South Korea, Australia, Portugal top OECD Digital Government Index for 2025

The OECD has published its 2025 results and key findings from the Digital Government Index (DGI) and Open, Useful and Re-usable Data Index (OURdata).

The DGI “benchmarks the efforts made by governments to establish the foundations necessary to achieve a coherent, human-centred digital transformation of the public sector.” The OURdata Index “measures governments’ efforts to design and implement national open government data policies.”

The highest scorers in the 2025 DGI are Korea, Australia, Portugal, United Kingdom, Norway, Estonia, Ireland and Denmark. The results cite a “balanced performance” across metrics, reflecting “comprehensive efforts in the implementation of digital government policies.

Chile, Costa Rica, Portugal and Japan saw the most pronounced score increases.

Korea tops the list with a composite 0.95 score across categories covering design, a data-driven public sector, government as a platform, degree of openness, the extent to which a system is user driven, and “proactiveness.” The ROK is the only country to score a 0.9 or better. Australia, in second, posts a score of 0.88. Rounding out the top 10 is Portugal (0.86), the UK (0.84), Norway (0.83), Estonia (0.83), Ireland (0.83), Denmark (0.83), France (0.80) and Chile (0.79).

On the bottom end, Romania comes in at 0.24, below Croatia at 0.35.

For the OURdata Index, the leaders are France, Korea, Poland, Estonia and Spain, reflecting “comprehensive open government data policies and implementation efforts.” The paper notes “pronounced increased” observed in Chile, Japan, Czechia, Portugal and Latvia.

Data for Germany and the United States was unavailable.

The paper addresses the difficulties governments face in keeping up with the pace of change and meeting public demand for transformation. Its assessment indicates “moderate progress towards full digital governments.” Overall, OECD countries raised their performance to 0.70 compared to 0.61 in 2023, a 14 percent increase.

The shift toward digital identity systems is reflected in the category assessing government as a platform, which shows “countries are reinforcing institutional frameworks for cloud technologies and coverage of digital identity.” However, there is “room to improve the ability of digital identity systems to work across borders,” and a corresponding need to continue improving digital public infrastructure.

South Korea retains pole position, Chile assumes LATAM leadership

The DGI results have been welcomed by governments celebrating wins.

South Korea continues its path to global dominance, taking the number one spot for the second consecutive year. A report in Seoul Economic Daily notes that Korea scored above 0.9 points in all six categories and “was the only country to receive a perfect 1.00 points in the data-driven public sector category.”

A release from the Australian government’s Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) quotes CEO Chris Fechner, who says “Australia’s Data and Digital Strategy set an ambitious goal to achieve world-class data and digital capability by 2030. This result is a testament to the immense progress we are making across government to strengthen how services are delivered across our community and positions Australia as a global leader in digital government.”

France’s digital service has hailed its result as an “historic performance” by ranking “first in the world in the OECD’s OURdata index for the first time and first in Europe in the Open Data Maturity Index for the fifth consecutive year.”

Portugal’s government has noted the country’s jump from 11 in 2023 to third place in 2025. “Portugal leads in the ‘Government as a platform’ dimension with 93 percent, fruit of the investment in a common digital infrastructure, system interoperability and the secure sharing of information between public bodies,” it says in a release. “This performance occurs in a context of growing demand on Public Administration, with more demand for digital services, pressure to reduce response times and the need to ensure inclusion, efficiency, and security in data use.”

Having broken into the top 10, Chile’s Undersecretary of Finance Heidi Berner says in a release that “this achievement underscores the Chilean State’s commitment to modernization and the provision of efficient digital public services focused on people’s needs and their user experience.”

“It is a source of pride for those of us who have been promoting digitalization, governance and interoperability of data among the various organizations and public services, that Chile is positioned among the OECD members with the greatest progress in the ranking and that it consolidates its leadership in the region, by leading the Latin American nations evaluated.

Article Topics

digital government  |  digital identity  |  digital inclusion  |  digital public infrastructure  |  government services  |  OECD  |  OECD DGI