>> I'm now pleased to invite Ms. Julia Glidden,
Corporate Vice President for
Microsoft Worldwide Public Sector
to share her observations and comments with us,
we run a little bit over the time with her so Miss Glidden,
we will take a little bit extra for you to finish the remarks,
but please be aware of it. Thank you.
>> Thank you so much. Excellencies, distinguished colleagues,
public sector, friends, and family from around the world.
I'm honored to join you here
today to be part of the 20th anniversary of
the UN's commitment to helping member states
improve e-government service capacity and delivery.
Over the past decade,
I've had the privilege of working
closely on a number of esteemed expert
working groups and to see
firsthand the way in which the surveys, insights,
operations, and findings have supported
governments everywhere in their quest to leave no one behind,
to deliver services for all,
and to accelerate achievement of
the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
I've constantly been impressed by the way in which this survey is
regularly updated to reflect new emerging technologies and trends,
including the shift toward the term digital government.
In this latest, and I must say,
most beautifully accessible survey,
I've been struck by and loved the observation,
"Digital Government is not an end.
It's a means to ultimately making life better for all."
I could not agree more,
and I believe this statement underscores
the essence of purpose-driven government.
A phrase coined by Muhammad Yasir from EY,
which exemplifies our shared Sustainable Development Goals
during this decade of action.
Government as a platform, multichannel integration.
Whole-of-society, not just whole-of-government.
Data in people-centric, not just tech-centric.
These are just a few of the trends which caught my eye as
I read this year's survey and reflected on
the shift we've seen from simply digitizing
the status quo to the goal of delivering sustainable,
inclusive, and equitable services to everyone, everywhere.
A goal, I'm proud to say,
very much echoes Microsoft's own core mission to empower
every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
In this spirit, I was especially
pleased to learn from the 2020 survey that
today 80 percent of member states now offer
specific digital services for youth,
for women, for older people,
for persons with disability,
for migrants, for the poor.
We have much work to do as
we've heard throughout the discussion today,
but it is truly inspiring to see
digital being deployed to help those most in need.
I'd be remiss, as our discussion today has revealed,
in reflecting on the achievements of
digital government over the past 20 years.
I did not contextualize these achievements in relation to
the current COVID crisis
which predominates all of our discussions.
Digital technologies have played
an increasing role in helping
government address pressing global challenges.
From managing migration and protecting the environment,
to helping citizens stay safe and protected.
Without a doubt, however,
one of the biggest, and I would argue,
most successful tests of
digital government has been the way in
which it's played a vital role
in helping to hold the fabric of civil society
together in the face of an unprecedented crisis.
When COVID first struck for struck, our CEO,
Satya Nadella, so presciently observed,
"We are all digital first responders
now," meaning in essence that we in the tech industry,
are the first responders,
to the first responders.
That all of us in tech have a vital role to play in
helping to fulfill the public sector mission to ensure the health,
education and safety of people everywhere.
I'd like to take a few brief moments here, if I may,
to share some reflections based on my own work
throughout the crisis and the way in which
technology was able to support
the public sector during its hour of need.
When the crisis first struck,
innovation barriers came down at unthinkable rage.
Satya himself observed that he saw
more transformation in two months than in the past two years.
A colleague in Sweden observed that he saw
his entire country digitized in just seven days.
Under the Cloud of crisis,
the risk of doing nothing
outpaced the risk of doing something wrong.
Sarah Paquet, EVP for Shared Services Canada,
recently shared with me,
"In the midst of crisis,
a planned three-year roll-out of remote working
was delivered over a weekend in mid-March."
Within this context that we saw Cloud, data,
and AI come together in new ways to
enable governments to keep citizens informed,
as we've discussed, to deploy
and stay connected with first responders,
to empower healthcare workers to deliver virtual assistants.
I'd go so far as to say that from the earliest days of the crisis,
we saw data, a theme throughout the survey this year,
come into its own as a national asset.
Taking just one example: around the world,
chatbots were rapidly embraced as we learned in real-time,
the way in which they can gather, process,
and learn from data to quickly
respond to and even resolve inquiries.
After this initial phase of the crisis,
we then saw Agile in action as public sector agencies everywhere
rapidly embraced technology to
ensure continuity of basic operations.
In Italy, the Ministry of Justice quickly eased regulation and
deployed remote working to enable
court cases to proceed without interruptions.
This is a trend, now being adopted by
an increasing number of countries, including the Philippines,
where leaders praise the way in which technology enabled
the legal system to keep operating
and innocent people, to go free.
Of course, education.
While there are disparities to address what could
possibly be more important than ensuring that leaders,
learners of all ages, continue to learn.
Around the world, we saw a truly remarkable embrace of
remote learning by governments everywhere, including the UAE,
which shifted an entire country,
1.3 million learners, from classroom to online learning,
in a matter of weeks.
Now, in what we hope is
the last and final phase of this crisis, the recovery phase.
We're seeing a shift toward
whole-of-society and government as a platform,
as member states everywhere,
break down traditional silence,
collaborate across government agencies,
and harness the power of data to deliver social value.
Whether in the form of distributing
funds to help people keep food on
the table or searching for
much needed COVID treatments and vaccines.
We're also seeing innovative new partnerships emerge to address
the vital need for
new capacities and skills in the post-COVID era.
LinkedIn, GitHub and Microsoft, for example,
have come together to help
25 million students and workers prepare for the future of work.
From the printing press to e-mail,
from paper to websites,
from queuing to immediate resolution.
Despite the work that still needs to be done,
20 years of UN benchmarking
shows that governments have always been shaped by
advances in technology thanks to
the successful delivery of
countless digital services during the COVID crisis,
it's fair to say that
new and emerging technologies are in the process of
driving another fundamental shift
in the way the whole of government works.
With public sector more open than ever before,
to embracing new methodologies like Agile,
new tools like data,
and new technologies like Cloud and AI,
I truly believe that the future has
never been brighter for digital government.
Worth repeating, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres comments,
"The post-COVID-19 world will be different,
and much more digital than before."
It is now up to us all to come together to embrace
the combined power of human innovation and technology.
During this, the UN Decade of Action,
to harness the full promise and potential of digital.
To deliver public services that are truly sustainable,
truly inclusive, and truly available to all.
Thank you so much for inviting me to join you here today.