Vision, Missions & Principles

Vision

A world where governments sustainably source and scale innovation to deliver adaptive local impact and build collaborative global futures

Mission

The GovTech Global Alliance is a network of government, academia, and private sector partners who believe in harnessing the potential of cross-border collaboration to improve the public sector innovation ecosystem.

In a landscape where emergent, complex and interconnected societal challenges require coordinated and sustainable action, we focus on building capacity and embedding resilience within the architectures of institutions so they may seek creative solutions and deliver reliable impact.  

The GovTech Global Alliance is committed to increasing the integrity and quality of products and programmes serving the public interest, while acknowledging bureaucratic realities and balancing the paradox of risks and imperatives required to achieve innovative outcomes. By shifting mindsets around inclusivity and stewardship, we can lay the foundation to work across disciplinary and jurisdictional silos not only to spur immediate responses to urgent needs but also support an infrastructure for intergenerational custodianship of long-term solutions. 

We seek practical strategies to reduce barriers in procuring, exporting, scaling and adapting sustainable solutions across regions. At the same time, the members of the GovTech Global Alliance focus on building skillsets that contribute to a more collaborative innovation culture. We do this by sharing expertise, expanding our understanding of where ideas and services come from, and actively increasing diversity in innovators and entrepreneurs. 

Through a growing body of knowledge and practice, these strategies bring contextual awareness to the interplay between the innovation ecosystem and civil society in order to take action and demonstrate new models for scale and global impact in the public sector. 

Principles

  • Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing: Strengthening a culture of peer learning and global connection, we can create the conditions for relationships and trust in order to speak openly and learn from each other’s experiences of failures and successes.

  • Adaptivity in Innovation Ecosystems: Anticipating that needs and challenges will continuously evolve, we promote strategies to build iteratively and embed flexibility into the human and technology systems that influence innovation lifecycles.

  • Distribution of Power and Cultural Contexts: Understanding that there is no ‘one size fits all’, and although interventions that work can be scaled, it’s important for regions to have the capacity, ability, and autonomy to create and maintain local context for solutions.

  • Intergenerational Custodianship: Thinking beyond short-term cycles to build enduring value that allows future generations to play an active role in the governance of solutions.

  • Anti-Extractive Business Models: Prioritizing business models which uphold ethical governance strategies to equitably increase opportunities for positive societal impact and reduce potential for direct or systemic citizen and environmental harm.

  • Democratizing Technology: Advocating for equitable access to digital technologies in the public domain, so the dividends of public service innovation benefits citizens and constituents directly.

Citation: This document references and incorporates many concepts and guiding principles from Context-Aware Systems, developed by Civic Software Foundation. The vision, mission and principles were assimilated from the membership of the Alliance over the period of January to April 2023.