City resilience in wartime and DPI scoop Future of Government Awards 2025

Today, Amazon Web Services (AWS), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Public Digital announced the recipients of the Future of Government Awards 2025.

This year’s awards saw a surge in nominations for digital public infrastructure (DPI) initiatives, evidence of the increased focus and importance it is playing in societies worldwide. The awards champion practitioners, teams, and leaders who are improving people’s lives by applying digital solutions and leveraging technology to transform the public sector for those it serves. Judges received a record 336 nominations from more than 50 countries in 2025, the third year the awards have run.

“It’s clear from the breadth and depth of nominations, that nations are leveraging technology to make meaningful change in nearly all areas of people’s lives – often overcoming incredibly challenging situations to do so,” said Emma Gawen, Public Digital’s Managing Director.

A selection committee of public sector digital leaders from around the world chose winners from the nominations received. The committee also chose a recipient for the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Meet the 2025 Future of Government Award winners

Digital team of the year

Winner: Kyiv Digital Team – Ukraine

Through crisis, Kyiv Digital has not only sustained vital services but expanded them, launching a unified platform that centralizes municipal support, transit access, and emergency alerts for vulnerable citizens—demonstrating how urban innovation can thrive even under the toughest of conditions.

The Kyiv Digital team is leading an innovative transformation in urban governance by combining cutting-edge digital advancements with a robust communications strategy. What started as an app for residents to use city services like paying for parking or topping up a public transportation card, has transitioned in wartime to be a life-saving tool, sharing information on airstrikes and the nearest bomb shelter during an air-raid alert.

Highly commended:

• Digital Transformation Office – Ministry of Health, Republic of Indonesia
• DigiLocker – National e-Governance Division, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, India
• Development and Applications Team – National Fund of Guarantees, Colombia

Open source creation

Winner: DHIS2 (Norway)

DHIS2 is an open-source data management platform that provides a customizable, reusable solution for health information systems, currently implemented at a national scale in more than 70 countries, with adaptability across health, education, and climate sectors.

By enabling local health authorities to make data-driven decisions, while fostering cross-border knowledge sharing and multi-sector adaptability, DHIS2 has improved health outcomes in low- and middle-income countries through better outbreak management, reduced mortality, and sustainable system strengthening—all while reducing implementation costs and barriers to adoption through its reusable architecture.

Highly commended:

• Energy Access Explorer – World Resources Institute: Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Zambia, India, Nepal, Tanzania, and Ethiopia
• Mojaloop – Mojaloop Foundation, USA
• Modular Open Source Identity Platform (MOSIP) – International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore, India

Open source reuse

Winner: Credits for Wellbeing: Sistema Integral Bancario Infotec (SIBI) – Financiera para el Bienestar, Mexico

SIBI is a banking platform based on Mifos X that was enhanced to transform Mexico’s federal aid distribution, serving 1.8 million active loans through an open source system that enables direct government-to-citizen lending without commercial bank intermediaries.

Beyond digitalizing aid delivery and reducing errors and fraud across 1700-plus offices, it has enabled rapid disaster response (like Hurricane Otis relief), supported innovative programs (such as electric vehicle loans), created tech career opportunities, and established a replicable model for efficient, transparent government aid distribution—all while saving millions in licensing costs.

Highly commended:

• Veneem Project – Directorate General for the Modernisation of Civil Registration, Burkina Faso
• Mojaloop – USA, for projects in Mexico, Republic of Guinea, Republic of South Sudan, Republic of Cabo Verde, and the COMESA Region
• One Health Data Alliance Africa – Cameroon, Intergovernmental Authority on Development, African Union; Cameroon, Intergovernmental Authority on Development)

Leadership award

Winner: Christina Lang – Founder and CEO of DigitalService, Germany

Christina is the founder, CEO, and Managing Director of DigitalService, the German federal government’s digitalization partner. In 2019, noticing the lack of a fellowship program to bring private sector digital experts into government, she founded a start-up that eventually became DigitalService.

While growing DigitalService to 200 employees, Christina has been driving the digital transformation of federal administration, working to future-proof the public sector and led by the conviction that well-designed digital services can strengthen the citizens’ trust in the government’s ability to perform.

Highly commended:

• Fernando de Pablo Martín – Digital Office Director at Madrid City Council, Spain
• Marcela Arruda – Municipal Management Secretariat of São Paulo, Brazil

Lifetime achievement award

Winner: Nandan Nilekani, India

Nandan Nilekani, a visionary leader and co-founder of Infosys, is a transformative force behind India’s digital revolution and nation-building. As the Founding Chairman of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), he spearheaded Aadhaar, the world’s largest biometric identity program, empowering more than 1.3 billion Indians with digital identities. His leadership extended to the creation of India Stack, which includes Aadhaar, Unified Payments Interface (UPI), and other foundational DPI, driving financial inclusion, efficient service delivery, and economic growth. Nandan, as co-founder of EkStep Foundation, champions the expansion of DPIs globally, fostering inclusive digital societies.

“It’s always so impressive to read the stories that come out of the Future of Government Awards. As a former public servant myself, and now supporting so many governments around the world, I know just how difficult it can be to turn great ideas into reality,” said Liam Maxwell, Director of International Central Government at AWS. “Every nomination has many months or years of hard work, conviction and tenacity behind it, so it’s crucial that we celebrate and share these successes.”

Open source and more resources

When a government organization develops a solution to meet a shared common need and publishes its solution as open source software, other governments can reuse it – saving agencies around the world time and resources along the way to modernization and innovation. The AWS International Central Government team has curated a growing collection of no-cost, open source solutions designed specifically for government services. Learn from the experiences and research of other public sector organizations around the world using open source code for digital services, standards, practices, and more by visiting the Open Government Solutions library on AWS.

The AWS International Central Government team creates a library of guides, videos, and articles featuring insights and best practices shared by public sector leaders to help their peers accelerate their transformation programs. Read the following resources on government innovation and thought leadership for public sector transformation:

• Digital public infrastructure is high priority for governments worldwide
• How governments can transform services securely in the cloud
• How human-centered design can help public agencies design better digital services
• How governments can benefit from open source solutions to solve common challenges
• Getting Started with Cloud: The Use What Works video series
• Governments look to digital ID to modernize services and boost growth