Digital isn’t a department. It’s a doctrine.

Across cities around the world, a divide is growing wider. Some local governments are getting faster and more responsive, using data and AI to target problems, adapt in real time, and deliver results residents can really feel. Others are launching expensive apps that have no users, or hiring chief AI officers with no mandate, and calling it transformation. It is easy to view this divide as a technology story. But it isn’t. It is about how leaders think.

For many years, digital transformation—and, more recently, AI adoption—was mostly treated as a procurement problem. What tools can we buy? Which big brand consultancy can we hire? But the tools flattered to deceive, and slide decks didn’t make services better for the public. 

As a generation of public servants who grew up on the internet come to power, the mayors making meaningful gains today are doing something more fundamental. They are treating digital not as a thing the government does, but a thing that the government is. Not a function, but a doctrine. In one model, digital remains confined to specialist teams and activities: innovation units, CIO offices, or procurement exercises that sit adjacent to core decision-making. In the other, digital thinking shapes how leaders define problems, allocate authority, respond to evidence, and evaluate success. 

In other words, the successful administrations of this century have adopted new technology. But they are also changing their ways of working.

At Public Digital, we define digital as applying the culture, processes, operating models, and technologies of the intelligence age to respond to people’s raised expectations. That definition is one we have arrived at after helping make the U.K. the world’s leading digital government and 10 years of building digital teams and state capacity around the world. 

Technology is obviously part of that definition, but it is only one part. Without a parallel shift in mindset, process, and approach, the gains tech alone can bring are real but fractional. With citizens’ expectations growing ever greater, plus the rapid advance of AI, fractional gains are not enough. 

The doctrine is simple but demanding: start with user needs, organize around outcomes rather than departments, use data to learn continuously, and give multidisciplinary teams the authority to adapt services in real time.

Take Kyiv. For years, the city has faced civic pressures beyond what most leaders would ever wish to contemplate. But basic services can’t stop for wars. 3.5 million residents still needed their city to work. And Bloomberg Philanthropies and Public Digital wanted to help.

Kyiv’s leaders knew that they couldn’t keep relying on paper forms and clunky IT. They also knew that citizens would not tolerate a government where departments didn’t seem to talk to one another; where political promises didn’t translate into action; where public services were a confusing burden rather than a help. What is annoying in peacetime would be unconscionable in wartime. 

So they rethought public service delivery, digitally. They didn’t start with off-the-shelf “solutions”; they determined what citizens needed from services by listening, prototyping, and learning. They built a feedback loop of rapid improvement based on data and insight. The team then applied that methodology to a variety of civic challenges: from how to provide dynamic, real-time notification of air-raid alerts to citizens’ phones, to—with our support—tackling the immense pressure the social benefits system was facing. And they saw results. The average application time for financial aid fell to just 6 minutes and processing times were cut by 87 percent, making assistance faster and safer for people with disabilities, older adults, and displaced residents. By focusing on user needs and transforming service delivery, the city has ensured that many more citizens can now receive much-needed financial assistance in a simpler, faster, and safer way. 

Kyiv’s experience illustrates what the doctrine looks like under pressure: not digitizing existing bureaucracy, but redesigning services around citizens’ lived reality. And cities don’t have to be facing an unprecedented crisis to walk a similar path. 

Rather than treating digital and data as an end in themselves, the city of Maipú, Chile, has worked with Bloomberg Philanthropies and Public Digital to apply the same approach to improve outcomes for people. By focusing on local priorities, such as the community’s high perception of crime and insecurity; and by forming multi-disciplinary teams—bringing together city staff and external service providers across policy, digital, and data—they designed their open data security observatory, which provides public-safety information in a comprehensive, transparent, and accessible way to citizens. Critically, political leaders framed digital and data as part of rebuilding trust in public institutions, demonstrating how outcome-focused practices, mindset shifts, and culture change can help deliver more responsive and effective services.

This is what it looks like when digital capability becomes part of governing itself, not a standalone modernization agenda. 

So for mayors considering what’s next, what does it actually mean to lead a digital government today?

In practice, it means rethinking three things. One, setting clear outcomes. How will you see the difference, and how will citizens see the difference, in real human terms, when you launch a new service? Two, tracking progress and framing accountability. Are teams being challenged and rewarded for delivering the outcome, or following process? And three, empowering teams to adapt. Are your teams spending more time delivering, or talking about delivering? Do they have the mix of skills, experience, and confidence to know the difference?

Ultimately, the doctrine is not about technology adoption. It is about whether government is capable of learning, adapting, and organizing itself around citizens fast enough to meet the demands of the intelligence age.

In cities where the digital doctrine is taking hold, new thinking is not confined to one department. It runs through the DNA of public service. These are the cities that are performing best today. They will be the cities that adapt best to tomorrow, too. 

Andrew Greenway is a co-founder of Public Digital and advisor to governments on state capacity.