Governments face significant challenges in an evolving digital environment, shaped by technological advances and rising citizen expectations. By placing digital transformation at the core of their modernisation efforts, governments can streamline processes, enhance agility and create more responsive, transparent and effective government functions, including enhancing policy implementation. Effective digital government policies rely on multifaceted enablers including strong governance, cohesive whole-of-government strategies and resilient digital public infrastructure, such as digital identity and data-sharing systems. These foundations are essential for fostering inclusive, long-term transformation and greater public sector efficiency (OECD, 2024a).
The Digital Government Index (DGI) benchmarks digital government policies and their implementation through a whole-of-government and human-centred approach. It comprises six dimensions based on the OECD Digital Government Policy Framework: digital by design, data-driven public sector, government as a platform, open by default, user-driven and proactiveness, with scores ranging from 0 (the lowest) to 1 (the highest).
The average composite score for OECD countries is 0.61, with most scoring above 0.5. Korea (0.94), Denmark (0.81) and the United Kingdom (0.78) are the three countries with highest scores. These countries’ balanced performance across the six dimensions reflects their comprehensive efforts in the implementation of digital government policies. Conversely, the countries in the bottom tier generally lagged behind the OECD average in all six dimensions (Figure 7.1). This underscores the need for countries to improve their digital policy frameworks and take a strategic whole-of-government approach to using digital technologies and leveraging data to become more human-centred and proactive.
Across the six dimensions of the index, OECD countries on average scored best in digital by design (0.68 out of 1.0). This measures the extent to which “digital” has been incorporated as a critical transformative element throughout policy processes, governance frameworks and public service delivery, rather than just as a technical tool. Australia (0.97), Korea (0.97), the United Kingdom (0.91), Denmark (0.85) and Ireland (0.84) perform close to best practice in this dimension thanks to comprehensive governance over digital government and its interplay with digital public infrastructure, investments, digital talent, and service design and delivery (Figure 7.2).
On average, OECD countries do least well on the open by default (0.53) and proactiveness (0.57) dimensions. Open by default measures the policies, tools and transparency mechanisms in place that promote a culture of openness. Korea (0.88), Denmark (0.78), France (0.76), Colombia (0.73) and Canada (0.73) score best on this dimension. Lower scores suggest a need for governments to guarantee access, availability, security and re-use of open government data (Figure 7.3).
Proactiveness evaluates the readiness of governments to anticipate user needs without formal user requests, including the provision of data and services, often using artificial intelligence (AI). It is one of the frontiers of government digital transformation, enabling personalised and seamless public services. Korea (0.93), Estonia (0.87), the United Kingdom (0.85), Denmark (0.79) and Türkiye (0.76) are the most digitally proactive OECD countries. Lower scores in this dimension indicate governments need to improve their capacity to leverage the use of data and AI to promote more responsive and proactive policies and services (Online Figure J.4.1).
