Digital Strategy
Over the past years, digital transformation has become a policy priority along with traditional areas such as health policy, economic policy, labor and social protection policies. National Digital Strategies or National Digital Agendas have become guiding policy documents to establish the priorities and focus areas that respond to the country´s context and needs (OECD, 2022).
More specifically, the figure below illustrates the OECD Framework’s seven dimensions that shape national policy domains for digital transformation:
Access (orange): Ensuring investment, infrastructure, and connectivity for digital inclusion.
Use (pink): Driving adoption of digital government, skills, and security measures.
Innovation (purple): Fostering entrepreneurship, science, and technology for digital growth.
Jobs (blue): Addressing labor market changes, skills development, and social protection.
Society (light blue): Integrating social policies, healthcare, and environmental considerations.
Trust (green): Building confidence through privacy, consumer protection, and digital risk management.
Market Openness (yellow-green): Promoting trade, competition, and financial market access.
At the center, “Growth and Well-being” reflects the overarching goal of these interconnected dimensions, supported by data and data governance as a foundational layer. This mapping shows how digital transformation intersects with traditional policy areas, reinforcing its role as a cross-cutting priority.
Why Digital Strategies matter
Digital strategies matter because …
…they present governments a clear vision and roadmap for their own national digital transformation
… they align institutions and investments around shared priorities in order to avoid fragmentation.
… they enable more efficient, inclusive, as well as user-centric public services (Eggers et.al, 2021).
Typical Topics & Implementation Steps Covered in a National Digital Strategy
Most digital strategies follow a clear structure in order to ensure coherence, inclusiveness, and long-term sustainability. Some typical topics/chapters include (OECD, 2022):
1) Initiation & Mandate Setting
Set up vision, mission, and strategic objectives: A National Digital Strategy usually starts with a national vision and mission that depicts the specific long-term ambition for digital transformation, before describing a set of strategic objectives defining what governments are intending to achieve over a period of time.
Implementation Steps:
Securing high level political support
Appointing a lead digital authority
Establishing governance structures (e.g. steering committee, working groups)
2) Digital Ecosystem Assessment
Develop current-state and digital maturity assessment: Most strategies delineate the current-state or digital maturity assessment. This includes the status of connectivity, digital public infrastructure, interoperability, digital literacy, institutional capacity, as well as the maturity of existing public services. This assessment is designed to aid in identifying gaps and barriers that the strategy must address.
Implementation Steps:
Conduct an in-depth digital maturity assessment
Benchmark the targeted country against regional and global peers
Identify major gaps, barriers, and opportunity spaces across the whole ecosystem
3) Vision, Strategic Objectives and Action Lines Co-Design
Determine priority areas or action lines: The creation of priority areas is a key component of a National Digital Strategy – often referred to as “action lines”. These can typically include digital infrastructure, foundational digital public infrastructure (e.g. digital ID, digital payments, data exchange), cybersecurity and privacy, digital public services, digital skills and inclusion, and innovation ecosystem development.
Implementation Steps:
Facilitate co-creation workshops with participants from ministries, private sector, academia, and civil society
Define activities/action lines, objectives, and goals (KPIs) according to the country's context and needs in an open and collaborative process with all stakeholders of the digital ecosystem in the country
Prioritize action lines/defined areas that have the potential of actually driving transformation
Align the Strategy to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
4) Action Plan Development and Implementation Roadmap
Ensure process of monitoring and evaluating: A good strategy comprise rules for creating a KPI framework, depicting how progress will be specifically measured and communicated publicly. Ultimately, most strategies conclude with a concrete implementation roadmap delineating activities, milestones and sequencing.
Implementation Steps:
Create detailed plans for each action line
Define governance mechanism to coordinate implementation and responsible entities for each action line
Determine key KPI’s , milestones, dependencies, resource needs, and progress reporting
Set up a public dashboard to share progress in the implementation of the agenda and its KPI’s (c.f. figure below - Example of Chile Digital Agenda dashboard showing progress on each action line covered in the agenda)
Create a multi-phase implementation roadmap with time frames for the execution of each action line
Ensure continuous improvement along the complete implementation process
5) Financing and Resource Mobilization
Determine financial & human resources: Digital transformation is tremendously relying on sustained financial and human resources. This element of the strategy specifically depicts funding models and long-term investment needs.
Implementation Steps:
Develop an in-depth multi-year budget plan
Determine funding sources such as national budgets, partners, donors, and Public Private Partnerships (PPP)
Align resources to specific action lines as well as implementation phases (see under 4) “Create detailed plans for each action line”)
6) Implementation of Priority Building Blocks & Digital Services
Implement Building Blocks: Foundational digital public infrastructure (DPI) and GovStack-aligned building blocks (BB’s) are used to enable scalable, user-centric digital services.
Implementation Steps:
Implement foundational DPI as well as BB’s
Run pilots for prioritized services and refining them based on the gathered feedback
Scale services, that were validated through pilots, across the government
Launch the digital agenda with the highest political support -> Coordinate a presidential event to launch the agenda where all stakeholders that participated in the co-design are recognized and encouraged to follow with its implementation
Start the implementation mechanism right after the launch to keep the momentum
Make implementation open and collaborative
Promote the agenda permanently
Examples of Digital Strategies
In Australia, the Digital Agenda (Digital Transformation Agency n.d.) sets 2025 as the target to have all government services available digitally.
In Estonia, the e-Estonia Policy (e-Estonia n.d.) leverages all digital capabilities of the Country to support other countries in their digital transformation journeys.
In Ireland, the Ireland Digital Framework (Department of the Taoiseach 2022) sets life events as the guiding principle for their service design and delivery.
In Mexico, the 2013 Constitutional Reform recognized the Internet as a Constitutional Right and made an obligation of the State to have a National Universal Digital Inclusion Policy (Please use Google translate to read in your preferred language).
Responsibilities
Who does what:
Head of the Digital Authority – Leads the Digital Agenda Co-Design process, coordinates the implementation and reporting mechanisms, and enables delivery of the action lines (see Implementation Steps 1,2,3,4 and 7 above)
Legal advisors – Prepare a regulatory plan to adapt/update Country legal framework according to the Digital Agenda action lines (see Implementation Steps 3,4,5 and 6 above)
The leadership team (chief data officer, cybersecurity officer, chief architect, lead service designer, etc.) – Coordinate stakeholder community to participate in the co-design and implementation of the digital agenda (see Implementation Steps 1,3,4 and 7 above)
Digital teams in each government entity - Implement, monitor, and continuously iterate the digital services under their jurisdiction in the user journeys (see Implementation Steps 4,6 and 7 above)
Stakeholder community - Private sector, academia, civil society, and international organizations (see Implementation Steps 2,3,6 and 7 above).
Deliverables
National Digital Strategy/Agenda
Digitization Roadmap
Public dashboard to share progress in the implementation of the Agenda and its KPIs
Governance mechanism to report progress made on the implementation of the National Digital Strategy/Agenda (This includes a high-level advisory board)
Multi-year financing and resource allocation plan
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