Talks

Just as digital sovereignty is about having the right agency and capacity to make and act on informed choices, digital resilience is a lot more than just whether the servers are working. It’s about whether you have the right options and ecosystem to keep delivering in the midst of changing conditions or emerging crises. In the midst of a busy UN General Assembly week it was great to moderate a panel on digital resilience with Robert Opp CDO of UNDP, John Hallmark from EY, and Vittorio Di Bello from the International Finance Corporation/World Bank at Mastercard’s Digital Ambassadors Forum. ...

Finland sits in a fascinating place when it comes to digital sovereignty. Its geography means it can’t ignore the power dynamics and risks affecting our world. Its recent history shows that it can be the home to major shapers of technology, but that they don’t necessarily last. Its recent political statements recognise that it needs to ensure that political leadership and clear roadmaps are needed to focus on sovereignty for themselves and as part of Europe. Their security agencies have correctly pointed out that there are limited options for key components of the digital supply chain. ...

There are growing questions about how we ensure new digital infrastructure and the open source software that’s available to support it are adopted, financially sustained, and managed in a way that increases government agency. The search for answers has drawn a lot of attention to the concept of Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs), a structure that’s been adopted in a number of technology-forward organisations over the past fifteen years. An OSPO is a corporate entity that is responsible for managing and coordinating an organization’s open source activities. The OSPO can be seen as the central nervous system for an organization’s open source strategy, and it provides governance, oversight, and support for all things related to open source. – Linux Foundation: A Deep Dive Into Open Source Program Offices ...

In the midst of an intense but excellent week at the 2025 Global Digital Public Infrastructure summit in Cape Town, my colleague Lauren Kahn and I helped shape and run a session with a public finance focus. Coming at the end of the conference it was a chance for participants to explore how they might take the ideas and energy from the event and apply it to reforming any/all aspects of public finance: from how we think about tax, to how we ensure compliance, to how public services receive appropriate and timely funding. ...

Great to be back at the Greenbelt Festival again a couple of weeks ago. I’m often involved behind the scenes at the festival, but this year Kester invited Hannah and I to join him for an AI-inspired panel. His write-up was: In the late 1950s, Marv Minsky, one of the early pioneers of Artificial Intelligence, excitedly turned to a colleague and gushed, “We’re going to make machines intelligent. We are going to make them conscious!”“You’re going to do all that for the machines?” his colleague replied. “What are you going to do for the people? Now, seventy-five years later, that same conundrum has become more acute. Untold resources have gone into advancing machines… but the question remains: what are we going to do for the people? This is not a panel about AI, this is a panel about us. Urgent, practical and guided by expert voices, this is about how to help humanity flourish in an age obsessed with investing more in machines. ...

I was in Singapore last week for the Digital Public Goods Alliance Annual Members Meeting, with Public Digital colleague Sechi Kailasa. It was good to feel the energy of the community and see it growing with the addition of Asian Development Bank (ADB), Open Future Foundation and the Government of Uruguay/AGESIC. It was great to see more emphasis on building capability better policy environments in government, and making smarter use of the private sector support. A highlight for me was joining Ambassador Nele Leosk from Estonia, Vice-Minister Armando J. Manzueta Peña Manzuela from Dominican Republic and Aura Cifuentes from Co-Develop for a discussion on making change happen in government as part of the D"igital Public Goods for Digital Public Infrastructure" (DPG4DPI) track. ...

Contributing to the final day of the World Bank’s “Climate Smart Public Finance” conference in Cairo, Lauren Kahn and I presented some of what we’ve learned from the past decaces of digital transformation that can aid green transition. We looked at how starting small, scaling what works and building movements are as relevant to the daunting challenges of the green transition as they’ve been for successful digital initiatives. More on the event on the World Bank site

It was a pleasure to join Dr. Geeta Mazur, Digital Minister of Morroco; Gerardo Una from the IMF; and Amanda Walker for a discussion about inclusive growth and digital transformation at the 2023 IMF/World Bank annual meetings in Marrakech. We talked about the importance of thinking beyond technology to get to integrated views of change, the need for whole of government strategies (and good examples of those) but also the importance of not starting with everything. ...

I spoke to introduce and frame this inaugural event for the ODI and public digital Digital Public Finance Hub, presenting alongside Emily, Cathal and Marco to introduce some of the themes from our working papers on what we see as an emerging (and vital) paradigm for public financial management. Videos and other content from the event are available at ODI’s event website

Around the world there’s growing interest in Digital Public Infrastructure - the way that governments and societies can build strong digital foundations - and Digital Public Goods that help us share the best practices, standards and code that support it. Together these tools should help solve wicked societal problems like financial inclusion, public services, benefits, etc at scale and speed. Examples from India’s Aadhaar to the Open Banking standards that started in the UK to Brazil’s new payments systems have driven thinking about digital platforms and infrastructure to the top of the agenda of the G20 the UN and many other bodies. Viraj Tyagi of the eGov Foundation and James Stewart of Public Digital will discuss the developments they’re seeing, the importance of the agile community and how the community can connect with the work. ...