GovStack in Action: 2025 Year in Review

In 2025, GovStack continued to translate shared principles into real-world implementation. Across regions and levels of government, the initiative strengthened its role as a practical enabler of interoperable, trusted digital public infrastructure (DPI).

From hands-on country support and growing adoption of GovStack-compliant solutions to an expanding global community of practitioners and policymakers, 2025 marked a year of consolidation, scale, and deeper impact.

By the end of 2025, over 20 countries were actively making use of the GovStack approach and Building Blocks, in trainings, service design processes, use case development, and key policy and digital architecture documents. Many more governments expressed concrete interest in GovStack implementations, a momentum clearly visible during the Global DPI Summit 2025 in Cape Town.

Across these engagements, more than 4,000 public officials, technologists, and practitioners have now been trained on GovStack, strengthening institutional capacity to design and deliver citizen-centric digital services grounded in open standards.

GovStack’s country support this year demonstrated how standards can be applied flexibly to local contexts while remaining interoperable by design.

In Montenegro and Mauritania, GovStack partnered with Kitsoft to deliver hands-on workshops for municipal teams, supporting the design of end-to-end digital services such as newborn social aid, real estate tax payments, and business licensing. Municipal teams developed full-service prototypes using the GovStack-compliant, AI-assisted and low-code solution Liquio, building practical experience in turning administrative processes into modern digital services.

In Ethiopia, GovStack supported the development and deployment of the Input-Output Coefficient (IOC) Application together with the Ministry of Industry. Through intensive technical trainings, participants strengthened their ability to operate, customise, and extend the GovStack-compliant low-code solution Joget replacing legacy paper-based workflows with a transparent and scalable digital system for manufacturers and exporters.

These examples reflect GovStack’s continued emphasis on implementation support that bridges global standards and local delivery realities.

In 2025, the GovStack ecosystem continued to expand through the growing availability of GovStack-compliant software and service providers listed on GovMarket.

Newly listed solutions included widely used open-source technologies such as QGIS and GeoServer, now compliant with the GovStack Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Building Block. Their inclusion supports governments in building interoperable, standards-based geospatial services as part of broader digital public-service architectures.

Additional solutions aligned with the Registration and Digital Registries Building Blocks such as Digital Registries System or the Unified Registry Platform were also added, supporting governments in managing core data in structured, interoperable ways and simplifying service delivery for citizens.

Alongside software solutions, GovStack welcomed new service providers with experience across the full digital service lifecycle — from technical advisory and system integration to service design and maintenance — further strengthening the ecosystem available to governments.

A core pillar of GovStack’s work in 2025 remained its technical and practitioner community.

GovStack currently counts eight active Working Groups, open to participation and bringing together experts from governments, international organisations, the private sector, and civil society. These groups continued to develop and refine Building Block specifications, service patterns, and implementation guidance, with several new releases expected in early 2026.

The GovStack Service Patterns work advanced through collaborative design workshops and hack days, reinforcing the role of patterns as a shared design language rather than prescriptive rules. This approach enables teams across countries and disciplines to think together while retaining flexibility for local adaptation.

In parallel, GovStack presented GovSpecs 2.0, outlining the strategy for 2025–2027 and providing a forward-looking blueprint for future-ready digital public services grounded in modularity, interoperability, and reuse.

The Global DPI Summit 2025 in Cape Town was a defining moment of the year. Across multiple days, GovStack contributed to main stage sessions, technical deep dives, and cross-regional dialogues on how countries can build DPI that is both sovereign and interoperable.

Discussions at the Summit highlighted the growing alignment between GovStack and national and regional DPI and IT architecture initiatives, including efforts in Africa, the European Union, and Germany reinforcing shared learning across contexts.

Sessions on Content Management System (CMS) standardisation, digital registries, workflow orchestration, AI for inclusive DPI, and digital sovereignty demonstrated how open standards and interoperable architectures are increasingly moving from concept to practice.

In 2025, GovStack’s approach to interoperable digital public infrastructure was also recognised in policy debates beyond the international development community. The German newspaper Tagesspiegel Background Digitalisierung & KI featured GovStack in its analysis on the need to move beyond fragmented digital solutions and towards a more coherent, interoperable approach to digital government.

Equity and inclusion remained central to GovStack’s work in 2025.

The year saw the successful completion of the second edition of the GovStack Women in GovTech Challenge, bringing together 208 participants from 49 countries to strengthen leadership, collaboration, and technical understanding of DPI. We were proud to collaborate with the World Bank, DPI Saefguards Initative (stewarded by UNODET and UNDP) and academic partners TalTech and Coursera. The finalists presented their prototypes at WSIS, and the culmination saw the launch of the alumni group and Women in GovTech Ambassadors.

Inspired by the ladies from the alumni, at the Global DPI Summit 2025, GovStack officially launched the third cohort of the Women in GovTech Challenge together with partners including the World Bank, the DPI Safeguards Initiative, academic partner UCL IIPP and communication partner GovInsider. The response was exciting: 1,349 applications from 137 countries, reflecting both the demand for inclusive capacity-building and the growing need for initiatives that focus on building a community for women to lead in digitalisation.

Through the Challenge, GovStack continues to support a global community of women shaping people-centred, inclusive digital transformation.

The achievements of 2025 demonstrate how GovStack is increasingly supporting countries not only to design digital public infrastructure, but to implement it in practice, through standards that are open, interoperable, and trusted.

As governments continue to navigate complex digital transformation challenges, GovStack enters the coming year focused on deepening implementation support, strengthening its technical foundations, and expanding collaboration across regions and communities.

Together with its partners and community, GovStack remains committed to helping countries build digital public infrastructure that works for everyone.

We are excited to sign off the year and look forward to an even bigger and better 2026!