Governance with Open Source

At a glance

In today’s world, the public expects government agencies to work seamlessly and efficiently. With the increasing digitalisation of society, government agencies face enormous pressure to comply with evolving policy regulations and address cybersecurity and privacy concerns. Digital government services have exploded around the world in the last twenty years and are critical to the development of a digital economy and society. For citizens, these services improve access to vital services such as health care, education and social services. 

However, many countries, especially in resource-poor areas, are struggling to keep pace with the development due to a lack of financial resources and technical capacities. This often leads to non-interoperable services, duplicate structures or even the absence of digital administrative services. GovStack, a global partnership, supports countries and organisations in building cost-effective and efficient digital public services that are tailored to local circumstances. With technical expertise, tools, communities of practice and practical guidance, GovStack supports countries around the world on their digitalisation journey, providing multifunctional and cross-sector digital e-government solutions that are easy to design, implement and scale. 

Our approach

Launched by Estonia, Germany, International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) in 2020, the GovStack initiative aims to share the tools, knowledge, and best practices needed to build digital public services at scale. 

The digitalisation of government services poses numerous challenges for policy makers and technical experts. GovStack addresses these challenges with its ‘building block’ approach, which provides an affordable, customisable technical solution that enables leaders to pursue a comprehensive, government-wide strategy. Rather than building digital services one at a time, GovStack creates and shares “digital building blocks” that allow government leaders to construct e-government services without starting from scratch each time. Every digital service consists of several different components (building blocks) that each offer a specific functionality and are combined to form the finished service. 

How GovStack utilises the digital building blocks:

In addition to the technical building blocks, GovStack is working with local and global partners and technical experts to provide a broad offering that supports countries at every step of their digital journeys.

GovStack offerings 

GovStack offers different products and services to support the digital transformation of governments and organisations. These include a collection of technical specifications, a testing environment for digital solutions, e-learning and in-person trainings, and different exchange formats for best practice and knowledge transfer. They are listed here: 

Our country activities 

GovStack empowers public and private organizations to make the most of the digital world by providing them with the tools and knowledge needed to successfully scale the digitalization of public services. The initiative helps partner governments with insights and leading examples to reduce unnecessary system duplication, combat fraud and corruption through increased security and traceability of transactions, and improve civic engagement and accountability. 

GovStack is partnering with countries from all over the world. Example implementations include the creation of digital High School certificates in Somalia and the creation of a digital platform for e-waste management. 

Here is an overview of GovStack partner countries (Status: June 2024):

More information