From Silos to Systems: Delivering Value through Digital Government
System level fragmentation cannot be addressed with agency level fixes. System coherence isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s a prerequisite for efficient, trusted, and resilient public services.
Government digital performance is straining under fragmented leadership, optional standards, and uneven capabilities. Two decades of agency-led projects have produced useful improvements but also duplication, variable user experiences, and rising integration costs. Citizens feel this daily; reliability and fairness depend on services that connect across agencies, not just within them.
The operating context is tightening. AI and automation are lifting expectations for speed and personalisation. Cyber risk and privacy obligations demand discipline. Businesses, iwi and community providers increasingly rely on stable government interfaces to build services around the state.
Our ambitions are clear, but we have struggled to deliver system-wide coordination. To address this, we need to treat digital transformation like a renovation: we don’t need to rebuild from the ground up, but we need to strengthen our core foundations and get the electrical and plumbing right before we can build up.
However, there is a practical paradox to resolve. Agencies need autonomy to meet specific user needs, and the system needs consistency to work as a whole. The path through requires strong central direction on foundations with flexibility at the edge of service design and delivery.
That means:
Implement enforceable, system-wide transformation from the top-down in leadership, mandates, and metadata standards.
Adopt strategic agency level change that targets bottom-up alignment and coordination within the system.
Weak foundations are a barrier to digital transformation.
A strong foundation for digital government can support:
Higher trust through reliability and fairness: all users, from other government agencies through to individuals, communities, and businesses, get predictable, joined up services regardless of which door they enter.
Responsible AI at scale: clean, connected, flowing data and transparent guardrails can turn agency pilots into system practice, supporting proactive outreach and a more responsive government.
A platform for business-led innovation: Open, standardised interfaces reduce compliance friction and let firms and communities build value around the state.
The time is right for breakthrough change.
Some challenges need to be tacked at the system level:
Ask the hard questions about system leadership. Ensure that our current leadership settings are fit for purpose. Are our leaders resourced, positioned, and supported in line with global best practice?
Common language, connected government. Get data right. Mandate consistent standards, prioritise reusable architecture, and support flow.
Invest in capability building across the system. This includes understanding of the basics of digital service design, responsive delivery, and data informed decision-making.
But that doesn’t mean that agency leaders can’t take action:
Know your scope, and know what’s structural. Identify what processes, systems, and standards
you can bring into alignment now.
Prioritise clean, flowing data. Emphasise data governance and flow over project-specific structures. Remove the silos that slow the flow.
Align your next project with the system build. Utilise common API standards, metadata, and data definitions.
Implement the minimum standards today - don’t wait to be told. Don’t wait for a mandate, recognise the value of building to code, so your systems connect smoothly with the rest of government.
Treat digital as strategic infrastructure. Put digital on the executive agenda alongside finance and risk. Back system owners with the authority to mandate.
We don’t need to build a digital government from scratch. New Zealand can move from silos to systems, from bespoke, one off builds to a coherent platform the whole country can rely on. The tools exist. The opportunity is present. What’s needed now is deliberate, collaborative, and decisive action.
How does NZ compare against peers?
International benchmarks like the OECD Digital Government Index (DGI) offer a valuable lens into how systems are perceived externally. These survey-based indices are not perfect (they often rely on self-reported inputs and subjective judgement) but they surface patterns worth examining. The OECD DGI is useful because it evaluates both foundational digital enablers (such as shared infrastructure and data governance) and more citizen-facing capabilities (like proactiveness). Although the latest dataset reflects performance up to 2023, it offers a diagnostic snapshot that aligns closely with themes raised throughout this paper.
New Zealand’s below-average scores across all subindices suggest a systemic lag rather than a single point of failure. We performed poorly in areas like Government as a Platform and Digital by Design, both of which reflect the maturity and coherence of system infrastructure. These results reinforce the case that New Zealand’s transformation efforts remain fragmented, with digital capabilities developing unevenly and often in isolation. That fragmentation is also visible in the Data-Driven Public Sector and Proactiveness scores, which suggest that the system still struggles to anticipate and respond to user needs using operational data. Rather than a critique of intent, the data points to constraints on execution (voluntary standards, unclear accountability, and variable capability) that may be holding the system back.
The real value of these indices is not necessarily in comparing rankings, but in prompting internal reflection. What the OECD DGI invites further consideration of is not just a gap between New Zealand and leading digital governments, but a gap between where we are and where we want to be. The sub-index breakdown offers a useful framework for diagnosis: from underutilised data and weak architectural foundations, to limited cross-agency consistency and insufficient user engagement.
These are precisely the issues addressed in this paper: fragmented leadership, patchy capability, and the lack of enforceable standards. Together, the indices, other evidence, and anecdotal accounts suggest the same thing: our digital house needs renovation, not from scratch, but with urgency, structure, and system-wide coordination.