IQGov Editors

Research desk, Online

Stories by the IQGov research desk are written from public documents, official data and on-record statements, which are listed and linked at the end of each piece.

16 stories

Glass facade of a government building at dusk

The state as a platform: inside the new public works

Identity, payments and data exchange are becoming the roads and bridges of the twenty-first-century state. Four systems show what the new public works look like, and what they cost to get wrong.

Policy & Strategy24 Sept 2026

Hand holding a smartphone showing a folder of apps

Europe's wallet moment: the race to ship a digital ID by December

EU law says every member state must offer citizens a digital identity wallet by 24 December 2026. Most will not make it. Here is what the deadline requires, and why it is proving so hard.

Digital Identity23 Sept 2026

A woman working at a laptop in a dim office

The algorithmic caseworker: what the Dutch benefits scandal teaches every welfare agency

A fraud-risk system flagged families by nationality, tens of thousands were wrongly pursued, and a government resigned. As agencies adopt AI, the Dutch case is the one to study.

AI & Data22 Sept 2026

Kyiv's Podil district and the Dnipro river at night

The app that would not go down: how Ukraine kept its state in a smartphone

Diia put documents and public services on citizens' phones in 2020. Through a full-scale war it kept growing, to more than 23 million users.

Public Services21 Sept 2026

A fruit vendor at a street market in São Paulo

Pix and the politics of instant money

Brazil's central bank built a free payment system in 2020. By 2025 it handled 79.8 billion transactions a year. What other governments can learn, and what Brazil is still fixing.

Policy & Strategy20 Sept 2026

A white aisle of server racks in a data centre

Who owns the government cloud?

Storing data inside a country's borders does not settle who can reach it. A hearing in the French Senate made that plain, and Ukraine's wartime migration showed the other side of the trade-off.

Cybersecurity19 Sept 2026

Virtual Seoul: inside a city's digital twin

Seoul has modelled its entire 605 square kilometres in 3D, above and below ground. The city uses S-Map to test policies before it builds them.

Smart Cities18 Sept 2026

A tree-lined avenue in Kigali seen from above

One front door: Rwanda's Irembo and Kenya's eCitizen

Two East African governments put their services behind a single portal and a single way to pay. What they built, and why a phone code matters as much as the website.

Public Services17 Sept 2026

A laptop on a plain wooden desk, seen from above

In defence of the boring government website

The best public service is one people can use without thinking about it. GOV.UK showed that plain beats clever. Our view.

Opinion15 Sept 2026

Ransomware and the city: what Baltimore's $18 million attack taught local government

In May 2019 attackers locked about 10,000 of Baltimore's computers and demanded 13 bitcoin. The city refused to pay. Recovery cost around $18 million.

Cybersecurity14 Sept 2026

Streaks of light against a dark background

A public language model: why governments are training their own AI

The Netherlands and Switzerland have backed open language models built with public institutions. What they are, and what a 'sovereign' model does and does not solve.

AI & Data13 Sept 2026

The Gulf's government platforms grow up

The UAE and Saudi Arabia have moved most of their public services online, built around a national login. The numbers, and the questions that come with them.

Policy & Strategy12 Sept 2026

Cranes above an apartment block under construction

Breaking the megaproject: two British lessons in how not to buy IT

England's NHS spent billions on a national records programme that was dismantled in 2011. GOV.UK Verify missed its target by 15 million users. The lessons are the same.

Policy & Strategy11 Sept 2026

Two older people sitting in a park pavilion

The offline citizen: designing public services for 2.2 billion people without the internet

Three quarters of the world is now online. The quarter that is not includes many of the people who most depend on the state. How governments are designing for them.

Public Services10 Sept 2026

The European Parliament hemicycle in Brussels

The AI Act's delay is not a reprieve for the public sector

Europe has pushed back its rules for high-risk AI to December 2027. Public bodies should use the time, not waste it. Our view.

Opinion9 Sept 2026

An aisle of servers lit in blue and green

Estonia's data embassy: backing up a state abroad

In 2017 Estonia signed the world's first agreement to host government data in another country with the protections of an embassy. How the idea works, and why others are copying it.

Cybersecurity7 Sept 2026