresses in a unified direction through engagement at the strategic, institutional, and network layers.
Enabling Digital Innovation in Government
The OECD GovTech Policy Framework
OECD Digital Government Studies
Abstract
The GovTech Enablers help to co-ordinate and facilitate the effective use of GovTech at the macro level. While the GovTech Building Blocks can contribute to the success of individual GovTech projects, the enablers ensure that the whole GovTech ecosystem is co-ordinated and moving in a unified direction. There are 3 layers of enablers: strategic, institutional, and network (see Figure 4.1), which are used to initiate, mobilise, and improve GovTech collaborations by creating the right environment to foster good practices and an active GovTech ecosystem.
Source: Authors’ own design.
The strategic layer acknowledges the crucial role played by the strategy and leadership in mobilising support for GovTech within the public sector. By focussing on this layer, public sector entities can encourage new GovTech initiatives, support and integrate existing initiatives, and demonstrate the strategic importance of GovTech as part of the broader digital government agenda. It can serve as a top-down facilitation of GovTech, providing a clear roadmap and direction for its advancement. By combining strategic guidance and strong leadership, governments can effectively ensure that GovTech has the necessary attention and resources to become a priority area and secure its sustainable growth.
GovTech strategies
Strategies are crucial for a coherent digital government, as they help aligning actions with policy objectives to ensure effective, efficient, and organised implementation (OECD, 2021[1]). For GovTech specifically, strategies can play a vital role in maintaining support and momentum, particularly during political changes or when the novelty fades. Good strategies are complemented with goals and milestones and backed up by financial resources, investment plans, or even changes in policy and regulation. GovTech strategies help address the gaps in the building blocks, such as infrastructure, skills, funding, or the maturity of GovTech partners. They can also ensure alignment and coherence with other work underway on digital government, digital economy, and public sector innovation (OECD, 2014[2]; OECD, 2020[3]).
Due to its place in the ‘digital government toolbox’, GovTech is generally incorporated into national digital or digital government strategies. For example, Estonia’s Digital Agenda 2030 includes a chapter on “Open innovation and development of GovTech community” (Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, 2021[4]), which promoted cooperation with the private sector (including start-ups and GovTech partners) as a key principle in developing digital government solutions. France also included a GovTech Lab and GovTech Catalogue in its digital government strategy to encourage the creation of digital public services using the best available solutions (Department of Public Service and Transformation, 2019[5]). Brazil’s Digital Transformation Strategy (2022-2026) also includes a strategic action to foster the participation of GovTech partners to help solve key challenges across different policy domains (CGEE, 2022[6]).
Some dedicated GovTech strategies do also exist and can be valuable in providing legitimacy and support for the practice. For instance, the Government of Ireland released the Cruinniú GovTech Report in 2019 that resulted in collaborative efforts from government, industry and academia to define Ireland’s aspirations for GovTech and identify measures to track progress (Expenditure, 2019[7]) These strategies may often be less formal than the national digital strategy but are still valuable in driving GovTech adoption, as well as in signalling to the GovTech ecosystem that this is a priority practice for the government.
However, it should also be noted that having a strategy is not essential for the emergence of successful GovTech programmes, as with the establishment of CivTech Scotland in 2016, GovTech Lab in Lithuania, and GovTech Polska in Poland in 2019. These organisations were launched by intrapreneurs and used a bottom-up approach to build genuine support. The feasibility of this approach will depend on a country’s context, and a strategy will generally be needed to build a sustainable practice.
GovTech leadership
Digital government benefits from leadership needed to drive a coherent and sustainable digital agenda, e.g. the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Chief Data Officer (CDO). Similarly, GovTech needs leadership to set a clear direction, mobilise resources, and advocate for its importance. This is because GovTech is:
relatively new and disruptive: GovTech engages with the unknown by innovating processes and diversifying supplier ecosystems, so leaders need to build endorsement for the value that it brings.
generally higher risk: GovTech involves iteration and experimentation, which often requires a higher risk appetite. It needs leaders to advocate for it in strategic planning and project approval.
highly cross-sectoral: GovTech can involve a diverse range of stakeholders, organisations, and even suppliers. Senior leaders are often more able to co-ordinate efforts across these sectors.
Strong leadership is therefore critical to advocate for and drive adoption of GovTech across organisations. This should be done in line with a leader’s focus on communicating a clear vision on digital government, actively championing its benefits, supporting decentralised decision making, and being actively engaged, visible and approachable (OECD, 2020[8]). However, GovTech leadership can be either:
directly or indirectly responsible: some countries have dedicated leadership roles for GovTech, as with Poland and Lithuania, whereas other countries have leaders with broader responsibilities for digital government or government data, who act as informal GovTech champions. Direct responsibility helps to elevate the role of GovTech in the digital agenda, but having informal champions may be more achievable for countries with limited resources.
political or non-political: political leadership can provide authority and influence, but there is a risk that politicising GovTech could hinder its long-term effectiveness and sustainability. Non-political leadership, like the CIO, can provide stability and continuity for GovTech projects.
Overall, having leaders to drive GovTech ensures that the practices are coherent, have sustained focus, and are backed up by the commitment needed to enable a broader digital transformation. These leaders act as catalysts for change – both as champions for GovTech and in enabling its success.
The institutional layer represents the GovTech teams that have been established across governments at the national, regional, or local levels, or within a specific policy domain. These teams provide hands-on support and guidance to run GovTech programmes or projects and take the lead in addressing any gaps in the building blocks. These teams actively contribute to building capacity, providing dedicated time and focus, and promoting GovTech. They can create environments that foster experimentation, learning, and innovation, which mitigates the impact of any maturity gaps. For example, if there is a lack of tools or processes to scale innovative solutions, these teams can establish innovation spaces within their programmes for GovTech projects to address this gap. These teams can also help drive change or promote better engagement across different policy sectors and public sector institutions. Therefore, these teams have value in ensuring the smooth execution of GovTech initiatives and programs.
Many GovTech teams and programmes have been established to overcome divergence in organisational culture between public sector and start-ups, the complexity of public procurement, and the unique market dynamics of GovTech compared to other emerging ecosystems, such as fintech (Kuziemski et al., 2022[9]). They will often also be designed to overcome challenges around funding, resourcing, and capability within agencies through structured programmes or processes that can be applied agnostically and seek to replicate near-perfect conditions for the co-creation of digital solutions. This is often complemented by capacity-building activities (such as workshops or academies), community and ecosystem building activities (such as events or networking opportunities), support for entrepreneurs (accelerator programmes), funding GovTech projects, and creating GovTech marketplaces.
While many GovTech teams are focussed on delivery, there is benefit in having an organisation in charge to provide leadership, governance, and strategic alignment, and a mandate for GovTech to happen (OECD, 2021[1]). This can be challenging due to the scope, scale, and replicability of GovTech – covering different levels of government and policy domains, but also because the practice covers different portfolio responsibilities like digital government, public sector innovation, public procurement, and entrepreneurship. For example, GovTech teams have typically been part of other institutions, such as digitalisation ministries or agencies (e.g., in Luxembourg and Scotland), innovation ministries or agencies (e.g., in Lithuania), or procurement agencies (e.g., in Norway). Therefore, having a dedicated organisation can help better connect GovTech actors, as well as to monitor and evaluate the collaborations.
Based on lessons learnt from 13 GovTech teams in Europe, there is clear value in focussing on the institutional layer as a key enabler for GovTech based on: (Kuziemski et al., 2022[9])
Proximity to executive power: to overcome challenges from bureaucratic culture and processes by having a strong connection to executive authority and the legitimacy of a political mandate.
Variety of models: to help develop the right structure, organisation, and approach for the team.
Lean teams: to facilitate agility and nurture a start-up-like operational setting.
Individual changemakers: to drive adoption and best practice of GovTech in the public sector.
Public value: to ensure that projects deliver efficiency, simplification, better user-experience, as well as broader value in areas like sustainability, circular economy, citizen-centric public services.
Right funding at the right stage: to fund the development of pilots for digital initiatives, but also as a tool to deliver valuable investment in the early stages of emerging entrepreneurship.
Friction with regulation or processes: for when the agile, experimental, and outcomes-focussed nature of GovTech risks friction with internal process (usually in budgeting and procurement).
Finally, while the institutional layer can be categorised into national, regional, or local and policy-specific areas, governments do not need to establish teams in all these areas to be effective. However, teams can exist in each of these levels and complement each other, provided that the right co-ordination is in place.
National GovTech teams
Given GovTech methodologies are agnostic to sector or location, national GovTech teams can provide a centralised support for GovTech projects at the national level. These teams are often set up as part of ministries or agencies to support digital government transformation and a more innovative public sector. The benefit of national teams is that they can ensure coherent understanding and development of GovTech across the country. Being at the centre of government, such teams often have more access to decision-making processes on the building blocks, as well as a more comprehensive picture of what is happening across the ecosystem. Examples of national GovTech teams include: 10x in US, GovTech Polska in Poland, GovTech Lab in Lithuania, GovTech Lab in Luxembourg, MiLAB in Colombia, the Government and Digital Transformation Laboratory in Peru, DINUM in France, Accelerate Estonia, the GovTech Campus in Germany and Startup in Residence Intergov in the Netherlands.
GovTech Lab in Lithuania
GovTech Lab was launched in 2019 and is part of the Innovation Agency Lithuania. It promotes public sector innovation by providing organisations with methods, tools, approaches and resources to use technology to solve public sector challenges. GovTech Lab’s main activities include:
Co-ordinating GovTech challenges: with a structured innovation programme for co-creation between the public sector and startups to build pilot solutions (GovTech Challenge Series). The programme consists of four main stages: 1) problem selection, 2) transforming problem into a challenge, 3) solution idea selection, and 4) pilot development. It is based on a design contest procurement mechanism and provides public sector entities with funding to build pilot solutions (approximately EUR 53,000). At the time of writing, GovTech Lab Lithuania organised six iterations of the GovTech Challenge Series, with 96 participating challenges.
Improving public sector innovation skills: including through workshops to municipalities, national GovTech Academy, and GovTech study visits to other countries.
Building ecosystem and community: it includes running international networks and programmes, including the GovTech Global Alliance, EU GovTech incubator, and Global Scale-Up Programme. It also organises conferences and events, for example for the GovTech Leaders, GovTech Awards, and the Public Sector Innovators’ Breakfast.
MiLAB in Columbia
MiLAB is a GovTech and public impact lab in Columbia that aims to contribute to the digital transformation acceleration of the public sector. It connects government with start-ups and small-to-medium-sized-businesses that use emerging technologies and innovative methodologies. It also maps GovTech start-ups in the country and organises GovTech bootcamps for public sector officials.
MiLAB also runs a challenge-based programme, which consists of 5 phases: 1) Call for Challenges, 2) Identifying the challenge, 3) Connecting GovTech solutions, 4) Strengthening GovTech Solutions, 5) Implementation. As part of the programme, MiLAB provides innovative tools and processes to public employees such as human-centred design, design thinking, open innovation.
Regional or local GovTech teams
GovTech teams can also be established in regional or local governments. This approach depends on the size and structure of the country, as well as the broader state of innovation and GovTech at the national level. Regional and local GovTech teams can benefit from their proximity to citizens and ‘on the ground’ challenges, while their impact can more easily be seen and felt by the local communities. It may also be quicker to establish GovTech teams at the local level, which can enable more agile collaboration (Filer, 2018[12]). Regional and local teams include CivTech Scotland, IdeiaGov from Sao Paulo State, Public Innovation Lab (iBO) in Bogota, CorLab Govtech Innovation Lab in Córdoba, Creative HQ in Wellington, Go2Gov and CivVIC in Australia, Public Venture Client Unit (GovTechHH) in Hamburg, GovTech Lab Bizkaia, BIND in the Basque country, and Startup in Residence Amsterdam.
Creative HQ, established and owned by the Wellington Region’s Economic Development Agency, has developed a GovTech Accelerator. The accelerator is a 13-week innovation programme that takes place annually. It takes projects and staff from government agencies (intrapreneurs) who are tackling problems, places them within the Accelerator structure, and applies innovation methodologies to create solutions that work. It primarily aims to reduce costs and de-risk innovation in the public sector. In essence, the GovTech Accelerator gives a chance for BIND public sector employees to build pilots themselves, in contrast to other programmes where engagement with external actors is mandatory. GovTech Accelerator has been running for six years and has accelerated 52 project teams that delivered innovative solutions across the public service.
Policy-specific GovTech teams
Given that GovTech can be applied across the policy domains, some governments choose to set up teams that are responsible for co-ordinating innovation in a specific policy area. Having a thematic GovTech team allows a more in-depth understanding about both the challenges and how potential innovations can support better decision-making. This contrasts with a more facilitator-like role of national GovTech teams, where the thematic and organisational scope is much wider. This set-up could help address the challenges related to scope, funding, and resourcing of GovTech projects – ensuring more involved co-ordination and coherence of GovTech collaborations within a specific policy field. For example, Portugal launched a Justice GovTech, which aims to introduce more GovTech collaborations to accelerate the modernisation and digital transformation of the justice sector (GovTech Justica, 2023[14]). Other examples include ImpulsiONar in Brazil and the EdTech centre in Lithuania, which are both focused on education.
The network layer of the GovTech Enablers focusses on the ecosystem and how the GovTech practice is advanced through communities-of-practice and leadership internationally, at intragovernmental level, and between non-government actors. A strong network layer is key to building support, sharing knowledge and experiences, and strengthening the GovTech agenda.
International GovTech community-of-practice
The international GovTech community-of-practice plays a vital role in accelerating the growth of local GovTech ecosystems by facilitating the exchange of knowledge between countries. These networks serve as valuable sources of best practices, providing examples of successful GovTech initiatives and policy tools that can inform policy formulation processes. Actively participating in this community also strengthens a country's position within the global GovTech ecosystem – enhancing its ability to attract international collaborators and foster partnerships.
There are several examples of international GovTech communities-of-practice, including the:
GovTech Global Alliance (formerly CivTech Alliance): is a worldwide network of public, private, and third sector organisations working in the Civic and GovTech sectors. Members are mostly from governmental GovTech teams across almost 20 countries, who exchange best practices, use cases, and tools to support GovTech programmes.
Iberoamerican Govtech Multisectorial Network (Red Multisectorial Govtech Iberoamérica): facilitated by the IDB Group, offers a network of over 140 municipalities across Spain and the LAC region to learn about working with GovTech start-ups.
GovTech Global Partnership: facilitated by the World Bank, brings key GovTech actors together to share knowledge and experience to support public sector innovation.
Source: GovTech Global Alliance (2023), https://govtechglobal.org; IDB Group (2021): https://blogs.iadb.org/ciudades-sostenibles/en/govtech-ecosystems-in-lac-innovation-focused-on-improving-citizen-services/; World Bank Group (2022): https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/govtech/partners
Intragovernmental GovTech community
The intragovernmental GovTech community refers to the network of civil servants working within public sectors that play a vital role in facilitating the dissemination of GovTech, promoting awareness, and acting as GovTech champions. They serve as important feedback loop for national, local, or policy-specific GovTech teams, providing insights into the practical implementation of GovTech projects on the ground. Their first-hand experiences and perspectives enable continuous improvement and optimisation of GovTech initiatives. They act as catalysts for knowledge-sharing, collaboration, and effective communication to improve the understanding and application of GovTech within the public sector.
The intragovernmental community can be focussed either on GovTech or on digital innovation more broadly. For example, GovTech Lab Luxembourg introduced different event formats, including the GovTech Lab Innovation Club, to foster exchanges between civil servants, inspire creativity, and strengthen a culture of innovation. In Chile, the Laboratorio de Gobierno instead manages the Network of Innovators to connect and collaborate on digital more broadly – sharing methods, tools, and experiences to avoid duplication and promote reuse (Laboratorio de Gobierno, 2023[15]). France’s ‘Blue Hats’ is another example of a digital community focussed open-source software, which could become a medium for GovTech ambassadors (numerique.gouv.fr, 2018[16]).
Non-governmental GovTech leadership
Public-private collaboration is at the core of GovTech, so it is important to have non-governmental GovTech leadership within a country. This is important to have actors outside the public sector to drive GovTech, but also to provide insight into the needs of innovators and investors, address any policy gaps, and ensure collaborations deliver shared value. The involvement of these actors can focus on lobbying, facilitating the availability of private GovTech innovation programmes, providing education opportunities, or facilitating the growth of the ecosystem.
There are generally 4 main types of non-governmental GovTech actors that take a leadership role:
Non-governmental GovTech labs or teams: to mirror the functions of public sector teams.
Academic organisations: to provide analysis and actively participate in the GovTech ecosystem.
Intergovernmental body: to provide GovTech policy guidance and implementation support.
Associations or similar organisations: to represent the interests of GovTech partners.
Non-governmental GovTech team: BrazilLAB
BrazilLAB is a not-for-profit organisation aimed at accelerating GovTech and connecting start-ups and public sector entities. Its work includes an acceleration program to support innovators in their go-to-market strategy, a ‘GovTech Seal’ to certify capable GovTech start-ups, and a programme to build digital capability in municipalities. It also works on advocacy, research, partnerships, and events.
Academic organisation: TU Delft
TU Delft has established the role of Professor of GovTech & Digital Government Innovation. It has also partnered with 3 other institutions to launch Digicampus – a space to foster implementation of innovative ideas in public services in the Netherlands.
Intergovernmental body: govtechlab by CAF
CAF, a development Bank of Latin America, created govtechlab, a platform to promote the GovTech ecosystem in the region through policy and implementation advice, support for GovTech labs, and investment in GovTech ventures. govtechlab also launched the inter-governmental GovTech Leaders Alliance and developed a GovTech Index to comprehensively measure GovTech ecosystems.
Association: GovTech Campus Germany
The GovTech Campus is an alliance of actors from the federal and state government, private sector, academia, and civil society. It also works as a non-governmental team to connect actors, to build solutions to challenges, and to scale pilots for use in public sector entities.
The GovTech Building Blocks and GovTech Enablers are interconnected parts of the GovTech Policy Framework. While the building blocks ensure the success of individual GovTech collaborations or practices, the different layers of enablers are essential for the overall functioning of the ecosystem. However, countries may have varying maturity in each of the components, with strong enablers in place but gaps in the building blocks (or vice versa).
Examples of strong enablers with limited building blocks often occurs when GovTech is prioritised and supported through the development of a strategy, the availability of a strong leadership, or GovTech teams, but where the public sector entities do not necessarily have sufficient skills and resources to undertake such collaborations.
In the longer term, the enabling layers can be used to build maturity and address these gaps. This could include improving data sharing, establishing GovTech funds, or creating GovTech procurement guidelines. While the strategic layer can have very direct influence on building blocks, the power of the institutional layer depends on the mandate given to the GovTech teams. Currently, many GovTech teams focus primarily on implementing challenge-based programmes, but not necessarily on improving broader building blocks. Finally, the network layer has more indirect influence over the GovTech building blocks through advocacy and community pressure.
In the short term, strong enabling layers can compensate for gaps in the building blocks without impacting them, especially through competent GovTech teams (institutional layer). Their challenge-based programmes can create a safe and controlled space for innovation and compensate for the lack of skills, process or fundings at individual organisations. However, this approach can cover only limited number of potential challenges and GovTech projects within a country. Therefore, if a goal is more systemic engagement with GovTech actors, compensating for the gaps is not enough to ensure a sustainable development of these collaborations. Instead, the enabling layers should actively work to address and fill these gaps.
Some countries have had historically strong innovative and digital government practices, which means that they might have well-developed building blocks even when they have limited enablers. While this can still allow for successful GovTech collaborations, establishing GovTech as a sustainable practice may be challenging. This can result in more ad hoc GovTech collaborations and preclude it from becoming a key instrument in the digital government toolbox. Strong enabling layers are therefore crucial to mobilise and unify the ecosystem, as well as to respond to advancements and new trends.
Nevertheless, further research is required to reach a definitive conclusion on the interactions between the GovTech Building Blocks and GovTech Enablers, given the evolving nature of the GovTech and this framework.
References
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