2026 Conference Agenda

Arrive and network with hundreds of public service leaders involved in innovation and transformation in the USA and all around the world.

A welcome introduction from Global Government Forum’s moderator and government expert.

A visionary talk from federal government agency leader or industry trailblazer.

A visionary talk from federal government agency leader or industry trailblazer.

Digital technology has fundamentally changed how Americans work, communicate andinteract with services. However, the way government delivers has not kept pace withthis transformation.

To address this challenge, the US government, and their peers around the world, aredeveloping digital transformation plans, with objectives to drive better digital services, modernize legacy services, personalize delivery for service users, and improvecybersecurity and risk management.

This session will bring together digital and transformation leaders from across the USgovernment to discuss how leaders can create a vision – and implement – a vision formodernization in line with the US President’s Management Agenda objective to leveragetechnology to deliver faster, more secure services.

Leaders will discuss how to build secure, digital-first services that are built for users,and how technological transformation can help improve, standardise and streamlineservices.

Government at all levels around the world are working to develop and implement the use of artificial intelligence – and broader automation – to improve both the efficiency and quality of public services.

Already, AI is driving transformation in both the federal government and states across the US, and this session will bring together leaders from across government to discuss how their departments and agencies are developing, deploying, and using AI – and how America’s AI action plan can be realised.

This session will provide a showcase of how departments and agencies are using AI, providing a forum to share innovations and case studies.

The success of digital transformation initiatives depends on the skills and capabilities of people in government.

The US federal government has recognised this importance through creating the US Tech Force, focused on recruiting an elite corps of engineers to build the next generation of government technology.

This session will explore how the US government can build a digitally savvy workforce by understanding and addressing skills that governments need, discussing how to both  recruit the skills they need and upskill existing employees by fostering a culture of continuous learning.

Drawing on success stories from governments around the world, the panel will highlight strategies for large-scale upskilling and recruitment of digital talent, and how to aligning digital skills in departments and agencies with agency leadership priorities.

The session will also provide practical insight for public servants on where they should prioritise their own learning and development to meet the challenges government faces now.

Harnessing the power of government data is at the heart of efforts of modernizing government, driving efficiency and enhancing transparency.

However, much data that could help governments is often trapped in legacy systems, making it difficult to use for officials and the public alike.

Tackling this is one of the priorities in the Presidential Management Agenda, with a focus on working to eliminate data silos and duplicative data collection across government.

This session will therefore examine how governments around the world have taken steps to make their operational data easier to use. It will look at where governments have created centralized data libraries that improve awareness of available data among policymakers, and how breaking down data silos can help create citizen-centric services.

It will also discuss how departments and agencies can use the data that they collect to better measure outcomes, optimize performance, and ensure that taxpayer dollars are being used effectively.

Many governments have developed plans for digital transformation, but they often need to be built on legacy systems.

Replacing these systems wholesale is not going to happen quickly. Instead, what governments need to do is work out how to prioritise the investments that they can improve services step-by-step.

This session will discuss how governments can maximise digital investments to build more effective systems. Leaders in this session will discuss how to determine the best investments to address the legacy technology backlog, and how government can develop acquisition strategies to drive more flexible and iterative technology developments.

The US federal government loses between $233bn and $521bn annually to fraud, according to estimates from the Government Accountability Office – and a presidential executive order has set out plans to centralize what was described as a ‘fragmented’ federal disbursements bureaucracy to tackle fraud. The ‘Protecting America’s Bank Account Against Fraud, Waste and Abuse’ order sets out measures to reduce fraud against the government, alongside plans to better manage payments, while a taskforce to eliminate fraud has also been created.

This session will explore what is needed to make progress. It will examine how the threat against the government is evolving, and how government should respond. The session will also share insight on how the public sector and private sector can work together, using technology, to tackle fraud.