GovMesh 3.0 in Lithuania convenes seven European digital governments
By Luke Cavanaugh
The third edition of the by-invite-only event for selected digital governments discussed sovereignty, being a better customer for startups, and scaling successes.
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The GovMesh participants in Beata’s Studio
Late last year, interweave hosted a third edition of GovMesh in Vilnius.
Conceived around the notion of digital government as a level playing field, GovMesh brings together a set of digital leaders “beyond the usual suspects” for a candid and vulnerable exchange of ideas around the present and future of digital government.
This time, the event is hosted in Beata’s Studio, the culinary and recording home of one of Lithuania’s most famous chefs – a far cry from an anonymous conference centre room.
Seven governments participate in the intimate closed-door day of reflections, presentations and futures exercises – Armenia, Germany, Iceland, Lithuania, Moldova, Netherlands and Ukraine – as well as the OECD.
The day begins with a values-setting exercise, with participants invited to choose from a set of cards one value that they are planning to bring to the day.
They pick up the idea of being “empathetic bulldozers” – able to force through change without being isolated, sidelined, or running out of steam.
The day before, most participants had been involved in GovTech Leaders 2025, Vilnius’s flagship digital conference, where the main theme had been GovTech Dilemmas.
In Beata’s Studio, this is reframed as polarities, questioning whether it is possible to have a both/and rather than an either/or when it comes to the risks and opportunities of themes like AI rollout and digital sovereignty.
Building the Digital Agencies of the future
As with our other GovMesh events in Singapore and Berlin, the first half of the day allows participants to put their “best foot forward” in a series of lightning talks on case studies.
Participants’ presentations dance around a couple of questions: sovereignty, being a better customer for startups, and scaling successes.
The OECD’s Angela Hanson opens the presentations by asking “innovation for what?”, foregrounding intentionality as a lens to frame discussions of “perennial piloting”, AI panic, and digital sovereignty.
We hear about the painful cost of awkward silence from Iceland’s Sveinbjörn Ingi Grimsson and moving “from procurement to partnership” with startups from the Netherlands’ Hessel van Oorschot.
Other talks range from Armenia on life events to the journey of Moldova’s eGovernance Agency, from user journeys in Germany to open innovation in Ukraine.
As the day progresses, participants leave questions on sticky notes for the presenters: how to get “skin in the game from the private sector”, how to scale pilots, and how to grow innovation labs.
The next GovMesh event is happening in Singapore on March 2.
The individual stories on the participating governments can be found here: