Emmanuel Macron played the Host of the inaugural Govtech Summit during the winter of 2018 in the marvelous buildings of Paris City Hall. The opening speaker was Justin Trudeau, followed by the OECD Secretary-General and the European Union’s vice president. The audience of 1000+ people arrived from ninety countries.
A gathering such as this one signifies an established space. However, on asking who among the audience had previously heard of govtech in the last five years, only less than 15 individuals raised their hands. Even fewer hands came up after I inquired who among them had been to any govtech conference previously.
It is a tradition for investors and entrepreneurs to stay away from the government, seeing the way that the public sector operates inimical to technology’s agility and pace. Investors are cautious as they consider the government to be difficult and also too slow a customer.
The next question I asked the audience was targeting the numerous investors present: who has taken a govtech deal in 2019? just three individuals showed their hands. This case will change in 2020 by rapidly investing in govtech, regtech, civic tech, and public tech companies. The govtech terminology is yet to be fully baked because the space is very young. Govtech usually means government buying from companies. Civic tech is its sibling, and it assists the citizens to deal with their government. Regtech, the govtech’s cousin, enables companies to comply with regulations effectively. Public tech is the general term used for all these techs, but govtech is used more extensively sometimes.
To fully comprehend the reason why investments will increase in this space in 2020, we have to know that govtech is about the means of delivering democracy, for example, online voting, citizen engagement, candidate fundraising. Govtech is also about delivering on equality – think accessible citizen services, efficient government, and pragmatic regulations.
The convergence of opportunity and fear will be the driving force behind capital mobilization for democracy, and it will be inevitable in 2020. In 2015, we witnessed Brexit perform a worldwide series of divided and suspicious votes. From then, people are increasingly becoming aware that with democracy, like climate, we have developed our society and economy on a weak pillar that we think to be very strong.
People typically perceive the relationship between democracy and money as destructive, so using cash as a solution may seem counter intuitive.
The opportunity of investing comes in the form of government’ $8 trillion yearly procurement budget, out that $400 billion goes to technology expenses alone. In the past, this market was only available to large companies capable of handling government tender marathon enabled by their deep pockets. But this will change one reason being that the Millennials are now in high offices in the government. They are the network and digital natives and are significantly impacting the way the government work.
