FOI2026 interview with UNDP's Juan Kanggrawan on how governments can move faster
Oleh Derek Alton
After chatting with Juan Kanggrawan, Regional Digital & AI Expert for Asia Pacific at UNDP, one theme kept coming back: humility. Not humility as a nice leadership word.
The practical kind. The kind that keeps you learning, keeps you close to the problem, and stops innovation from becoming theatre. Juan has worked across government, development, digital transformation, and the private sector — including experience with a unicorn.
And that private-sector muscle showed up in how he talked about implementation: whatever you do, make sure you are solving real problems and actually building things that work.
We also got into pilots. Why they can help governments move quickly, create impact, and find low-hanging fruit — but also why they are not always the right answer. Not every situation needs a pilot.
Not every pilot needs to scale. And sometimes the most useful thing a pilot can do is fail clearly.
What do you think: are governments using pilots to learn faster, or sometimes to avoid making harder decisions?
The video was first published on Civic Punks' YouTube page, and this was made possible through a collaboration between GovInsider and Civic Punks at the Festival of Innovation (FOI) 2026 event from 3-4 March 2026.