If the first two decades of the 2000s saw digital technology permeate everyday life and radically transform economic models, the next phase will not only be about new apps or platforms—it will concern the relationship between citizens and institutions.

This is where GovTech comes in: technology in the service of government and the public sphere. The term should not be confused with the mere digitalization of public administration. Rather, it refers to an ecosystem of solutions, startups, and policies capable of reshaping how the State delivers services, makes decisions, and builds trust with society. Just as twentieth-century welfare systems emerged to manage complex industrial societies, GovTech arises as a response to today’s challenges—from artificial intelligence to public data management, security, and defense, to name just a few.

It represents the most radical attempt to rethink the relationship between the State and citizens through technology, integrating all the actors of an ecosystem that includes both public and private sectors: corporates, startups, universities, and public administrations—from regions and municipalities to institutions in the broadest sense. Digitalization and AI are pushing models toward human–machine interoperability, a paradigm anticipated by Industry 5.0, which points the way toward co-creation and mass personalization. These signals—the new ways in which humans interact—must be taken into account, since citizens increasingly encounter new modes of connection to information and services across various domains.

It is the transition from the State as “institution” to the State as “platform.”
However, GovTech is not just about technology—it is a framework, a new way of conceiving the State as a civic platform built on transparency, participation, and sustainability. With an estimated public impact potential of $1.4 trillion by 2034, it represents a systemic lever to reduce costs, improve service quality, and rebuild trust in institutions.

This vision will lead us to co-create public services with AI, test policies in controlled sandbox environments, and design civic infrastructures as if they were APIs. It also means enabling startups to innovate in areas once reserved for large corporations. Europe is responding—and, perhaps surprisingly, Italy is at the frontier.

According to the World Economic Forum, the global GovTech market is expected to grow from $606 billion in 2024 to $1.4 trillion by 2034, while the Italian market could expand from $12 billion in 2023 to $50 billion by 2031.

In Europe, GovTech is no longer an experiment—it has become a competitive and geopolitical lever. The European Commission has integrated GovTech into both the Digital Agenda and the priorities of the European Data Strategy. The key words? Interoperability, sovereign cloud, AI for policymaking, and open procurement.

In an increasingly data-aware Europe, where public data is recognized as a strategic asset, GovTech solutions are not just tools—they are infrastructures of democratic trust.

One of the most significant projects at the European level is GovTech4All, launched as part of the GovTech Connect initiative funded by the European Commission. The program aims to build a pan-European, interoperable ecosystem where public administrations, startups, and SMEs actively collaborate in developing digital public solutions.

Among its most notable pilots are projects enabling the secure exchange of information between countries—such as health data and educational certificates—through the use of advanced technologies like post-quantum cryptography (PQC) and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE).

Another impactful pilot is the Personal Regulation Assistant (PRA), a virtual assistant designed to help citizens navigate European regulations and access social benefits.

In parallel, the program supports GovTech startups through bootcamps, accelerators, and dedicated challenges: between 2022 and 2024, 23 startups across 11 European countries have been supported, focusing on themes such as green transition, civic participation, and municipal digitalization.

A striking example of national acceleration is Poland, with the GovTech Poland program. Born from a hackathon in 2017, it immediately delivered tangible results: a challenge launched by the national tax agency led to an 80% reduction in VAT fraud within just a few months, thanks to automated data analysis. The success of the initiative prompted the government to institutionalize it, involving six ministries and numerous local authorities. Today, the platform promotes agile public tenders accessible even to startups, as well as a digital marketplace for GovTech solutions.

Among the most advanced countries is Estonia, long considered a global benchmark for digital governance. Through an open and modular architecture, it has built an infrastructure that allows startups to create interoperable public services. All Estonian citizens can vote online, legally sign documents via app, and digitally access health and tax services — they can even become e-residents. The core principle is that data should be entered only once and then shared, in a controlled way, among authorized entities — a vision fully aligned with European principles of privacy and interoperability.

Lithuania and the Netherlands are also emerging as European laboratories of GovTech innovation. Both focus strongly on co-creation with citizens, active user involvement in service design, and the development of digital skills within public administrations. In Lithuania, civic participation is at the heart of the national agenda Lithuania 2050, while the Netherlands has developed GovTech Labs that facilitate public-private collaboration and agile experimentation. The OECD recently recognized these initiatives as best-in-class examples for their user-centric approach, systemic perspective, and effective internal change management.

A separate chapter belongs to Ukraine, which — even amid an ongoing war — has become a symbol of digital resilience. At the heart of Ukraine’s GovTech revolution is Diia, the application that enables citizens to digitally access over 130 state services, including official documents, certificates, business registration, and — since 2024 — even online marriage. Diia has become a global model for public service digitalization, now being exported to other countries with the support of the World Economic Forum. Alongside Diia stands Prozorro, a transparent procurement platform based on open-source architecture, which has helped the government reduce public spending, combat corruption, and engage thousands of companies in digital tenders. The system has won international recognition, including the OGP Impact Award and the Citi Tech for Integrity Challenge.

Ukraine has also developed Delta, a situational awareness system integrating data from drones, satellites, and intelligence sources to coordinate real-time military operations, proving how GovTech can be effective even in crisis contexts. At the same time, the country has invested heavily in digital capacity building, launching the CDTO Campus program to train over 1,500 digital leaders in its first year alone.

In conclusion, the European and Ukrainian experiences demonstrate that GovTech is no longer a utopia but a concrete strategy to innovate public administration, improve citizen services, and strengthen the continent’s competitiveness. Europe stands out for its systemic approach, based on interoperability, data security, user engagement, and openness to startups. The best practices analyzed — from GovTech4All to Estonia, from Poland to Ukraine — show that when technology meets governance and political vision, the results can be measurable, replicable, and transformative.