Organised by Global Government Forum, the Digital Summit will blend presentations delivered by participants and Knowledge Partners with informal round table discussions. The event allows delegates to speak openly and honestly about their successes, the challenges, and what they have learned along the way.

Sometimes, you learn most from talking to people who do a job like yours. And for many national and departmental digital leaders, that often means your peers working for other governments. For while many of the challenges you face are unique within your country, governments around the world must address a similar set of opportunities, risks, obstacles and decisions in their pursuit of digital transformation. The world’s digital leaders have a huge amount to learn from one another.

The Digital Summit is open to national and federal public servants working as national digital leaders, departmental heads of digital, data and IT, and heads of the digital profession.

It was important that these beneficial discussions continued to take place during the pandemic, supporting governments’ work to deploy digital technologies in defence of people’s health, incomes and wellbeing. So in 2021 the Digital Summit was held online as a virtual event, covering topics including: Delivering at pace: what we learned in the pandemic; Refining the new oil: using data to fuel government and power citizens; and Organic intelligence: using AI wisely in the civil service.

Reports on the discussions are available on our Previous Summits page.

In 2022, we returned to an in-person event, kindly hosted by the Government of Canada in Ottawa, where the event has been held annually since. The next Summit takes place in December 2026, and is set to attract over 40 international digital leaders for this important meeting.