New Normal:How the pandemic changed public service delivery

The year 2020 became a crossroad in digital transformation. The COVID-19 pandemic became a definitive push that forced the public sector to digitalisation. “Eventually, the digital way has been internalised as a must and a necessity by everyone like never before,” explained Linnar Viik, Programme Director of Smart Governance at e-Governance Academy the need to address the New Normal on the e-Governance Conference 2021. 

“We found ourselves in a prolonged state of emergency. That’s why countries came up with a patchwork of diverse digital solutions. But now it’s time to shift from such reactive innovation to more stable and sustainable plans. Innovation is already happening. Today, our task is to make sense of it in a way that ad-hoc responses, differing between countries, are reorganized and reformulated to look forward and beyond the present needs,” he stresses.

Three macro-trends shape innovation in 2021 and requirements towards public service delivery, Linnar Viik underlines. These are people centricity, location independence, resilient delivery and operations. “Institutions understood that people are central, and at the centre, of their activities. The focus lies now not only on end-users but on makers as well, i.e. staff and employees,” he explains. A location-independent framework means that the back office is not anymore just in a government but potentially elsewhere, enabled also by cloud solutions. 

The lessons learned from the new normality brought by the COVID-19 pandemic and future digital developments in governments worldwide will be the focus of this year’s e-Governance Conference. 

Join us in the discussions on New Normal addressing the shift in the digital governance models and challenges and successes of digital transformation during the COVID-19 pandemic on 19 May! 

Presentations and discussion on “Shift in the Digital Governance Models” will feature Nicolas Ruiz from OECD, Aki Enkenberg from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland (TBC). The discussion is moderated by Nele Leosk, Ambassador-at-Large for Digital Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Estonia. 

Presentations and discussion on “Challenges and successes of digital transformation during the COVID-19 pandemic” will feature Bolor-Erdene Battsengel, Chairwoman, Communication and Information Technology Authority of Mongolia and Valeriya Ionan, Deputy Minister, Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine. The discussion is moderated by Hannes Astok – Executive Director, e-Governance Academy.

Tune in Digital Government Podcast to find out more about the New Normal and the trends that influence public service delivery!