Bolor-Erdene Battsengel is the State Secretary of the newly established Ministry of Digital Development of Mongolia, effective starting January 2022. She was previously the chairwoman of Mongolia's Communication and Information Technology Authority, the youngest and first female to hold this position since July 2020.

Raised in the countryside, Bolor-Erdene has started the “Girls for Coding” program, which trains girls from vulnerable families in remote areas who do not have computer or internet access. Until end of 2021, fifty girls received training in the program and were offered jobs at companies.

Bolor-Erdene graduated from the University of Oxford with a master's degree in public policy in 2017. She previously worked at the World Bank, United Nations, Asian Development Bank, and Cabinet Office of the United Kingdom.

She has been selected into the Forbes Asia “30 Under 30” list of outstanding young leaders.

There had been several attempts to get a digital government going in Mongolia, but it took Bolor-Erdene to make it happen. As always, there have been important supporting factors, too: strong political support and push, plus COVID-19. As she has said herself, in a way it has been the right time and about time.

But her story is to me a good example of the premise of this book: the right strategy and right conditions do not cut it by themselves; you also need to a right leader to make the magic happen. That is why I was keen to have Bolor-Erdene in this book, even if her journey as a digital government leader has been a short one so far.

She does have the results to show, no doubt. The e-Mongolia introduction in 2020–2021 has been perhaps among the most shining recent digital government progress stories globally in terms of the speed, width of services, as well as public appreciation. Which all translates into impact.

Her youth should offer encouragement that you do not always need long experience to make stuff happen. Rather, the right attitude (look at what she says about importance of bravery!) and approach can help just as much. It will be fascinating to see in the next years how the changes that this power-woman and the Mongolian government started will continue and last.

—SIIM

What Was Your Journey to the Government in Mongolia and to Digital Government Leadership Like?

I did my master's in public policy from Oxford University, although I was not focusing on digital topics then. I got an opportunity to work within the UK Cabinet Office on an internship, in the team that worked on the International Civil Service Effectiveness Index. That led to me to digital governance issues, as we were doing surveys and learning about relevant experience of countries from around the world. It was very interesting to see the different mechanisms and different systems how governments had been digitizing and how they received the benefits from it.

After the studies, I worked some time as a consultant and also went to work for the World Bank in Sydney, overseeing some of the agricultural projects in the Pacific Islands countries. My parents kind of pressured me to come back to Mongolia; plus, I found that University of Oxford was working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on a project called Digital Pathways. It is about analyzing the digital development readiness of countries, and then developing relevant strategy proposals for these governments on how to transition to a digital economy.

They chose a few countries; I lobbied to include Mongolia. Their requirement was that the government had to have ownership of the work. We managed to get that from the current president, Uhnaagijn Hürelsüh, who was prime minister at the time, and the current prime minister, Luvsannamsrain Oyun-Erdene, who was chief cabinet secretary at the time. We got the funding, got the project going, and I led this work in Mongolia.

It was an important initiative to convince the leaders on the importance of digital development and digital economy; it was before COVID-19. Politicians did not care much about it before. The strategy we ended up proposing entailed six steps for the transition to a digital economy in Mongolia. The assessment basically concluded that the government itself was a bottleneck to digital development as digital services were not there, and the government was very bureaucratic and corrupt. I suggested a strong move toward digitizing the public services and building up a digital government; I was trying to convince the Cabinet Secretariat to take it on.¹ I was planning to go back to Sydney after handing over the proposal.

It so happened that then the chief cabinet secretary and several parliament members went to Estonia, saw what the digital government could be about and how it saved money. They came back and established a digital development committee under the Cabinet Secretariat, asking me to lead it. It was a policy coordination body; I had some five people working under my supervision. We were trying to pressure Communication and Information Technology Authority (CITA) to start work on e-Mongolia, a digital government program. We had everything prepared for it but CITA chairman was not having it.

After the 2020 election, the new prime minister offered the CITA chair job to me saying that if I really wanted to do the digital government, I had to do it myself. There was no way I could convince others to do it for me. It was a big decision for me because I had a lucrative job waiting, and I always wanted to be far away from politics. But I had a motivation to try and make e-Mongolia work.

So, on the 22nd of July 2020, I was appointed as the first chairwoman of CITA. It was still a civil service role, even if I do have to deal with politics by working with the cabinet and parliamentarians to get things approved—like laws in parliament.

Where Does Your Motivation for Improving the Government Come From?

My grandfather was a public servant; my parents were public servants. Even though I wanted to be away from the politics, I was always interested in civil service, and how it works. I also got a chance to work with a lot of governments around the world and see their approaches, including when I was working for the World Bank.

There is also a cultural thing for Mongolians, perhaps because we have a small population. We always want to come back to Mongolia and do something good for the country. I always had this thing in my mind that I should go back to Mongolia and do something, to help the country to do something.

When I was given a choice to work as the leader of the CITA, I thought it was a good chance for me to change the country in my own way. E-Mongolia could help a lot of people because corruption had been a very, very big issue for a long time. Also, I had had myself the experience with bureaucracy. I remember spending like three days at the registration agency to get my passport; it was so terrible. So, I thought it was a good chance to do something about it!

The only thing I asked for from the prime minister was political support. He has been very supportive. If we would not have had that, we would not have succeeded with our tasks. It is very important to have faith in whomever you are working for. One reason I joined the government is because I thought there were good leaders, and they could help me do these things.

As the Prime Minister Asked You to Join, Did He or Anyone Lay Out a Concrete Expectation for You in Terms of What to Deliver?

It was about putting to action the six steps proposed in the digital economy report, which include a lot of different things: digital governance, cybersecurity, digital signatures, and so on. CITA works on all of these and with a wide digital development mission, including skills and connectivity infrastructure, even space topics.

The political leaders paid the most attention to getting the government services digitized and getting our government services available on the phone. That was what moved them. So, the biggest expectation for me, from the people who offered me the job, was to bring e-Mongolia out as a platform with services in it. My purpose within the first hundred days was to launch e-Mongolia. And we did it with exactly the first hundred days, on October 1, 2020. That was when the new digital service platform launched, with 181 first digital services available there.

What Was the Digital Government Scene and Situation in Mongolia before That?

Some countries do not have too many public services perhaps. In Mongolia, we have thousands of government services at every step of the way. You have to get some signatures; you have to get some approvals for whatever you do.

Some infrastructure for digital government had been built up. We had data centers, we had government data collected and kept. We had an authentication system to register the citizens and allow them to use online services. But there were not many actual government services using these options.

We had lacked a lot in leadership, to be honest. In civil service, certain ways of work had been in place for thirty years; public servants were not supportive of new ideas and new projects.

What Have Been the Levers and Mandate of CITA to Bring Change to the Scene?

What I wanted to do from the beginning was to build services for the agencies, because there have been a lot of projects implemented and failed in terms of actually digitalizing the different sectors, like health, for example. As CITA is an agency, we could not take over the delivery and leadership of different sectors—there are different ministries for that. We have to work with them.

I got a lot of support from the current prime minister, because when he came into the office, he announced that leaders or ministers who are not digitalizing their services will be considered as pro-corruption. That was a big political move. It was a big help, because when we started digitalizing with e-Mongolia, I got a lot of backlash from the government, from different agencies. People were against because, first of all, they did not understand the importance of it as they had not seen it before. Second, there have been corruption issues in some organizations but thanks to digital governance, corruption options are reduced. The prime minister saw the importance of e-Mongolia in this sense; also e-Mongolia became instantly a very appreciated government project by the public. So, he and other leaders paid more attention.

As CITA has been under the Cabinet Secretariat, we can bring backlash and challenges to the highest level. The prime minister has also set up a mechanism whereby citizens can send complaints, and these become priorities for government to solve—also priorities for our digitalization work. So, if there is a complaint for specific service, we will digitalize that service first. This structure and the political weight behind have given a lot of leverage to the work.

Starting from January 2022, CITA is actually becoming a Ministry for Digital Development. We will have a minister; we will be working at the same level of and directly with all other ministries. Previously it was a challenge to go directly to other ministries and tell them what to do; now such coordination will be stronger. We can also start reducing the overlapping digital investments, for example.

If e-Mongolia Was the Deliverable, What Is Your Wider Mission? What Is the Objective You Have Set for Yourself and the Country in Digital Government?

My vision has always been to develop the digital economy more broadly, just like in our studies under the Digital Pathways work and in the recommendations we made. Digital governance is important, but in the end, it is a very small part of digital development. We want the Mongolian economy to grow, to make the country very inclusive, want to support companies and encourage people to use digital services more widely, to have a well-developed digital infrastructure for it. Then we can create a digital economy. This matters especially because Mongolia has been heavily relying on the mining industry.

In a digital government, the aim is to digitalize all the government services, excluding perhaps only the ones where you will have to make emotional decisions, like getting married. By end of 2021, we have made 610 services digitally available on e-Mongolia. In 2022, we will focus on services that help special groups of people like those living oversees or who are left out of digital development for age or disabilities. Most important, we are looking at services for herder communities, as we are still a nomadic country in Mongolia.

My own goal would be accomplished if a herder from middle-of-nowhere can use his or her phone and get the government service right there—and not need to drive to for five hours to the nearest province center or to the city to get a simple government service done. A lot of combined work has to go into reaching this objective: from governance and digitalization of services to infrastructure and digital literacy, for example. But that is the mission I have.

The time line we are operating with is 2024. All services have to be online before the next elections that year. We are halfway there, I would say, in terms of digital services reaching all the people and communities.

With All the Government Services to Digitalize, How Do You Prioritize and Sequence Them? What Are the Criteria for Selection?

There are two types of ways we set up the priorities and the work plan.

First, we do regular surveys, assessments. We conduct this research to see how many services people are getting from each agency, what are the most commonly used ones. This way we see the effect of potential digitalization. For example, a state registration agency is one of the most common places citizens go or need to go—so we started with them quite a bit.

Second, it is the complaint mechanism that the prime minister has set up. There have been complaints coming in about health services, like hospital appointments, and army registrations, which we have digitalized just recently.

Given the Tough Context You Started From, How Did You Start in the Role and Gear CITA to Start Delivering from Your First Hundred Days?

I had a lot of challenge in the beginning for people to accept me as a chairwoman, to accept my leadership and to follow my leadership. A lot of people in government widely and in CITA, too—they have seen many leaders come and go. They thought that I would leave soon anyways. I also caught a lot of attention from the public, being the first woman on the job and being the youngest. There have been suspicions about me coming from a political family, from a rich family.

I worked very hard. I did not have weekends off that first summer. I was a harsh boss also to the team, pushing them to work long and a lot. A lot of people were against it at first, but then they started seeing the results and they started seeing the recognition. They are now very supportive, and do not mind working weekends even.

The results of our work brought public support. I wanted to come out and announce e-Mongolia very publicly on purpose, in an Apple or TED-talk kind of way. We did a big event and launch. Except for elections, it was the first case when a civil servant came out and introduced the product to the public. That got notice. Still, when people saw me or my video of making presentation about e-Mongolia launch, they did not trust immediately. Once they tried out the services on the site, then we got the support.

We did not stop there with the outreach. One of the most important things we have done to ensure the support is to try and have more citizen involvement and participation in the digitalization process. If there is a service you do not like or you are experiencing bureaucracy or corruption, you can inform us, and we will solve it. We have done a lot of public communications to publicly say these things. We got a lot of citizens involved, and they see that it actually works this way.

Training and communications have been a big part of getting agencies onboard. When you digitalize a service, the whole process has to become digital, and you are changing how work gets done. You have to change the internal processes and that takes different skills. We also highlight and praise other agencies' good work in the media a lot, in press conferences. This has helped to win them over.

Still, How Did You Start Working with the CITA Team and Perhaps Changing Things There to Get the Speedy Delivery and New Approach from Them?

When I was working at the Cabinet Secretariat, at the digital development committee, I got to know the people in CITA and the government. I knew whom to talk to, how they work, whom we could work with.

I also had the plan ready from before. I had myself a list of services to start with, from different government agencies—things that people use regularly. We started on them from the first day.

I hired some companies to help us with the actual tech development. I established a project unit immediately with ten people. So, we had then a technical team from outside working on code and solutions, and we had a new project unit working on digitizing the government processes. Convincing people and training people. I started bringing in younger people to join us.

It obviously was a bit lonely at the beginning, but then I had some people join the team. The previous team leaders left their jobs, as their previous boss left. I promoted some specialists to become team leaders, once I worked with them in these first months and got to know who was who. They are now my main partners on e-Mongolia. It was a good thing because they already knew how government worked, but they are young and ambitious—and now given an opportunity.

Once you got e-Mongolia Up and Running, What Have Been Your Key Initiatives and Milestones since Then?

We have done work to promote technology and make people in the country understand the importance of technology. We continue actively with communications work. We have organized a big ICT Expo each year. In 2021 we named it “Digital Nation Expo” and had more than one hundred companies joining. It had the biggest stage ever built in Mongolia, we had two hundred thousand people come to the event in three days.

We have done a lot of legislative and policy work, in addition to continuing the fast-paced digitalization of services and to support these efforts. There was a lack of proper legal environment before. We have been creating a regulation framework to promote and to encourage digital development not only within the government, but to support the digital economy in general. It has meant five new laws within the last year, which has been possible due to the wider public's strong support, again.

The laws have included a personal data protection law; cybersecurity law, which was discussed for almost eighteen years but not passed; a data sharing law; a digital signatures law.

Building CITA has been another important part of work. We now have about eighteen people working in e-Mongolia unit, a third of them are in customer service. They take calls and messages from citizens about e-Mongolia, offer instructions or guidance, solve complaints. I have started using an expert team or group structure, where we involve specialists from various units. So, there is a horizontal e-Mongolia team, a public relations team like that, so on.

How Have You Been Building the Team? How Do You Find People and Whom Do You Look For?

One of the biggest challenges I have had is to find people, to find good people. It is a very small community here, in Mongolia. There are obviously some qualified people out there, but they prefer to work for the private sector, because the pay is much higher and there is less stress.

I have done a lot of headhunting. I have tried to convince young people, talking to them about the importance of the work itself. This way some ambitious guys joined my team: not because of the salary, but because the ambition itself. We have gotten some people who are educated in Australia, the UK, or the US to join. They have been good additions because they have seen how other countries work and they are relatively open-minded.

I have been seeking team members who think differently from the usual government. The culture of government is very boxed, in a way. I want people who can be innovative, who can be creative.

How Do You Work with Your Team? What Are Your Methods and Style?

I work directly with my team; I talk directly to the specialists. Often in government, you have to work through the directors or that is how people do work, at least. I work with people at front desk, the junior staff. I do not have a problem talking to them directly. I like working with people without having to spend time to translate things through the team leaders. In CITA, we are still a small enough team to be able to do it like that.

Before there were a lot of delays in government projects in Mongolia. I did not want to have that. One thing I always believe is that if you give people ten days, they will finish the task in ten days. If you give them three days to finish and really, really push it, you can still have the same result—in three days. I have been aggressive with my team in this way.

I am the one that sets the goals. When we launched e-Mongolia with the first 181 services, I set the next goal right after. I had dinner with the team after finishing the first task, appreciating them, and recognizing them for their work. And then gave the next very strict deadlines for the next few months.

We have very productive short meetings. I do not like long, extensive, inefficient meetings. These are issue or substance meetings. I plan ahead the things to talk about. Once a week, we do a meeting where people can report what they have done. However, if there is an issue or an idea, we will talk about it right away. Even after 7 pm, we can do it over the phone, does not matter.

We do have a very dynamic team in this way. The team has a hunger to do something. I myself do not give interviews that much anymore. I want to have more recognition for my team. That is why I have them talk to the media more: so that they get recognition for what they are doing and working on.

I am involved in my style, I would say. I do not just give the assignment and disappear; I follow up. I think I make people feel like I am their partner, more than their boss. And that they are my partner as well. One aspect of it is that we do not have much hierarchy within the teams.

What Type of Culture Have You Tried to Build into CITA?

I want to have the team as a very dynamic, very active one. I want it to be a power team.

The best way to build a culture is to show and be part of that culture yourself. So, I try a lot myself to be very dynamic and active, to be qualified, to be hard-working, to be friendly. In a way, I create more stress on myself. But if people like it, they kind of tend to follow it.

A big part has been to induce people to be creative. The way I give tasks is aimed at this. If there are ideas or issues on the table, I want to see three options or solutions or suggestions. If I give an assignment to somebody, I want to see the options so that people do not just bring the simplest solution. I want them to think harder, be more innovative, more creative. That is why I ask for three options that are different from each other. It gives them an opportunity to really understand the issue and think more widely.

Looking back, we achieved the things we have achieved with the team because we—and I—have been very brave. You need this kind of bravery, even if some might call it stupidity, in face of risks and political issues.

Where Does This Sort of Bravery Come From?

It comes from the vision you have—that I have. The feeling that it has to be done, that we have to do it.

What Have Been the Mantras You Have Kept Repeating to the Team?

I do tell them to be more creative and innovative. To be persistent. These are the things I say in every meeting.

And the three options! Always have and bring three options.

Especially at the beginning, I used to say often that we are re-creating government services. We are changing and re-creating the culture, the standards for government. I often say this just to make people understand and realize how important it is what we are doing.

What Do You Think Have Been Your Biggest Achievements in the Role So Far?

I am most proud that e-Mongolia is pretty safe now, even if I were to leave the job. That is because we have introduced service standards to the public and have the public's support.

I am also proud that people now understand the importance of digital transformation more widely, within the shortest amount of time. That there is wide support for digital development itself. This comes from the capacity building, from the public relations work we have done. But it also comes from the fact that we created the e-Mongolia platform and people have been able to use services there, even during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Even in this time, people could order passports, renew driver's licenses.

COVID-19 had a useful impact as well in that it helped people, especially the public and older generations, understand the technology and the benefits of it. If we would not have used the COVID-19 opportunity to deliver services during the lockdown, we would not have the two million users on e-Mongolia that we have now. It stands for 90 percent of the adult population. We grasped the opportunity during the lockdown by preparing a lot of video content, instructions, TV programs, a lot of articles, and experience sharing and feedbacks. So that more people can understand digital more.

What Do You Think You Could Have Done Better? What Have You Learned the Most?

I was rather inexperienced in handling the political stuff. I have made some mistakes in dealing with politicians, not always calculating the political factors in. I would be more careful with some steps of building up e-Mongolia if given second chances.

I also wish I had known more on how to deal with civil servants. That could have saved some time. You have got to give them praise, recognize them for what they have done. Listen to them very carefully, to what they are doing and trying to achieve. I was fairly stubborn: I would come out and fight in the big meetings. That is the bravery part; I get very aggressive when people are not supporting whatever I am doing, especially within the government.

Now I have learned to use soft power more, being friends, being supportive. Still, I do not think it would have been beneficial for us to be very soft and understanding when we started. In the beginning, it was a good approach for me to be very aggressive, even though it was very stressful to me. We needed to shake things up.

What Are the Next Challenges Ahead for You, for CITA, for e-Mongolia?

We have now a very big historical responsibility by turning into a ministry. We have seen a lot of ministries succeed, and a lot of ministries fail as well. I will be spending a lot of time creating a culture that is dynamic and proactive. I will also work very hard to do good team building as well, because we will not have many people. As a ministry, there are government protocols we have to follow, more hierarchy. That is why I need to make sure to create very good fundamental infrastructure for the ministry itself, including the culture and how work happens.

For e-Mongolia, the challenges are in cybersecurity area and in user-friendliness. As we will digitalize all—or at least 95 precent—of government services, it becomes very challenging for people to find whatever they need on e-Mongolia. Especially so because government official names of services and how people learn to name the service is often different. For example, the COVID-19 vaccination certificate has an official title that is very different from what it actually is about. People do not know this and as they are searching for services, these can be hard to find. So, we want to offer citizens more services based on their data. For example, we want to include voice helpers like Siri on e-Mongolia: then people could explain to the app whatever they need, and we can then bring this thing out.

How Have You Managed to Make Sure That on Your Departure the Work Would Last—You Mentioned Standards, for Example?

I have given quite a lot of thought to it, because we have a very high level of political instability in Mongolia. The risk is that if the government is overturned, it would be hard for us to continue what we are doing. That is why we have indeed focused on creating standards for services. Then anybody coming after me, they will only have to do improvements. This way whatever happens in the future, it will also still keep getting better.

In order to create the standards, we have not been following the existing ones, because we are re-creating government services, government cultures. We have defined certain experience, even feelings of people as a standard. When we introduce a service, it is important how it is going to be perceived and experienced by the citizens. We do a lot of tests, research, even neuroscientific tests for this purpose. Does the service feel bureaucratic or friendly, for example? These sorts of standards have public support behind them, too. It helps to make sure that people themselves would be asking for improvements.

In addition, I am more confident that things could last because of the culture we have created and the team. At some point, I want to have my team working without me. That is why I have been training them to be more independent, more innovative. In the beginning of my leadership, I was very involved in everything, every small details. Now, I want to see what the team comes up with and then I promote it.

What Is Your Advice to Young Students on What Skills to Develop to Do This Kind of Job Well?

The first thing I always say is to work hard. I think people look for shortcuts. When you see all the success stories, they do not talk about how they were stressed or how vulnerable they were in fighting the hardships. That is why the first thing is to work hard and to be able to last.

Second, people should have negotiation skills and be very good listeners. Especially in politics, there is always a message hidden in people's conversation and whatever they are saying. There is a motive in some hidden meanings as well. That is why it matters to develop good listening skills.

I also think people should have coding skills. Soon enough, it will be a basic requirement. I would say: learn how to code just to understand how technology is built.

What Are Your Key Recommendations on How to Reach Digital Government Progress?

The first recommendation is to understand your customer and know what they are going through. What is the challenge? What is the problem? How do they feel? Do really understand the experience of existing digital service or non-digital government services before making it digital.

Second, you always will have problems and you kind of deal with them one problem at a time. This way you lose the bigger picture and vision; you get lost in the system and stuck on issues. Do draw back to bigger picture. Envision to yourself the bigger picture and reassess yourself, your team, the situation. See where you are in the bigger picture.

Third, be very good at planning!