Asia an emerging leader in digital government, says UN report

The 2024 edition of the United Nations E-Government Survey has identified Denmark, Estonia, Singapore, and the Republic of Korea as leading digital governments across the world, with Asia seeing the highest growth in the e-government rankings.

The rankings measures performance in online service provision, human capital, and infrastructure.

“Europe continues to lead, followed by Asia, the Americas, Oceania, and Africa. Asia has seen the highest growth at 7.7 per cent followed by Africa at 4.8 per cent,” said the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs’ Chief of Digital Government, Vincenzo Aquaro, in a press conference on September 17, 2024.

“This collective momentum underscores Asia’s emerging leadership, led not only by historical digital leaders such as Korea and Singapore, but also by several key groups of countries such as the countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) as well as the countries in Central Asia.”

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How Asia performed

Of the top 25 countries in this year’s e-government survey, six Asian countries were listed, including Singapore, the Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Japan, and Bahrain. This marks an increase from the 2022 survey, where only four countries – the Republic of Korea, Singapore, UAE, and Japan – were listed.

The full report also highlights India’s digital identity system, Aadhar, Thailand’s Government 4.0 initiative, Bangladesh’s use of digital solutions to empower small businesses, and Japan’s new Digital Agency as examples of impactful digital government initiatives.

“Additionally, the impressive digital progress in large countries such as Turkey, China, India and Mongolia have further propelled the region's transformation, making Asia a dynamic hub of digital innovation and growth, despite the significant progress achieved in Oceania and Africa,” Aquaro said.

In Southeast Asia, most countries have risen in the rankings, with Indonesia making the leap from 77th to 64th place and Singapore moving from 7th to 3rd. Other countries that have progressed in the region include Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Brunei, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

AI takes the spotlight

While the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic were key to understanding the survey results in 2022, the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in government services has emerged as one of the most dominant trends of the past two years.

In a first-ever special addendum, this year’s report explored the ways AI can improve the effectiveness of public service delivery and help countries achieve sustainable development, as well as emerging concerns around data bias and digital disparities.

The report recommended that countries adopt human-centric approaches to implementing AI in public services, capacity-building measures, robust data governance structures, and AI literacy efforts, highlighting Singapore’s AI national capabilities programme, AI Singapore, as one example.

During the press conference, the Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development at UNDESA, Navid Hanif, noted that while AI offers promising opportunities to improve public services, “its application must be carefully managed to ensure fairness, transparency, and accountability”.

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Digital divides persist

Hanif highlighted that though digital government has been on an upward trend globally, 1.37 billion people are still “on the wrong side of the digital divide”.

Least developed countries, landlocked developing countries, and small island developing states are at the highest risk of not being able to bridge the digital divide, he noted. In these categories, countries like Bangladesh, Mongolia, and Singapore have stood out as leaders.

When it comes to closing the digital gap, India was favourably mentioned for its BharatNet initiative, which aims to provide high-speed Internet to rural areas.

This year’s report included new metrics to measure digital government performance, including e-government literacy skills – the ability of people to use digital services well – and affordability of Internet access.

The report also included a Digital Government Model Framework, which aims to be a systemic road map for implementing digital government. The framework includes key principles for digital development, business drivers, and metrics to evaluate performance.

The six key business drivers identified include digital identity, digital literacy, digital participation, digital infrastructure, data centricity, and digital leadership.

Significance of the report

From the UN’s perspective, the report serves as a global benchmarking tool to help nations “understand and improve their performance in the digital domain,” said Hanif in his opening remarks, particularly in the context of achieving the sustainable development goals.

Writing for GovInsider previously, leaders of UK-based consultancy Public Digital, Andrew Greenway and Emma Gawen, highlighted that agencies can use the legitimacy associated with such rankings to petition for higher budgets and convince stakeholders of the worth of recent initiatives.

However, past reports have been criticised for an overly broad view of digital government.

In a past piece by the Blavatnik School of Government’s Aaron Maniam, he argued that the UN’s focus on telecommunications infrastructure and human capital, coupled with a lack of analysis of the success of digitalisation projects, means that the report does not accurately capture the state of government digitalisation.

For instance, Japan has historically done well in the e-government rankings due to its strong investment in infrastructure, despite its relative slowness in adopting digital government methodologies, having only just eliminated fax machines.