Leading in Digital Government

Helmuth von Moltke said that “no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force.” Mike Tyson put it more succinctly: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Digital services aren’t as confrontational, but the lesson remains the same: Tactics and implementation are vastly different from theory and architecture. And the office of the CIO is where theory collides headlong with the realities of implementation.

In this chain reaction panel, we’ll join four leads from Digital Nations member countries as they lay out their journey to the highest levels of digital government, and discuss the tradeoffs of turning idealistic plans into concrete actions.