Based on an Infoquest Expert Voices interview with Paul Scully, Former UK Minister for Technology
When Paul Scully became a UK government minister in 2020, civil servants were still printing out every letter that needed his signature, sometimes running to tens of pages. That image sits at the heart of his view on digital-first government transformation: swapping paper for PDFs is not the same as designing services around digital logic from the start. Scully, who later served as the UK’s Minister for Technology and helped shape the country’s AI white paper, has spent years watching governments mistake digitization for transformation.
From Paper to PDF Is Not Digital-First Government Transformation
COVID forced the UK government to abandon its paper habits almost overnight. Scully recalls flicking through documents on a tablet instead of signing printed pages, a shift he calls a start, but not the finish line. “It’s still not digital first,” he says. “It’s still a digital representation of a bit of paper.”
The real test, he argues, is whether systems can talk to each other. Open banking already lets financial apps share data securely across providers, yet government services rarely offer the same. A citizen explaining their situation again to every department is, in Scully’s words, the opposite of digital-first government transformation.
Japan made a similar mistake, he notes, digitizing existing paper processes rather than rethinking them from scratch. The lesson for governments everywhere is that speed without redesign only gets you so far.
The Digital-First Government Journey
From paper signatures to agentic AI policymaking
Before 2020
Paper-Based Government
Civil servants printed every letter and document requiring a minister’s signature, sometimes running to tens of pages. Services existed as isolated paper trails with no shared data across departments.
2020, COVID Acceleration
Forced Shift to Digitized Paper
Necessity pushed governments onto tablets and PDFs almost overnight. UK Parliament built a “member hub” so politicians could vote remotely via an app, a major leap, but still a digital copy of paper processes rather than a redesign.
Present Day
Digital-First Identity and Services
Models like Ukraine’s DIA app and India’s MOSIP identity platform show what happens when services are designed around a single digital identity from the outset. GCC governments, building without legacy systems, are positioned to move quickly along this path.
Next 18 to 24 Months
Agentic AI in Policymaking
Pilots already underway, including in the Scottish government, use AI to process thousands of consultation responses in a fraction of the usual time. The next step extends agentic AI from consultation through to drafting stages of legislation.
The Public Trust Gap Holding Back Digital Government Services
People hand over personal data to Facebook, Amazon, and social platforms without much thought, Scully points out, yet bristle at sharing the same information with their own government. That asymmetry, he says, is one of the biggest barriers to digital-first government transformation in countries like the UK.
Security incidents don’t help. Scully cites a major NHS outage caused by an outdated version of Windows, a vulnerability that fed public skepticism about government IT systems. Contrast that with Ukraine, where roughly 80 percent of citizens use the government’s DIA app for everything from identity documents to tax filings, a level of trust the UK has yet to build.
Closing that gap, Scully argues, means governments have to actively sell the benefits to citizens rather than assume adoption will happen on its own. Without that groundwork, even well-built systems struggle to gain traction.
Why the GCC Has a Head Start on Digital-First Government Transformation
For Gulf governments, the absence of legacy infrastructure is an advantage rather than a gap to close. “You’re starting with almost a blank page,” Scully says. “You don’t have that legacy of mistrust.” Citizens can submit information once and have it flow seamlessly between planning, health, and welfare systems.
Nabil Kanaan, who conducted the interview for Infoquest, has watched this shift firsthand in Saudi Arabia, where he lived for 15 years. Government services that once meant queuing for days now run almost entirely through mobile apps, a transformation closely tied to the ambitions of Vision 2030.
Scully sees this regional momentum continuing, provided GCC governments keep building on co-created solutions rather than importing systems wholesale from markets burdened by decades of legacy technology.
Global Models for Digital-First Government Transformation
Scully points to Japan’s former technology minister, Taro Kono, who used a lifelike avatar to deliver speeches and represent him at events. It’s a small example, he says, but it shifts public perception of what a government can be, signalling experimentation rather than rigid bureaucracy.
India’s MOSIP identity platform offers a starker number. Bank account ownership among Indians rose from roughly 8 percent to 80 percent over 15 years, largely because the app gave people a single, trusted digital identity that worked across services. France and other countries are now studying the model for use across developing economies in Africa and South Asia.
Global Digital Government Models Compared
How four approaches to digital-first government transformation stack up
United Kingdom
Starting Point
Decades of legacy analog and digital systems that don’t talk to each other
Approach
Digitized paper into PDFs; built a remote-voting member hub during COVID
Trust Level
Low; citizens reluctant to share formal ID with government
Outcome
Faster processes, but services remain siloed across departments
Ukraine
Starting Point
Young population, urgent wartime need for resilient public services
Approach
DIA app built as a public-private collaboration for ID and documents
Trust Level
High; around 80 percent of citizens actively use the app
Outcome
Mass adoption of a single digital ID across government services
India
Starting Point
Large rural population with very low formal financial access
Approach
MOSIP identity platform giving citizens a single digital identity
Trust Level
Built gradually through visible, everyday benefits
Outcome
Bank account ownership rose from about 8 percent to 80 percent in 15 years
GCC Region
Starting Point
Few legacy systems, described as a near blank canvas for digital services
Approach
Mobile-first national services consolidating ID, licenses, and records
Trust Level
Comparatively high, supported by national digital identity rollouts
Outcome
Rapid shift from in-person paperwork to near fully digital services
Measuring Digital Transformation Without a Single KPI
Scully is candid that no single metric captures success in public sector digital transformation. Instead, he looks at time saved, transactions processed, accessibility, and direct feedback from focus groups and user reviews, layered together to build a fuller picture of what’s working.
He also stresses ethical guardrails. During his time overseeing the UK’s online safety legislation, Scully pushed to bring ethicists, philosophers, and theologians into rooms otherwise dominated by data scientists and engineers, arguing that diverse voices catch blind spots that technologists alone tend to miss.
Agentic AI and the Next Phase of Digital Transformation
Looking ahead, Scully expects agentic AI to reshape government over the next 18 months to two years. The Scottish government, he notes, is already piloting AI tools that condense thousands of public consultation responses, work that once took six months to a year, into a fraction of the time.
From there, agentic systems could carry a policy process from consultation through drafting stages, freeing officials to focus on judgment calls rather than paperwork. For governments in the GCC, this stage may arrive faster given fewer legacy constraints to work around.
Keeping the Human Element in Government Technology
Scully’s closing advice is simple: never lose sight of the people behind the process. “There’s a human cost if we get it wrong,” he says, pointing to UK welfare reforms from years past that officials are still working to unwind today.
For GCC leaders specifically, his message is to protect the entrepreneurial, risk-reward culture that has fueled rapid progress so far. Digital-first government transformation works best, he says, when it amplifies ambition and supports people chasing better lives, rather than simply automating old paperwork.