GovMesh Digest: GovMesh brings together digital government leaders in Singapore

For observers of and commentators on the digital government world, one of the most exciting about the space is that in many ways, digital government is a uniquely level playing field.  

Digital government indexes have traditionally been dominated by nimble and lean bureaucracies, where being a first mover or a large government has not always been an advantage.  

This has allowed smaller governments to develop specific world-leading capabilities in digital government niches. 

Six weeks ago, interweave and GovInsider co-hosted a new digital government summit in Singapore – GovMesh – to reflect that reality.  

Breaking the mould of traditional diplomatic groupings that often fall along political allegiances or existing partnerships, GovMesh is a space to bring countries together “beyond the usual suspects” that each would see at international conferences each month.  

‘Beyond the usual suspects’  

Senior digital government officials – including senior civil servants, top advisors, and former ministers – from Bhutan, Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Japan, Montenegro and South Korea were hand-picked based on their specific complementary strengths and weaknesses to each other.  

Together with experts from the United Nations (UN) and Germany, they flew to Singapore to lead with their best foot forward, facilitating candid, closed-door discussions on both the things that made their governments world-leading and some of the challenges they were facing. 

The energy of the day was set by kicking off with a discussion of the key values underpinning the participants’ work: integrity, collaboration, a learning culture.  

All of these were on-show from the first presentation, with Germany’s Peter Parycek sharing Europe’s vision to shift from regulation to implementation of a continent-wide European ID.  

Other participants responded with questions on sticky notes that pointed to a two-way lesson exchange, asking how Europe’s lessons might be learnt in an ASEAN context and suggesting how Europe could learn from their own countries. 

As the day progressed, our digital government leaders then presented on and discussed between themselves – everything from Bhutan’s self-sovereign ID to South Korea’s uses of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in government.

Futures thinking

By the afternoon, our conversations broadened to thinking about the future. 

UN Project Office on Governance (UNPOG)’s Ana Christina Thorlund gave a sobering reminder of how severely off track many of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) are, and participants discussed the role that digital government can play in correcting this in light of the UN Pact for the Future and Global Digital Compact.

With this call to action still in mind, the format then shifted to an unconference format by the end of the day, with participants asking themselves questions on Agentic AI, Cultural Innovation, and International Collaboration, as well as “What’s Next in Digital Government”. 

As for what’s next for GovMesh, we are working on a follow-up event in Berlin in June, as well as setting up a community of practice for our participants.

If you are interested in participating, please reach out to GovInsider or interweave.  

The individual stories on the participating governments can be found here: 

1. South Korea’s quest to move from Digital Platform Government to AI Government 

2. Azerbaijan’s great digital leap through a single window system 

3. Bhutan builds a decentralised digital government with a centralised agency 

Watch the page for the stories of Japan, Indonesia and Montenegro published soon!