In recent years there’s been a flood of activity from digital teams in both North and South America, working on public sector services to improve millions of people’s lives.

We’ve spoken to friends in Peru, Colombia, Belize, Brazil, Bahamas, California and Ontario, and in my home Argentina, to name a few. There are people in all these places working hard to make digital transformation happen, and Public Digital are working directly with some of them. A PD team recently flew back from a successful week in Sacramento, California, with the alpha.ca.gov team.

Beyond California, in 2019 we visited Nova Scotia, Canada, to help them in the implementation of their digital strategy and the launch of their website. We also had the opportunity to present our work in Colombia, thanks to our IADB friends, and meet an amazing digital team within the Colombian government. In 2018 we wrote about our work with the Peruvian government.

Last year in Buenos Aires, Argentina, we attended the annual meeting of the Electronic Government Network of Latin America and the Caribbean (Red Gealc) to present our vision of the continent to the people responsible for digital government in 26 countries. We also attended Red Gealc in Panama in 2018 and in the Dominican Republic in 2017.

Things are moving fast. You can feel the momentum.

I can feel the momentum too: I recently closed a chapter after 12 years in the public sector in Argentina, where I headed the team that built the world-leading digital driving licences service, and more new services every week: car insurance (potentially 20 million users), car documentation (potentially 23 million users), labour insurance card, organ donor credentials, organ transplant credentials and vaccination certificates. Starting today I’ll be working with Public Digital.

I’m going to be helping the PD team reach more clients in this region. PD now has a Spanish home page , and will be publishing more things in Spanish, and attending more local events. The connection between London and Latin America will be stronger than ever before.

We’ve already got some meetings and visits in the calendar – in the coming weeks I’ll be travelling throughout the region – and I can’t wait to get started.

Adelante!

– Dan Abadie