What separates countries that succeed in digital government transformation from those that don't?
Why can one government transform the way millions of citizens access public services while another struggles to move basic processes online?
Technology matters, but successful digital government transformation depends on more than technology itself. Leadership, institutional coordination, public trust, clear priorities and the ability to change how government works all shape whether digital transformation moves beyond individual projects.
In the Code the State podcast, Oleksandr Iefremov, CEO of Ukrainian GovTech company Kitsoft, and Daniel Korski, one of the pioneers of GovTech in Europe and a former adviser to UK Prime Minister David Cameron, discuss why digital transformation moves at very different speeds across countries.
Their conversation moves from Ukraine's experience with Diia to Europe's uneven digital landscape and the growing role of AI in public services. At its core is one question: what allows governments to turn digital ambition into lasting change?
Trust has to be earned through services
For Oleksandr, trust in digital government is built through people's experience of using its services. They need to be simple, reliable and secure. Statements about digital transformation alone are not enough.
Ukraine is an interesting example in this respect. Oleksandr describes a country where trust in government has traditionally been low, while Diia has become a digital ecosystem that citizens trust. In his view, that trust is now one of the factors driving GovTech development in Ukraine.
Daniel builds on this point by focusing on reliability. When a government service works well, people often take it for granted. But a failure, cyberattack or data leak can quickly undermine the trust that has been built over time. Governments therefore need not only to create convenient digital services, but also to ensure their stability and security.
Daniel sees trust as one of the most impressive aspects of the Diia ecosystem. What stands out to him is not only the individual digital solutions Ukraine has built, but also the fact that new services become part of an environment citizens already know and trust.
But integration also creates responsibility. As more services and data become connected, Daniel argues that governments need strong legal frameworks defining who can access information, what happens when something goes wrong and how citizens can seek redress.
There is no single European model of digital government
Daniel rejects the idea that Europe has one approach to digital government.
Some European countries have built digital services so effectively that citizens barely notice them. He points to Denmark and the UK, where passport processes can be handled digitally, and to Scandinavian digital identity systems that are used not only for government services but also for interactions with banks, insurers and other private-sector organisations.
But that experience is far from universal.
Daniel describes a digitally advanced Nordic group as the “vanguards”, countries where digital identity and digital public services have become part of everyday life. At the other end are countries where core government processes remain largely undigitised. He places Germany among the most prominent laggards, linking some of its caution to the country's historical experience with government surveillance. Between these groups is a large middle where governments are digitising services without fundamentally transforming the citizen experience.
Europe's strength, in Daniel's view, is not a particular technology. It is the expectation that public services should serve citizens and remain democratically accountable. That creates a strong foundation for GovTech, but also raises expectations when digital services fail.
Ukraine followed a different path.
Before Diia, Oleksandr says, Ukrainians were already accustomed to digital banking, insurance, tickets and other private-sector services. Government remained far more bureaucratic and paper-based. The expectations created by those private digital experiences helped generate demand for a different kind of interaction with the state.
Political will can start transformation, but it cannot deliver it alone
Oleksandr sees political will and technical capacity as interconnected. Without a technical foundation, governments cannot execute. But leadership can set direction, build capacity and remove barriers that technical teams cannot remove themselves.
Daniel identifies a different obstacle: bureaucratic risk aversion.
Politicians may genuinely want better digital government, he argues, while administrations remain cautious about unfamiliar technologies. When officials do not understand how a technology could transform a service, they may perceive greater risks than are actually present. The result can be slower decisions, excessive hedging and less ambitious solutions.
Ukraine's experience brought political ambition and technical execution together. Oleksandr points to the idea of the “state in a smartphone” as part of Volodymyr Zelenskyy's political programme, combined with strong technical teams capable of turning that ambition into infrastructure and services.
Kitsoft, he says, was involved from the beginning, focusing not only on launching services quickly but on building a platform that could remain stable as the number of services grew. The team was designing for a future in which the platform might need to support hundreds of services.
Speed requires teams to work differently
Ukraine's speed did not come only from technology.
Oleksandr describes product, technical and legal teams working in parallel to launch services. Even government legal teams, which he characterises as traditionally conservative, became more agile as the pressure to deliver increased.
COVID-19 created additional demand for digital services. The war intensified that demand further, while repeated cyberattacks forced teams to strengthen the security measures protecting critical digital assets.
At the same time, Ukraine's digital transformation is still ongoing. Oleksandr mentions work with legacy systems and the challenges of integrating with some government registries. He also points to areas where Ukraine can benefit from the experience of other European countries, including transparency in tax collection and public spending.
For Kitsoft, this has shaped a broader approach to international GovTech projects: not simply exporting Ukraine's model, but combining lessons from Ukraine with practices from other countries.
Successful transformation needs a movement, not just a project
When asked directly what separates governments that succeed in digital transformation from those that do not, Daniel begins with a warning against universal formulas.
Countries start from different positions. Estonia was able to begin its transformation from a different starting point, while Denmark's experience has been shaped by factors including its relatively small population and high-trust society. Lessons can travel between countries, but the conditions in which they are applied are not identical.
Still, Daniel identifies one factor he considers essential: transformation needs to become part of a broader movement for change.
Complex legacy systems are tied to institutions, established ways of working and professional interests. Changing them therefore requires more than deploying new technology. Daniel points to reform movements associated with Emmanuel Macron in France and David Cameron in the UK as examples of the political momentum needed to push structural change forward.
That movement also needs priorities.
Governments do too many things to transform everything at once. Daniel argues for a sharply prioritised plan: decide which services, platforms or infrastructure matter most during a particular period and focus on delivering them. Trying to modernise everything simultaneously risks spreading resources too thinly and failing to realise the expected benefits.
He also stresses the importance of an ecosystem in which smaller teams and companies can contribute good solutions rather than limiting government technology to large legacy providers.
Siloed digitalisation can stop transformation from becoming systemic
Oleksandr sees another pattern in governments that struggle with digital transformation: disconnected initiatives.
Different agencies or digitalisation centres may each have their own projects, budgets and teams, but little coordination between them. The result can be substantial activity without a shared direction.
As he describes it, governments can have many initiatives and significant investment while still lacking a common strategy and effective execution.
This is why he emphasises not only individual digital services but the foundations that allow different services and institutions to work together.
In international projects, Kitsoft has also encountered challenges that were less significant when Ukraine began its own transformation. Connectivity is one example. In countries where reliable internet access cannot be assumed, digital government may need to include tools for public servants who interact with citizens offline, rather than designing exclusively for citizens accessing services directly online.
Oleksandr connects this to the GovStack approach of reusable building blocks. The objective is not to copy and paste another country's digital government architecture, but to reuse components where they make sense, adapt them to local conditions and build the capacity of local companies and government product teams to support them.
How do you create urgency without a crisis?
Ukraine's experience raises another question: what role does a sense of urgency play in the speed of digital transformation? Oleksandr notes that demand for digital services increased during COVID-19 and became even more pressing during the war. Limited resources forced teams to set clearer priorities and concentrate on what mattered most.
Daniel picks up on this point. He stresses that war is a terrible experience that no one would want to repeat, but asks a different question: how can countries operating in peacetime create a similar sense of urgency and momentum for change? For him, part of the answer lies in bringing people together around a shared mission.
Drawing on his experience in the British government, Daniel explains that public servants need to feel that they are contributing to something larger than their individual task. A junior official should not see their job simply as maintaining a particular database or carrying out an administrative process. They need to understand how their work contributes to a broader transformation.
For Daniel, this sense of shared mission is critical to creating momentum within government institutions, particularly among people who may be far from the political centre but whose decisions ultimately determine whether change moves forward.
Where AI could change digital government
AI enters this conversation not as a replacement for the foundations of digital government, but as another tool for changing how services are delivered.
Oleksandr identifies three areas where he sees the greatest potential.
The first is helping citizens navigate complex public services: understanding which service they need, what they are eligible for and what steps come next. The second is supporting public servants by helping them process information, find relevant information and draft responses more efficiently. The third is helping governments design and improve services by analysing regulations, identifying bottlenecks and modelling processes.
He also points to law as code as one area where AI could play a role, helping transform legal requirements into technical requirements and technical requirements into actual code on the platform.
But Oleksandr draws a boundary around government judgment and responsibility. Those cannot simply disappear into an algorithm. AI can help governments become faster, clearer and more transparent, but people remain responsible for serving people.
Daniel focuses on what AI agents could mean for the citizen interface. Instead of citizens having to understand government structures and search for the right service themselves, agents could increasingly provide personalised and proactive assistance, from preparing tax information to helping organise interactions with public services.
Governments need to think in services, not procedures
Oleksandr closes the conversation with a call for governments to stop organising their work around procedures and start thinking in terms of the services people rely on.
For him, this requires a shift towards product management and product thinking inside government. The question is no longer only how to digitise an existing procedure, but how to organise government around the service a person is actually trying to receive.
Daniel's argument arrives at a similar point from another direction. Successful digital transformation requires political momentum, clear priorities and public servants who understand that they are part of a larger mission.
Neither treats technology as irrelevant. But throughout the conversation, both point to the institutional conditions around technology: leadership, coordination, trust, priorities and the ability to execute.
Listen to the full episode
Listen to the full episode of Code the State with Oleksandr Iefremov and Daniel Korski for their complete conversation on trust in digital government, Ukraine's experience with Diia, Europe's uneven digital transformation, political leadership and the future of AI in public services.
