We all know New Zealand leads the world in many areas including agriculture, sport and innovation. However, when it comes to digitising government, in many ways we’re still operating like a cautious early adopter rather than a bold digital leader. While countries like Estonia, Singapore, and even the UK have been sprinting ahead, we’ve been jogging.

To start on some positives, New Zealand has made decent progress on the road to digital government for its citizens. Services like RealMe, the Companies Register, and digital passport renewals are user-friendly and prove that when we get it right, the public notices. But if we’re serious about creating a world-class digital experience for citizens and businesses, we need to shift gears, fast.

Turning to public agencies, there are also bright spots in our digital evolution. Inland Revenue’s transformation to a more modern, agile system is a standout, delivering faster processing times, simplified interactions, and fewer headaches for businesses. We’re proud at One NZ to have supported this journey. MBIE’s Business Connect platform is another strong example, in helping businesses access government services through a single login.

But these successes remain isolated. What’s missing is a bold, joined-up strategy that connects the dots across departments, systems, and customer journeys. Right now, too many of our government services still feel disjointed, overly manual, or just plain outdated. Try applying for multiple business licences in one go, and it’s like stepping back in time.

So what should we be aspiring to? Let’s take Estonia, who has digitised 99 percent of its public services. Their digital identity system allows citizens to access almost every government service online, including voting, banking, taxes, healthcare all through a secure, centralised platform. They’ve made government services invisible in the best possible way: always there, just when you need them.

Or look at Singapore, where the government is embedding AI to predict citizen needs and personalise services. Meanwhile Australia is pushing ahead with the expansion of myGov, aiming to provide a truly integrated, whole-of-government digital experience.

Even the UK is making significant progress in some really challenging areas, such as inter-agency data sharing agreements, which I learnt firsthand while attending the DigiGov Expo in London last year. Without these agreements as the bedrock across government, providing insightful citizen services is that much harder. This is something we should already be forging ahead with.

These countries aren’t just improving convenience. They’re cutting costs, improving transparency, and building trust by delivering a seamless, secure digital experience that mirrors what we expect from the best of the private sector.

Part of the challenge in New Zealand is scale. Or rather, lack of it. With a smaller population and limited resources, large-scale transformation can feel expensive or hard to justify. But that’s exactly why we must act. We can’t afford to be inefficient. Every duplicated process, every siloed system, every paper-based form costs us in time, money, and trust.

We also need to stop treating digital transformation as an IT project. It’s a citizen experience project. It’s a productivity project. It’s a national resilience project.

The business case for going faster is clear. Many businesses are crying out for easier ways to deal with government: to register, report, apply, comply. We shouldn’t need a manual to navigate government processes. With the right technology and design, government should operate as intuitively as any large corporate.

Digitisation also opens doors to smarter regulation, real-time data sharing, and greater collaboration with the private sector. If we want to grow a high-productivity economy, we need a high-performance public sector.

Here’s what I’d like to see as a five-point plan:

1. A bold national digital government strategy. This requires central coordination to ensure cohesiveness, with measurable targets, public reporting, and ministerial oversight, plus data-driven decision making at its heart.
2. A “citizen-as-customer” mindset embedded across all departments. This involves embracing a culture of experimentation and risk-taking, where agencies are empowered to test and refine new digital services quickly, with appropriate guardrails in place to protect citizens and their data.
3. Faster rollout of a single digital identity and authentication framework, with consent integrated so individuals and businesses control who sees their data and when, prioritising data security.
4. Investment in secure, scalable infrastructure to support the rapid rollout of digital services, and by embracing new tools such as AI. Our recent AI Trust Report shows 31% of New Zealanders see AI adoption as an opportunity to improve public services and infrastructure, while 43% say it can boost productivity.
5. Public-private partnerships, where enterprise and startups alike can help accelerate innovation and the government can leverage best-in-class practices to accelerate its digital transformation journey.

New Zealand has the smarts, the creativity, and the agility to be a global digital leader. But good intentions aren’t enough. We need a bold approach with strong vision.

Because in 2025, a modern government isn’t one that’s simply online. It’s seamless, digital and intuitive. Let’s not get left at the starting line. It’s time to accelerate with purpose.

*This was published as an opinion in the Sunday Star Times, 13 July 2025*