Whenever government CIOs or colleagues with similar titles and responsibilities meet, be it within a country or at an international level, it is like a support group meeting of sorts. We listen to each other's challenges and trials; we bounce ideas off each other about how to solve them and share practical insights on what we have tried ourselves for it. We lean on each other to hear if anything has worked well or not—and then perhaps copy that practice.

This is natural, because peer-to-peer sharing and learning are one of the most valuable ways to learn. At the end of the day, our jobs and, therefore, the joys and troubles are very similar country to country or organization to organization.

There is a growing number of international and other groupings, annual events, and chat channels for peer learning in the digital government space. One of the reasons is that the good practices and country examples are still too seldom codified and mostly spread through word-of-mouth only. Too often, these conversations and learnings stay just between people and closed doors, or direct chat channels.

However, digital government is a growing phenomenon and movement all over the world, in latest part because of COVID-19 pandemic's (one good) impact. There is a growing eagerness around the world to digitally transform governments—to take the public services and governance to a digital era, finally. Yet, actual success and achievement in building out a digital government greatly varies among countries as well as within them, with many failed or stalled attempts.

Thus, there is a growing demand to learn how to really build a digital government that works well. That is why there should be value and interest for the sharing of the relevant leadership or management lessons more widely.

And that is why the idea for this book was born. As a digital government leader myself until recently, I always yearned to hear from peers how they did what they did, how were they solving some strategy or management or other issue that I encountered in my work.

In my ten years in this business, I have had the good fortune to meet literally hundreds of digital leaders from all kinds of geographic, sectoral, and digital maturity backgrounds. Each time I picked their brains and their practical experience drawers for tips and tricks. That is what got me thinking—could we somehow make these nuts of insights available more widely?

In a way, there already exists a lot of research and writing on how governments have, can, and should build up a digital government. You can easily find cases and guidelines on what should be the strategy and the policies to make the most of digital technology for improving public services and policy delivery. Such literature covers either or both the theoretical models as well as practical case study angles. A range of international institutions and all kinds of consultancies work daily to compile and disseminate these kinds of findings and know-how.

Attention has also been paid to how to build relevant institutional conditions and mechanisms for digital government progress. Similarly, a body of literature and online advice is growing for practitioners on how to build up public sector teams to really deliver on the digital efforts: why and how to start digital (transformation) agencies or ministries, or even digital teams within various departments, borrowing bits of practice and know-how from private sector companies.

In this existing pool of very useful knowledge, surprisingly, only very little attention has been paid so far to leaders and leadership as one core component of achieving digital government excellence.

If you study history or management, you learn that great achievement and changes always are the sum of factors combined: a good plan, a good set-up and institutions, good leaders with effective practices. In other words, it takes great individual leaders to make things happen in a great way in great groups in right context.

Hence, this book. It is an attempt to provide a tour guide or playbook on how to achieve digital government excellence in terms of how to best lead such efforts and the relevant teams. Perhaps tour guide or playbook are not the best terms, because I do not even pretend to provide comprehensive models and a full checklist.

However, you do find in this book a range of tried-and-proven leadership practices and learnings from seasoned practitioners on how to make digital government reforms a success. They come in the form of firsthand accounts of leadership stories and tips from twenty globally renowned digital government leaders—from governments in all parts of the globe.

It is a collection of interviews with remarkable people who have led their governments to digital government excellence. These are their stories, in their own words, about some of the core dilemmas that practitioners are dealing with the most in digital government leadership jobs. I opted for the story or interview form because stories (case studies) have been proven to be one of the most effective methods to really learn from others.

Similar-style books have been compiled about private sector digital transformation leaders, but these are not entirely relevant to public sector specifics—although many insights can be surely transferred, too.

So, this long story finally short now. This book was written because the topic of digital government is increasingly hot, and governments and practitioners yearn for learning the best practices on how to make it all work. No one has assembled the lessons of relevant best leaders so far. The book presents shining examples of what good looks like in digital government leadership and management sense.

Choice of Twenty Remarkable Leaders

The professionals featured in the book have not been chosen because they happen to be known on the digital government circuit. They were chosen because they have been remarkable as leaders in this field and because they have shown a remarkable track record of leading digital government to progress in their countries. Another criterion was that the person would be insightful as an individual and as a leader, and effective as a manager. Somebody we could really learn from.

Some of these professionals had to start their government's digital journey from scratch. Some of them had to restart it or make a turnaround in strategy and delivery. Some of them had the hard job of continuing the track of excellence and bringing it to a whole next level. They represent a mix of backgrounds in terms of their government's digital maturity.

These leaders have not been chosen because their country is necessarily high-ranking in some digital government benchmark or another. Instead, they were chosen for the relative change they managed to make in their leadership term—the countries represented have been the fastest-improving ones in the global digital government space during their time in the role.

Some of them have been called government chief information officer; some have been chief digital officers. Some have been deputy ministers at the same time; some have been CEOs or directors general of digital agencies. The titles do not matter. They all have had the same kind of job—to lead the digital transformation and across the relevant government, not just in a department. Thus, all of them have had large-scale coordination challenges as part of their problem set. Their experience in this area should be particularly valuable, because coordination issues and how to best tackle them are among the biggest questions in each digital transformation leader's mind anywhere.

All of the twenty have inspiring stories to tell and real-life experiences to share. Each has a unique story, but there are many recurring themes.

None of the interviewees achieved excellent outcomes alone, and they are the first ones to acknowledge it. We could make another book on digital government excellence about the stories of remarkable number-twos or most-valuable experts. Or ministers and country leaders, without whom sometimes also nothing can really happen. Yet, this book is about the actual digital leaders only. Let us start with them, because they have had the ultimate leading duty despite ministers and teams around them.

The interviewees have been largely selected from national governments, given my own background as a government CIO in central government and bias of interest in this level. There are just a few very notable exceptions of people who were simply too remarkable to leave out.

It so happens that most of the professionals featured here have left their governments now—but their insights are just as relevant today. By the way, it so happens that several of them left during 2021, the year of preparing this book—I had started with about half the interviewees on-the-job, half already past that. Most of those already outside of government work as advisors globally, sharing their practical experience and thinking with next governments and organizations. Thus, they can be available also for you!

There could surely be many more digital government leaders to include. These twenty are by far not the only remarkable digital government leaders with lots to share. Yet, they are some of the most remarkable ones for sure—given their results and given their insights that you can read right now.

Who Can Benefit from This Book?

This book and its stories are of most value to other digital government leaders out there. You could be a chief information officer, chief digital officer, chief technology officer, or head of a digital and technology agency. Titles do not matter, as long as your job is to lead digital change in the whole of your government.

The book might resonate most powerfully for those just starting in such roles because you can immediately set sights and get tips to make a step change on how your organization delivers. However, mid-role leaders also can get a much-sought-after new inspiration on how to tweak and improve their team's and their own work further.

I think—and hope—that this collection of practically implementable, effective practices and thinking models is widely useful for any digital government practitioner, managers, and specialists who want to do their job in the best manner possible. Anyone can adopt the practices from here and make their team more effective in digital government delivery or suggest these practices to their leadership after reading the book.

That is why the book is for digital government policymakers and builders from around the world. From all levels of government. Whether in policy or technical delivery role, whatever the title. Whether in ministries or agencies, although especially in digital coordination units and digital service or govtech teams. Whether in a whole-of-government or policy domain responsibility—digital transformation as a challenge and as a practice is in some ways the same everywhere.

I would hope that even politicians, especially ministers in charge of digital government area in their jurisdiction, and parliamentarians could also find this book useful. If they want to up their government's digital game, here they can get a glimpse on what kinds of leaders to select and how to best empower them or work with them.

In addition, the book could be useful for anyone studying the field, whether in academic circles, where there is a growing number of professors teaching digital government courses around the world, or to their students (especially graduate level). Or to a growing number of researchers studying and doing reports as analysts in the field of digital government lessons and success. I hope that you can include the leadership and management aspects more now.

For the same reason, I do see that consultants and experts who increasingly work on advising digital government initiatives and teams around the world, from national to local levels (including in international organizations), should also find the book to be of great use. If you do not include leadership aspects in your advice, you are doing your clients and their countries a disservice!

Last but not least: some bits and parts, the book can be useful beyond the public sector sphere. I believe that practitioners, consultants, academics working on and studying digital transformation and digital leadership in any sectors, especially in big corporate settings, can find several insights relevant to their work. The lessons learned and practices shown are often not government-specific at all; they are universally applicable to any digital change team or leadership role. In exactly the same way, the practice of digital strategy and delivery in government has benefited from learning from private sector examples.

Structure of the Chapters

All twenty stories, or interview chapters, are largely structured similarly, with some questions common for each person and some specially catered to their background or depending on how the conversation went.

Each story covers the following themes:

• The person's background: what led them to taking the digital government leader's job? What was their past experience and motivation for it?
• Context: what was the digital government situation and setup at the time? What were the challenges and political issues that needed tackling?
• Starting the job: first hundred days and sequencing of steps
• Vision and strategy: their ambition, the key initiatives that they set out to do—what were their mandate and levers for it?
• Leadership style and practices: routines with the team or building a team and its culture, the values or practices they tried to instill
• Successes and failures: lessons learned from them and from the time in office
• Transition: leaving and how to make changes stick
• Key recommendations: for all peers doing the same job—what does it take to be an effective digital government leader?

Most of the interviews were done between August and September 2021, so COVID-19 was a theme we touched on as a special focus with leaders who had been most recently or still were in the job, sharing how they coped with it in their role and strategy.

Each chapter is accompanied by a short background story on why I chose this person for the book. My attempt with these sections is to try to pass on what is special about that particular leader and what to look for in the chapter that follows.

You will find a short epilogue in way of a summary, where I have tried to distill a few of the biggest common learnings and takeaways from the twenty stories. This epilogue aims to provide the shorthand playbook on key themes of how to be or become an effective leader to drive a government (or any organization) to digital excellence.