The pipeline of GovTech investment projects keep growing globally with a diverse set of development objectives, components, and activities to support public sector modernization. GovTech is wide ranging across the four pillars (core government operations, citizen-centric service delivery, citizen engagement, and GovTech enablers) and often cross cutting. There is not only one approach to improving public sector modernization, and there is a growing need for data and knowledge on GovTech projects, activities, and outcomes. Client countries are looking to Bank staff to support them to design technical assistance, analytics, and investment projects to further their digital transformation. Task teams are actively searching for information that can 1) inform client dialogue; 2) support project design and appraisal; 3) support implementation, monitoring and evaluation. However, there is no all-in-one search tool to support task teams to see what else has been implemented to inform their GovTech projects.
Introducing GovTech Advisory and Guidance Tool (GTAG) is a groundbreaking tool that harnesses the power of AI and machine learning to revolutionize the way GovTech practitioners inform policy dialogue, design, and implement future projects. In partnership with the ITS Technology and Innovation Lab (ITSTI) in the World Bank, the team has adopted a user-centric approach and conducted design thinking workshops with internal and external users respectively. During the 6-month period, the focus was to understand challenges as GovTech practitioners and identify needs of a dynamic searchable online tool by leveraging the existing assets to provide practitioners with relevant information on ongoing and past GovTech projects. During the World Café session, “GovTech Advisory and Guidance Tool (GTAG): Revolutionizing GovTech with AI and Machine Learning”, at the GovTech Global Forum in May 2023, the team demonstrated its initial prototype, which was very well received by the audience. Based on the feedback received, we are now ready to demonstrate the next round of a prototype to a wider audience for further improvement before the full deployment.