Signals: Sustainable digital transformation around the world

The latest edition of Signals is back from the printers. If you’d like us to send you a copy, leave your details here. We’ll keep giving them away until we run out.

Signals is a collection of essays, curated by Public Digital and written by leaders involved in digital transformation across the world. This is our fifth and most ambitious edition yet. We’re doing more work than ever with French and Spanish speaking clients, so this time, we’re publishing Signals in French and Spanish as well as English. Thank you to our close partner DIAL who made this possible for us to be more inclusive and reach more people.

‘Sustainability in digital transformation’ is the theme for this edition of Signals.

We’ve entered a third year of a pandemic that has highlighted huge inequalities between individuals and nations. The climate crisis continues to threaten the wellbeing of populations worldwide. The questions surrounding how we can responsibly use digital transformation to help with the big issues felt like an obvious choice of theme this time.

But what is sustainability exactly? And what does it mean in the context of digital transformation? For many, it has become a buzzword. But for our contributors, sustainability is about designing inclusive services, maintaining digital public goods, investing in cyber capacities, ensuring digital sovereignty, protecting the environment or building teams.

And because sustainability is a global challenge, we’ve asked for contributions from all over the world: India, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritius, Mongolia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Tunisia, the United Kingdom, the United States and Switzerland.

Here’s the list of the essays you can find in Signals: Sustainability in digital transformation:

• Digital public goods and the importance of stewardship, by Heath Arensen, Director at the Digital Impact Alliance, USA

• Delivering public services in Mongolia, by Bolor-Erdene Battsengel, Chairwoman of the Communication and Information Technology Authority of Mongolia

• Investing in teams is an investment in sustainable change, by Pandu Putra, Consultant and former Executive Director of the West Java Digital Service in Indonesia

• Accelerating environmental sustainability in a digital world, by David Jensen, Head of Digital Transformation at the United Nations Environment Programme

• Using behavioural insights to build a data culture, by Imen Ghedhioui, Behavioural Insight Advisor at the Ministry of Communication Technologies and Digital Transformation of Tunisia

• Infrastructure: the foundation of a sustainable digital transformation, by Samatar Omar Elmi, Chief ICT Specialist at the African Development Bank

• The Irembo model: Rwanda’s public/private partnership, by Faith Keza, Chief Executive Officer of Irembo in Rwanda

• Sierra Leone’s fight for inclusive digital services, by PJ Mandewa-Cole, Head of Project Design and Delivery at the Directorate of Science Technology and Innovation in Sierra Leone

• Sustainable digital transformation: from technology building blocks to protocols, by Dr Pramod Varma, Chief Architect of Aadhaar and India Stack

• Responsible innovation through intentional practices, by Sam Brown, Co-founder of Consequential CIC, UK

• Building cyber capacity requires more than investing in technology, by Joanne Esmyot, Director at Public Digital and former Executive Director of Mauritius National Computer Board

We’ll share all these articles online in a few months. In the meantime, you can see the previous editions of Signals here.

We hope you enjoy the read.