Transforming government through digitization


Bjarne Corydon, Vidhya Ganesan, and Martin Lundqvist at McKinsey: “By digitizing processes and making organizational changes, governments can enhance services, save money, and improve citizens’ quality of life.

As companies have transformed themselves with digital technologies, people are calling on governments to follow suit. By digitizing, governments can provide services that meet the evolving expectations of citizens and businesses, even in a period of tight budgets and increasingly complex challenges. Our estimates suggest that government digitization, using current technology, could generate over $1 trillion annually worldwide.

Digitizing a government requires attention to two major considerations: the core capabilities for engaging citizens and businesses, and the organizational enablers that support those capabilities (exhibit). These make up a framework for setting digital priorities. In this article, we look at the capabilities and enablers in this framework, along with guidelines and real-world examples to help governments seize the opportunities that digitization offers.

A digital government has core capabilities supported by organizational enablers.

Governments typically center their digitization efforts on four capabilities: services, processes, decisions, and data sharing. For each, we believe there is a natural progression from quick wins to transformative efforts….(More)”

See also: Digital by default: A guide to transforming government (PDF–474KB) and  “Never underestimate the importance of good government,”  a New at McKinsey blog post with coauthor Bjarne Corydon, director of the McKinsey Center for Government.