Slovenia has made substantial progress in advancing digital transformation in the public sector. However, challenges remain in monitoring and evaluation, governance clarity, regulatory foundations, and digital capacities. Slovenia could leverage the momentum by strengthening its digital governance model to reinforce coherence, foster cross-sector coordination, and promote more effective use of public resources.
Digital Government Scan of Slovenia
Abstract
Slovenia has made notable progress in advancing digital transformation in the public sector through robust leadership and political commitment, a comprehensive long-term strategy, and wide multi-stakeholder collaboration on the digital transformation agenda. However, critical challenges remain in strengthening monitoring and impact assessment of digital government, enhancing institutional coordination, reinforcing legislations and regulations on digital rights maturity, as well as assessing the needs of digital skills across public workforce. Addressing these gaps is imperative for Slovenia to realise its ambitions of “improving the quality of life of Slovenian citizens in a sustainable, green and trustworthy manner through the digital transformation of all segments of society” by 2030.
Slovenia has demonstrated its commitment to advancing digital transformation in the public sector through concrete actions. This is thanks to its long-term digital government strategy, centralised institutional model, and multi-stakeholder collaboration as foundations to drive more coherent and sustainable digital transformation. Built on a well-defined long-term direction, effective cross-sector co-operation and coordination, there is an opportunity for Slovenia to bolster its digital governance model.
Slovenia’s Digital Public Services Strategy 2030 (SDJS 2030) (Ministry of Public Administration, 2022[4]) serves as the main national strategy to drive digital transformation in the public sector. It sets clear vision, ambitious objectives and targets, action plan (Ministry of Digital Transformation, 2023[5]), as well as specific timeframes for implementation. The strategy was formulated in consultation with a number group of stakeholders, including the central and sub-national governments, private sector, academia, civil society, and representatives of citizens in local communities. This emphasises Slovenia’s vision to foster user-centred digital transformation in public services, complemented by its acknowledgement of digital rights linked to putting people at the centre of the digital transformation (European Commission, 2025[6]). The SDJS 2030 also aligns with the overarching strategy of Digital Slovenia 2030 (DSI 2030) (Ministry of Digital Transformation, 2024[7]), demonstrating Slovenia’s strong commitment in policy levers and amplifies the country’s ambitions to achieve its Digital Decade objectives and targets (European Commission, 2025[6])
Strong leadership and political commitment are imperative to accelerate the advancement of digital government maturity (OECD, 2021[8]). The OECD Digital Government Review of Slovenia called for enabling enhanced maturity in the way the organisation-in-charge and the coordination bodies of digital government oversee, coordinate, and consult on the implementation of digital strategies and projects (OECD, 2021[9]). Slovenia has made good progress on this recommendation through its collaborative governance model, which comprises several bodies and institutions that play different but important roles in engaging with all sectors and levels of government (Box 3.1).
The organisation in charge of digital government
The Ministry of Digital Transformation plays a role as the organisation-in-charge of digital government with a strong political mandate for bringing more clarity in leadership and promoting efficient implementation of digital policy and services. The ministry oversees conducting decision-making in the management of value proposition and investment of digital projects, as well as supports the development, coordination, standard-setting, and monitoring of digital strategy and projects across the public sector (Ministry of Digital Transformation, 2023[10])
Coordination bodies
The Government Council for Digital Transformation serves as both formal coordination body and external advisory body for the government of Slovenia. As a formal coordination body, it is chaired by the Minister for Digital Transformation and supported by a number of senior digital government officials, including twelve State Secretaries from key ministries, one Deputy Secretary General, one Head of a National Centre, and one Director of a Government Office. The Council performs advisory roles to consult, coordinate, and oversee the implementation of the SDJS 2030. The Council also serves another function as an external advisory body. Its roles include advising on digital strategy, sharing the latest industry advancements in the areas of digital, and promoting dialogue on digital policies by involving a number of non-governmental actors from academia, civil society organisations, and private sector (Ministry of Digital Transformation, 2023[10]).
The Inter-Ministerial Working Group on Digital Transformation Projects aims to ensure effective horizontal and inter-ministerial coordination of digital initiatives, facilitate dialogue and exchange of best practices, and oversee the implementation of the SDJS 2030 at the working level. The Working Group is chaired by the Ministry of Digital Transformation and consists of representatives (general director level) across public sector institutions (Ministry of Digital Transformation, 2023[10]).
In addition to establishing effective institutional set-up and strategic direction, equipping both public servants and citizens with ample capability to use digital technology and data is prerequisite to drive a successful digital transformation. Slovenia broadly embeds its digital talent and skills strategy in the SDJS 2030. The strategy includes objectives to strengthen digital skills of public workforce (stated in Specific Objective V.A) and create an environment that foster digital transformation (stated in Strategic Objective I). This demonstrates the government’s commitment to upskilling and reskilling public servants in digital capacities to improve the delivery of digital services and strengthen resilience in the digital era.
In practice, Slovenia has implemented a dedicated initiative to improve digital skills of public servants through the programme Strengthening the Digital Skills of Public Employees, co-funded by Slovenia’s Ministry of Public Administration and the EU’s NextGenerationEU since 1 March 2023 (Ministry of Public Administration, 2024[11]). The training is delivered by the Slovenian Public Administration Academy and is aligned with the OECD Framework for Digital and Skills in the Public Sector (OECD, 2021[12]). It offers a wide range of courses in basic and professional digital skills, digital social and emotional skills, user digital skills, and leadership digital skills, available in remote, on-site, and hybrid formats. As of 19 November 2025, the Academy had successfully held 933 events, with 34,121 civil servants participating in the courses (reached 85% of the total target of 40,000 participants by 2026), indicating that the programme is strongly on track to meet its 2026 target (Ministry of Public Administration, 2025[13]).
Slovenia also has demonstrated a strong commitment to achieving the target of 80% of the population acquiring basic digital skills and taking the benefit of digital public services by 2030 (European Commission, 2025[6]). This commitment has resulted in concrete initiatives:
Digi Info Points aims to narrow the digital divide by providing accessible support and training for citizens to use digital public services through 222 digital information points across all Slovenian municipalities. Led by the Ministry of Digital Transformation with the Chamber of Craft and Small Business of Slovenia, the initiative empowers general citizens to navigate digital services with support from public servants (EIPA, 2023[14])
Mobile Heroes is a government-funded training programme that is proactive in its approach and targeted at people aged 55 and older. It is delivered via mobile units that travel across all 12 regions in Slovenia. The project provides free, basic digital literacy training to groups of the population residing in remote or rural areas. The project successfully reached 5,000 participants across 171 out of 212 total municipalities in Slovenia (80%) by January 2024 (INEPA, 2024[15])
Non-formal education programmes, valued a total of EUR 8.85 million, have been designed to upskill and reskill digital competences for unemployed and inactive individuals, including long-term unemployed, disadvantaged groups, and youth under the Youth Guarantee. These programmes aim to educate participants in basic and advanced digital skills, and are expected to reach 7,620 participants by December 2028 (Government of Slovenia, 2024[16])
Building on its efforts and recent achievements, Slovenia could advance the implementation of SDJS 2030 and ensure the delivery of public value through digital transformation by reinforcing its digital governance model and public sector capacities. Key challenges remain in developing more robust monitoring and impact assessment, fostering institutional coordination around digital government initiatives, and enhancing legislations and regulations on digital rights maturity. To supplement these actions, Slovenia would also benefit from assessing the needs for digital skills of its public workforce.
Enhancing monitoring and impact assessment of digital government
Robust monitoring and impact assessment are imperative to ensure the effective implementation and accountability of the digital government strategy and initiatives. The results from the 2025 DGI indicate room for improvement, particularly in relation to having and using systematically a dedicated KPIs and the measurement of overall impact of digital government.
Setting out dedicated key performance indicators (KPIs) in an open and transparent way
Slovenia relies on the European Commission’s Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) to monitor the implementation of the SDJS 2030 based on DESI’s four components: human capital, connectivity, digital technology integration and digital public services (European Commission, 2025[17]). However, developing a dedicated set of KPIs to monitor progress on the defined objectives and goals of the strategy will encourage timely implementation. Furthermore, publishing the progress status of each deliverable under the SDJS 2030 publicly would enhance transparency and accountability. It will also enable a more collaborative oversight from wider digital government stakeholders.
Fostering feedback loops with users
Allowing greater civic participation to oversee and provide feedback would foster the implementation of digital strategies and initiatives. This continues to be an area where Slovenia needs improvement. The government could encourage systematic feedback loops with stakeholders to support agile adaptation and alignment with user needs, leading to the improvement of both quality and relevance of digital services delivered to citizens (OECD, 2021[8]). This would also help realise the vision of digitally transforming the public sector in Slovenia, which puts the users at the heart of the digital transformation agenda.
Measuring the overall impact of digital government
Slovenia could benefit from having a comprehensive approach to measuring the overall impact of digital government. Creating common standards and assessment tools at the whole-of-government level would provide a foundation for assessing the impacts of digital government on citizens, businesses, the public sector, and the environment. Furthermore, Slovenia could better align its digital agenda with the green agenda and contribute to a more future-resilient public sector. This could be done through a more systematic evaluation of the environmental impacts of digital government.
In this context, the SDJS 2030 assigns responsibility for monitoring and coordinating the implementation of the SDJS 2030 to the Ministry of Digital Transformation, and envisaged establishing a dedicated working group to coordinate the implementation of the actions. (Ministry of Public Administration, 2022[4]). However, following the adoption of the overarching Digital Slovenia 2030, implementation and coordination are framed through the whole-of-government governance arrangements led by the MDT and supported by the Government Council for Digital Transformation, and the Inter-Ministerial Working Group on Digital Transformation Projects. The government should consider providing clear mandates, developing measurable indicators, and conducting regular public reporting.
Bolstering institutional approach for digital initiatives
Robust governance of digital government with the organisation-in-charge which has substantial leadership, political influence and organisational stability is essential to advancing the digital transformation agenda in the public sector. The OECD E-Leaders Handbook on the Governance of Digital Governance underlines that institutions mandated to lead digital agendas should have sufficient authority and influence, while promoting openness, accountability, and engagement with relevant stakeholders (OECD, 2021[8]). Against this backdrop, the findings from the 2025 DGI point to opportunities to strengthen the governance model for digital transformation in Slovenia in three main areas.
Strengthening the decision-making role of the Ministry of Digital Transformation
According to the 2025 DGI, Slovenia scored 0.40 on the decision-making responsibilities of the organisation-in-charge, significantly below the OECD average of 0.76. The Ministry of Digital Transformation already plays an important role in prioritising investment and managing the value proposition process of digital and ICT projects across the central government (Figure 3.1). Building on this role, Slovenia could consider further reinforcing the Ministry’s decision-making responsibilities to:
Assume co-funding responsibilities for cross-cutting, major digital and ICT projects
Approve digital and ICT projects on the basis of agreed criteria
Mandate external reviews for selected projects, for instance those with high costs or high risks.
These efforts could also be complemented with reinforcing more structured coordination with sub-national governments in the design and implementation of digital and ICT projects across the country.
Note: 2025 results only cover information from 2023 to 2024. 2025 results do not include data from Germany and the United States.
Source: (OECD, 2025[3])
Clarifying and reinforcing the role of the Government Council for Digital Transformation
The Council could strengthen its function in delivering the outcome of digital government policies and initiatives. As the main coordination body, the Council holds a few decision-making responsibilities. However, its mandate could be expanded with responsibilities for prioritising digital and ICT projects, and managing their value proposition and approval processes. The Council could also enhance its coordination with sub-national governments and extend its responsibility to develop and oversee the adoption of common technical standards for digital infrastructure. In this case, the Council could work closely with the Inter-Ministerial Working Group on Digital Transformation Projects to promote greater engagement and to streamline collaboration across public sector to advance the country’s digital government maturity.
The Council also serves as an external advisory body. This double role assigned to the Council may affect the effectiveness of the whole-of-government coordination of the implementation of the digital strategy within and across levels of government. Establishing a more specific organisational duties, well-developed structures and effective governance mechanisms for the Council would benefit efforts to steer digital government agendas across levels in the Slovenian public sector.
Deepening engagement with external stakeholders
While the Government Council for Digital Transformation plays a role of the external advisory body, it remains limited in engaging external stakeholders in a meaningful way throughout the policy cycle. The 2025 DGI results shows that the external advisory body has held one meeting per year during 2023-2024. Slovenia could consider creating a dedicated external advisory body separated from the structure currently embodied in the Council for Digital Transformation, or planning periodic meetings dedicated to the engagement with external stakeholders. This would ensure a meaningful platform for non-governmental stakeholders to share their knowledge and insights, and for the government to leverage on them to inform digital policies and initiatives. More regular and frequent activities of the external advisory body could bring greater impact to advancing digital transformation in the public sector in a transparent and inclusive manner.
Enhancing Slovenia’s legal and policy frameworks
Slovenia performed significantly below the OECD average in two key areas of its legal and policy framework for digital government. Slovenia scored 0.56 on having laws covering different enablers of digital transformation (compared to the OECD average of 0.83, and 0.38 on acknowledging digital rights in policy (compared to 0.71) in the 2025 DGI results. These results underline the need to strengthen the legal underpinnings of digital transformation in order to support greater digital maturity. To address these gaps, Slovenia could consider reinforcing its legal and policy framework by:
Strengthening laws and policies in areas such as administrative simplification and the rationalisation of digital government services, ‘green digital,’ ICT procurement, information and data life-cycle management, and experimentation in the public sector. Clearer and more comprehensive provisions in these areas would help create an enabling environment for trustworthy and efficient digital government.
Ensuring key fundamental rights in the digital age are recognised by laws or policies. While Slovenia recognises fundamental rights on digital identity, access to internet, and privacy, additional rights could be more explicitly acknowledged. This includes the right to interact and communicate digitally, algorithmic transparency, net neutrality, and self-determination in a digital context. This would help promote more human-centred and rights-respecting digital government.
The government could consider reviewing Slovenia’s legal and policy framework together with the Government Council for Digital Transformation and by engaging citizens, businesses and civil society stakeholders. This would ensure that the process is inclusive and transparent, thereby promoting trust in government and stronger ownership of the changes. The 2025 DGI results also indicate that Slovenia does not yet systematically assess whether implemented digitally enabled services and digital policies are aligned with the existing laws, while 16 out of 36 OECD countries (44%) have conducted such assessments across the whole centra/federal government. Slovenia could consider addressing this gap by making strategic use of eLegislation (Government of Slovenia, 2025[18]), an open platform that is currently under development. This platform could be used to help ensure that new and existing digital initiatives remain consistent with the country’s legal framework and strengthen regulatory impact assessment of digital policies and services.
Assessing the needs for digital skills for public workforce
Equipping the digital government ecosystem with digitally proficient public workforce is a prerequisite for delivering proactive, integrated and human-centred public services, and maximising the value of digital government investments. A first and critical step is to assess the digital skills needs in the public sector in a systematic way. According to the 2025 DGI results, while 26 out of 36 participated OECD countries (72%) conduct such assessment, it is missing in the Slovenian public sector. This represents a significant gap that may hinder progress towards Slovenia’s digital government objectives. Conducting a comprehensive assessment of digital skills would enable the government to identify specific gaps across institutions and profiles, and to tailor capacity-building initiatives accordingly. Furthermore, it would also help reinforce ongoing efforts to develop a more digitally skilled public workforce through the Public Administration Academy, in alignment with the OECD Framework for Digital Talent and Skills in the Public Sector (OECD, 2021[12]). In turn, this would support Slovenia’s ambition to make at least 80% of key public services available and accessible digitally by 2030.
Based on these findings, the government could consider integrating the strategic objective below to bolster its digital governance by addressing the corresponding recommendations:
Slovenia could build on the momentum of its advancing digital transformation in the public sector by strengthening its digital governance model to reinforce coherence, coordination, and to support a more efficient and effective use of public resources.
Recommendation 1:
The government could enhance the monitoring and evaluation of the SDJS 2030 by devising a dedicated set of KPIs and making them publicly available. It could also create and apply common standards to assess the societal, economic, and environmental impacts of digital government to support better alignment with Slovenia’s digital transformation objectives.
Recommendation 2:
The government could promote systematic feedback loops to support agile adaptation in the implementation of digital strategies and projects, and to improve the quality and relevance of digital services in line with user needs.
Recommendation 3:
The government could reinforce its digital governance model by bolstering the decision-making responsibilities of the Ministry of Digital Transformation on co-funding, approving digital and ICT projects, and mandating external reviews. The government could also re-evaluate the current Government Council for Digital Transformation’s double roles as both formal coordination body and external advisory body, as well as work together with the Inter-Ministerial Working Group to strengthen co-operation with sub-national governments and promote more coherent and well-coordinated implementation of digital agendas.
Recommendation 4:
The government could review and update the legislation for digital transformation by introducing or strengthening provisions on administrative simplification, green digital, ICT procurement, data and information life-cycle management, and experimentation in the public sector, while simultaneously enhancing the recognition of key fundamental rights in the digital age in its legal and policy framework. These include rights to interact and communicate digitally, algorithmic transparency, net neutrality, and self-determination in a digital context.
Recommendation 5:
The government could systematically assess whether implemented digitally enabled services and digital policies are aligned with the new and existing laws. It could also make strategic use of eLegislation to help ensure that digital initiatives remain consistent with the country’s legal framework and to strengthen regulatory impact assessment of digital policies and services.
Recommendation 6:
The government could improve public sector digital capacities by undertaking a systematic assessment of digital-skills needs and gaps. Then, it could provide targeted upskilling/reskilling efforts to improve digital skills needed in the public sector to equip public workforce to drive digital transformation across the public sector. In parallel, establishing specialised horizontal teams within the Ministry of Digital Transformation could help optimise existing human resource capacity to enhance coherence, efficiency and the scalability of digital service delivery across government levels, thereby improving the satisfaction of both users and public servants.