To make public services more efficient and responsive to citizen needs, governments are investing in scalable digital public infrastructure, embedding emergent technologies — such as automation, AI and modular code in public services — and expanding innovative and digital skills.

Officials in Portugal took this approach with child benefits, which are the second biggest social benefit behind retirement pensions. The process of delivering benefits had been traditionally paper-based, confusing and very bureaucratic. To make this public service more efficient, the government automated the delivery of social benefits for newborns. Under this new system, child benefits are now automatically transferred to the families at birth registration. Already covering 22,500 families, this streamlined process reduced waiting time from 30 days to merely two and has the potential to impact over one million families. This innovation is increasing service delivery by eliminating barriers to access and ensuring the inclusion of every newborn in the system.

Governments are moving away from simply digitalising often burdensome and complex administrative processes. They are now investing in scalable digital infrastructure, including through the adoption of automation and AI, to build technological systems that can evolve over time, adapt to changing demand and support future innovations. This not only makes public services more efficient but can also make them more secure, accessible and reliable. Meanwhile, governments are investing in innovation skills to prepare public servants to lead digital transformation processes and to deal with uncertainty and complexity (OECD, 2024[19]).

In recent decades, government efforts towards digital transformation have resulted in a fragmented digital landscape. This is characterised by a multitude of often isolated or disconnected digital systems offering single-event, highly transactional and poorly-interoperable services. Outdated systems (legacy systems, zombie technologies, i.e. unsupported or not up-to-date anymore. etc.) have slowed the response of public services, maintained dependencies on specific technology providers and exacerbated cyber vulnerabilities. For example, research in Europe found that legacy systems present significant challenges to the digital transformation of public administration systems (Irani et al., 2023[28]).

Governments are now investing to upgrade outdated systems and build better digital public infrastructure (e.g. digital ID systems, payment systems, data sharing platforms). This will help provide people with seamless and secure access to digital services, improve scalability and optimal resource allocation through standardised and reusable tools (OECD, 2024[29]). These initiatives enable faster processes, with less “noisy” public service delivery (Kahneman, Sibony and Sunstein, 2021[30]), cutting the bureaucratic burden and allowing public officials to focus more on activities that have more value (e.g. those that require their personal intervention). For example, in Austria, the city of Vienna’s BRISE-Vienna, has transformed its digital building permit application process with AI and Augmented Reality (AR), not only making it more transparent but also cutting the wait time in half. In Indonesia, the Sehat IndonesiaKu (ASIK) application for healthcare workers, launched in 2022 digitised the data recording process, making recordkeeping more efficient, reducing errors, minimising repetitive tasks and enabling the real-time monitoring of health programmes. Finally, in South Korea, AI and automation are being used to address phishing crimes, greatly improving the efficiency of public services (see Box 3.1).

Public services are using modular software to enhance their efficiency, transparency and sustainability. Modular software services are a set of building blocks that can be easily combined and rearranged to create different solutions and allow governments to develop tailored systems that can be easily maintained and updated as needs change. By making this software open source (freely available for anyone to view, use or modify), governments encourage collaboration and knowledge sharing within the developer community. This leads to more robust and secure systems, as many experts can review and improve the code, and develop flexible and adaptable solutions that are easy to maintain and update (Drake et al., 2023[31]). Encouraging the reuse and improvement of existing code trends promotes not only innovation but also cost savings and faster development cycles. For example, India’s National Urban Digital Mission (see Box 3.2), Ukraine’s Diia Engine and the United Kingdom’s LocalGov Drupal are open-source solutions developed to ensure that public administration can create intuitive, accessible and customizable websites for their digital public services.

Governments are translating complex regulations and policies into executable computer code to ensure public services are more consistent, transparent and efficient. This approach allows for more rapid updates and adaptations of legislation, policies and regulations to changing circumstances (Mohun and Roberts, 2020[32]). It also contributes to greater understanding and compliance with regulations, as they can be more easily understood and interpreted by computers. This has real applications for public services. For example, in France, My Helper simulates social security entitlements for prospective beneficiaries simply by responding to a questionnaire. In New Zealand, similar solutions have been developed for platforms such as SmartStart, a portal providing information connected to birth and parenthood, or the Rates Rebate, targeting low-income homeowners. Canada developed Blawx as an open-source tool that helps non-programmers encode, test and employ rules using a user-friendly visual programming interface. The United Arab Emirates has also invested in a nation-wide effort to build a "Rules as Code" platform for developing AI-based laws and legislations, transforming the financial ecosystem.

Governments are increasingly focused on building the capabilities they need to thrive as the digital transformation accelerates. The OECD Recommendation of the Council on Digital Government Strategies (OECD, 2014[33]) underscores that public sector employees will play a critical role in keeping pace with technological change and making the most of digital opportunities. Human resource departments must adapt to new circumstances. And they must use new means of attracting and retaining employees, as well as develop career paths that promote a learning culture both formally and informally (OECD, 2021[34]). Innovative efforts include implementing targeted training programmes to boost employees' digital literacy, data analytical skills and familiarity with emerging technologies. These efforts are also focused on encouraging employees’ experimentation, creativity and calculated risks-taking. For example, in Indonesia, the Thematic Innovation Clinic provides local public servants training to foster innovations leveraging design thinking techniques. The African Union Digital and Innovation Fellowship has disrupted traditional hierarchies and introduced young African innovators in the bureaucracy, triggering a profound change in mindset within the organisation. In Greece, HowTo is fostering the growth on new digital skills in the public sector (see Box 3.3).

By strengthening both their technological infrastructure and their human resources, governments are making their public services more efficient. These innovations demonstrate the value of building reliable and inclusive digital infrastructure and developing the skills and competencies of public servants to design and deliver human-centred services, as stated in the OECD Recommendation on Human-centred Public Administrative Services (OECD, 2024[27]). Yet this approach has several challenges. First, digitisation processes risk infringing users’ digital rights, especially in processes that involve the automation of decision-making. Second, digitisation risks excluding people who lack digital skills. Third, governments may struggle to find a balance between building innovations from scratch and using existing solutions, and therefore risk implementing suboptimal solutions. Traditional procurement processes may not be equipped to meet the modern needs of public sector organisations (Monteiro et al., forthcoming), and recruitment practices are limited in their ability to attract and retain innovative talent.

Good practices for using technology to boost efficiency:

• Governments must focus on enhancing data accessibility and sharing within the public sector. Many countries have laid the groundwork for data sharing, yet there is still significant room for improvement in using these systems effectively across all levels of government. Doing so will improve the potential of adopting automation across different sectors.

• Digital innovations should be integrated within a broader regulatory framework that safeguards core democratic values, such as transparency, fairness and accountability. Clear guidelines and guardrails are needed to protect citizens' rights, ensuring that technology supports public trust and ethical governance, such as the G7 Toolkit for Artificial Intelligence in the Public Sector (OECD/UNESCO, 2024[20]).

• Novel approaches to procurement and hiring can accelerate the adoption of innovations. Instead of growing from zero the capacity needed, with more agile rules for innovation procurement, governments can leverage external knowledge and find novel ways to bring it into the public sector, ensuring its value persists over the life of specific projects.

In Italy, more than 22 million people receive their pensions and more than 25 million workers are insured through the National Institute of Social Security (INPS). One of the country’s largest public service organisations, INPS had more than 20,000 employees and 448 territorial offices across the country as of 2022. It is one of the main points of contact between citizens and Italy’s public administration, and one of the main channels that citizens use to communicate with INPS is certified emails.

When the COVID-19 pandemic drastically limited in-person visits, INPS employees saw a surge in digital communication via certified emails. Previously, employees handled these requests manually, sorting the emails by subject and forwarding them to the appropriate departments, a time-consuming process. With more than 500 services to manage, the sheer volume of requests left employees overwhelmed and citizens without timely answers.

To manage this surge in certified emails, the INPS has implemented a cutting-edge robotic automation tool. Using AI and an innovative machine learning model, the tool is able to sort and classify web requests, enabling a much faster response time, and allowing public servants to better manage and prioritise urgent requests. With a focus on precision, more than two-thirds of emails are now automatically dispatched, with 80% accuracy.

Developed internally and following strict rules, the tool was developed to respect data sensitivity and to complement the work of employees. Its implementation has been gradual, with employees at the centre; there has been a robust and comprehensive onboarding process. The tool has successfully been implemented in 10 major cities and in medium-sized cities. Italy aims to deploy it across the whole country by the end of the year.

To further enhance the use of technology, INPS is experimenting with large language models (LLMs) to craft pre-written emails, accelerating and streamlining the communication process. This solution is paradigmatic of how AI technologies, such as robotic processing tools, are empowering governments to build stronger foundations and provide citizens with more efficient public services.

The tool has already treated more than 1 million requests, streamlining their processing, alleviating the workload of first-level operators and ensuring a more immediate resolution of citizen requests. At the same time, the tool is making it possible for employees to focus on emails that the technology struggles to label or handles incorrectly. As such, this innovation has not only facilitated the processing of emails, but it has also allowed the INPS to better allocate its human resources and to respond to citizen’s requests in a timely manner, demonstrating how innovations can provide better value for money.