Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent a commitment by all United Nations Member States to pursue development efforts, including ending poverty and hunger, promoting well-being and education, reducing inequalities, fostering peace, and protecting the planet. Member States and their governments are supposed to take ownership of the SDGs, strengthen the means of implementation, and improve public governance as both the means and the end to development. Their capacity to undertake these tasks is critical for implementing SDGs. This keynote will develop three lines of arguments: 1) that the Member States should strengthen the SDG implementation by building Digital Government capacity; 2) that according to the Digital Government Evolution model comprising Digitization, Transformation, Engagement and Contextualization stages, 87% of the 169 SDG targets require Digital Government capacity at the highest Contextualization stage; and 3) that less than 31% of the Member States reached this stage and 55% remain at the lowest Digitization stage. The keynote concludes that Digital Government should play a key role in the implementation of the SDGs but, at present, the gap between aspiration (SDGs) and capacity (Digital Government) is affecting more than 69% of the Member States. Understanding and eventually addressing this gap requires further research efforts and adaptation of research results to different national circumstances and policy contexts.

Tomasz Janowski is Invited Professor at the Gdańsk University of Technology, Poland where he serves as acting Chair of Applied Informatics in Management. He is also Invited Professor at Danube University Krems, Austria; and Co-Editor-in-Chief of Government Information Quarterly, a leading journal in the area. He established and directed between 2004 and 2016 the Electronic Governance programme within the United Nations University (UNU), recently as the Founding Head of the UNU Operating Unit on Policy-Driven Electronic Governance (UNU-EGOV). He also established in 2007 the International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance (ICEGOV) series, and led it to international recognition through ten editions in Macao (2007), Cairo (2008), Bogota (2009), Beijing (2010), Tallinn (2011), Albany (2012), Seoul (2013), Guimaraes (2014), Montevideo (2016) and New Delhi (2017). He conducts and directs research focused on Digital Government and its impact on public policy and development, translates research findings into policy instruments, and consults for many governments and international organizations in this area. He lectured and organized activities in 52 countries around the world, and led many projects funded by the Commonwealth Secretariat, European Commission, IDRC, Macao Foundation, Microsoft, OSCE, UNDP, UNESCO, World Bank and several national governments. He holds PhD in Computer Science from the University of Warwick, UK, and MSc in Applied Mathematics from the University of Gdańsk, Poland.