The Future of Government Smart Toolbox, published by the World Economic Forum, demonstrates how technology can enhance government performance by strengthening efforts to reduce corruption and bureaucracy and enhance political representation, service delivery, trust, leadership, security and innovation. The report highlights successful state practices from around the globe in the digital era.
Public sector leaders around the world face a daunting challenge to deliver good government in the 21st century. They are under increasing pressure to deliver more and better services to a growing urbanized population, and to manage complex issues, from macroeconomic uncertainty to international conflicts, in an environment of diminishing trust in government, increasing bureaucratic complexity and natural resource constraints.
This Smart Toolbox, developed by the World Economic Forum’ s Council on the Future of Government, shares insights on how technology can strengthen good government ‘“ for example, by enabling greater transparency of government actions through open data, empowering citizens to have faster and more accurate access to online services, and helping to strengthen responses to aid civilians in conflicts. It also explores the risks and challenges of an increasingly digital era, including the often expensive and complex need to keep pace with changing tools and technology, the divides that can expand between user groups that have less ease of use, and the security and protection of data and information.

The Council posits that, if well managed and strategically deployed, information and communication technology (ICT) can reshape government in the next decade by strengthening trust in government, leadership, delivery of services, political representation, anti-corruption, bureaucratic cooperation, the management of conflict, and innovation. In each chapter, the authors define the topic, assess its varied and changing meaning, explore how it is affected by ICT, offer key insights and share case examples that public sector leaders can apply in their work. The toolbox also assesses risks, including privacy, security, access, and organizational capabilities to build and manage new IT plans.