Governments today face a growing disconnect between rising expectations for speed, adaptability and responsiveness, and institutional systems that have not kept pace. Digital technologies and data are no longer optional enablers; they have become core infrastructure for addressing today's policy and service delivery challenges. The 2025 OECD Digital Government Index (DGI) and Open, Useful and Re-usable Data (OURdata) Index confirm that governments have made meaningful progress, particularly in establishing strategies, frameworks and enabling conditions. The challenge now is to move beyond these foundations to deliver transformational impact for people and businesses: strengthening data governance for greater coherence and reuse, increasing uptake of digital public infrastructure, modernising investment and procurement approaches, building robust trust frameworks for AI, and designing more proactive, human-centred services.
The OECD Digital Government Outlook2026 provides a comprehensive, forward-looking assessment of these dynamics across 36 OECD Members and 8 accession candidate countries. Drawing on the results of the 2025 DGI and OURdata, it evaluates both progress and persistent gaps across key areas of digital transformation, identifying what governments need to do to move from digital ambition to public sector performance in an environment of rapid technological change, fiscal constraints and limited public trust.
