Video: People remains the missing piece in digital government, say former ministers

After a long career driving the Maldives government’s digital transformation, Mohamed Shareef’s biggest lesson was that the digital government isn’t all about digital alone. 

Rather than just focusing on the latest or most sophisticated technology, governments should channel efforts towards building the capabilities of their workforce, equipping them to adapt to the new environments that tech brings about. 

Trust and relationships still need to be built for effective digitisation, thus putting people at the centre of it all, said Shareef, who was the former Minister of State for Environment, Climate Change and Technology and former Chief Information Officer of the National Centre for Information Technology in the Maldives. 

Shareef’s sentiments were echoed by Dr Ong Kian Ming, who served as former Deputy Minister of International Trade and Industry in Malaysia from 2018 to 2020. 

Be it digital, governance or politics, Ong’s biggest takeaway was that it was about managing people at various levels, as well as knowing oneself to be able to better connect with the team and thus drive better outcomes. 

Shareef and Ong were speaking in the Civic Punks’ interview at GovInsider’s Festival of Innovation (FOI) 2026. 

It was telling that both ministers from different fields and circumstances had come to the same conclusion — to focus on people first. 

Invest in people, and technology will solve itself 

“Technology will come because the markets are driving that anyway,” Shareef noted, urging governments to not get caught up investing in tech, but instead focus on people and their capabilities. 

When asked about how investing in people could be done even amidst budget cuts, he pointed to regional blocs such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to facilitate cross-border partnerships. 

Governments could leverage this network to channel their resources more effectively into equipping their workforce to deal with a changing environment. 

“If you invest in people, it drives the economic engine, which drives the technological development,” Shareef said. 

Ong further added his own perspective on the matter. 

“People don’t really care how much you know until they know how much you care,” he said. 

He believed empathy was crucial to make meaningful use of the existing knowledge and technology, especially in the context of public policy. 

A good understanding of the self and interaction with others enables us to use the systems to better implement policies and strategies, Ong shared. 

This would also ensure they remained in control of their output and direction, rather than relying on artificial intelligence (AI), for example. 

Cognitive sovereignty rather than outsourcing thinking 

Both Shareef and Ong also emphasised the importance of cognitive sovereignty.  

There is a need to not outsource thinking, because then we outsource the learning, Shareef said.  

In doing so, dependency would be built on external partners such as “platform partners, service providers, digital innovations, global companies”, which was not ideal.  

Rather, cognitive sovereignty meant making sure that the country was still coming up with solutions and not just consuming them, ensuring the country’s continued ability to navigate an unpredictable world.  

Ong further drove this point, saying that the core intellectual property and capabilities of the government had to be maintained.  

“That's something that we should not let go of, whether it is to consultancies, or governments or companies from another country,” he said. 

Ong acknowledged that although governments might enhance their solutions through input from external sources, they ultimately should retain their own thinking and decision-making capabilities. 

'Slow cooking over the dinner table’: A longer-term view needed 

Aligned to cognitive sovereignty, the conversation turned to the implications of outsourcing thinking to AI.  

“With digital government there is this rush to do things faster,” Shareef noted. 

This displaces the need for long-term thinking and planning in government, resulting in a loss of opportunity to build trust with citizens. 

Though AI is “beautiful at generating answers”, Shareef said, “we don’t want to give AI the opportunity to ask the questions, we should be asking the questions.” 

Rather, he brought up a vision where citizens and the government come together to discuss and “frame the questions for technology to answer”, thereby building trust in emerging technology and an AI-enabled state. 

Referring to this as “slow cooking over the dinner table”, Ong explained that slow cooking referred to governments’ long-term planning and engagement with citizens, creating a platform on which AI could then work to give the fast answers. 

Both speakers called for governments to not neglect their human aspects in the increasingly tech-driven era, and to aim for a versatile workforce that would hold amidst an ever-evolving world. 

“To cut through those struggles in an uncertain world, depend on people, real people, and not just people within government, your nation as a whole,” Shareef urged. 

You can watch the video below: