CEO of Tesla, co-founder of OpenAI, owner of X (formerly known as Twitter) – and now Volunteer IT Consultant of the United States government?

In an X post on December 9, Elon Musk said: “My preferred title in the new administration is Volunteer IT Consultant. Need to fix the IT infrastructure in order to make government work. This is a grind & hardly glorious, but we can’t make government efficient & fix the deficit if the computers don’t work.”

US President-elect Donald Trump announced the establishment of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), after his electoral victory in November 2024. DOGE is envisioned to be a new advisory group, headed by Musk and Trump’s fellow Republican leader and close ally, Vivek Ramaswamy, that will provide recommendations for improving government efficiency.

Early signs indicate that the issue of government modernisation within the United States government is now firmly within Trump’s crosshairs, with Musk recently taking aim at federal legacy systems – some of which are more than 50 years old, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report from 2019.

Federal tech observers in the US will have their eyes on DOGE and its promise to revamp tech in government and remove regulations to reduce expenditure. Early interest is reportedly building across both sides of the aisle.

Trump and his allies are not alone in their expressed desire to revamp government functioning with a technology focused approach to problem solving.

After a historic year of elections in 2024, which saw voters turning against incumbents across several countries, new leaders are expected to put their own mark on their country’s approach to digital government.

Though it is unlikely that new administrations will roll back existing digitalisation efforts significantly, they will likely align digital transformation efforts with their policy goals.

Dust settling for digital governments

In the United Kingdom, the Labour Party’s victory in July 2024 saw a reorganisation of the country’s digital government, with a new “Digital Centre” that consolidated key digital government bodies within the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT).

Over the course of the year, we can expect to see this new Digital Centre take clearer form, with an expert panel formed in October 2024 to shape a 10-year vision for the new body that aims to “drive innovation, transform services, improve lives, and unlock the full potential of digital and data” according to a press release.

UK’s civil service COO, Cat Little, said the body will support the new administration achieve its five national “missions” through data-driven decision-making, which includes improving the NHS.

Closer to home, Indonesia saw a year of intense digital government activity, with the launch of GovTech Indonesia, INA Digital, in 2024, under former President Jokowi. Newly elected President Prabowo is likely to continue prioritising Indonesia’s digital transformation, having rebranded the Ministry of Communication and Informatics (KOMINFO) as the Ministry of Communication and Digital Affairs (KOMDIGI).

New Communication and Digital Affairs Minister, Meutya Hafid, has stated that digital transformation will support the new government’s efforts to eradicate corruption and integrate digital services as part of its eight national missions (Asta Cita).

Other countries to watch during the year will include Germany, where a snap election in early 2025 could lead to changes in digital strategy, and Bangladesh, where a2i, the country’s innovation agency, has come under corruption investigations in the aftermath of mass protests that saw the downfall of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the installation of an interim government.

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DPI efforts will start bearing fruit – and hopefully tackle its identity crisis

Last year saw a surge of activity around digital public infrastructure (DPI): foundational digital infrastructure, such as digital identity, digital payments, and data exchange systems, which have been touted as critical to solving global challenges.

As of September 2024, 22 countries have joined the United Nations’ 50-in-5 programme, which aims to support 50 countries design, launch, and scale digital public infrastructure components by 2028. We will likely see further development in these initiatives across 2025, culminating in the next Global DPI Summit.

As these projects make headway, the question of DPI’s definition will begin to assume greater importance. Different organisations have defined DPI differently. For instance, the Centre for Digital Public Infrastructure includes trust infrastructure and open protocols that enable discovery and fulfillment (such as India’s Open Network for Digital Commerce) as additional DPI pillars.

Individual countries have also approached DPI systems in different ways, with the picture changing “radically from one country to another”, according to a piece by researchers from the University College of London.

While these approaches reflect varying motivations and goals, vague definitions of what constitutes DPI could be a stumbling block for continued funding and support from multilateral institutions such as the World Bank.

Commentators have also warned that unclear definitions will increase risks that governments may use DPI systems for surveillance in the name of national security.

If a universally acceptable definition for DPI does not appear within the next few years, it is possible that new concepts, which may not be compatible with current common understanding of DPI, may start to dominate the global conversation on digital governance.

Systematic, novel approaches to AI

AI has dominated the digital government space for the past two years, with the advent of large language models (LLMs) in 2023. This year is likely to be no different, and we can expect to see more systematic approaches to AI, with more countries adopting national AI strategies on top of digitalisation plans.

In December 2024, Malaysia’s Digital Minister, Gobind Deo, announced the formation of the country’s new National AI Office, which will support the government’s digital transformation efforts, improve public services, and drive industry adoption of AI.

Australia has announced plans to release the country’s National AI Capability Plan by end of 2025, which aims to grow investments in Australia’s AI ecosystem, tap on AI to support critical sectors, and boost AI skills.

Many countries are also driving efforts to build national LLMs, such as Thailand’s ThaiLLM, Turkey’s plans to build a Turkish LLM, Nigeria’s multilingual LLM, and Kazakhstan’s recent launch of KazLLM, a large language model for Kazakh.

These models will support countries’ goals to build LLM-powered applications that can converse in both national languages and low-resource languages that are poorly supported by LLMs developed by Silicon Valley.

Countries like Singapore are also beginning to explore novel approaches to AI, such as agentic AI, where autonomous AI agents make decisions independently to better support operations – a theme that recurred in GovInsider’s Women in GovTech report.

Even as energy continues to buzz around AI, DPI, and new approaches to digital government this year, hewing to the best practices of digital government efforts will continue to determine success. To avoid public pushback and win over sceptics, governments will have to bear in mind not to lose sight of key principles such as user-centricity, sustainability, interoperability, cyber security and data protection.

Perum Peruri

Jabar Digital Service