Image Source: @igorlys/LinkedIn 

The GovTech 4 Impact World Congress is coming this May and promises to be a central stage for GovTech innovation. As the event draws near, we had the opportunity to interview one of the key speakers for this year’s congress – Igor Lys, the Founder of the Government Tomorrow Forum and Gambit Advisory Agency.  

In this exclusive conversation, Lys dives deep into his views on governance, emphasizing that despite the rise of AI and autonomous agencies, governance still relies on the foundational pillars of human decision-making and effective processes. According to Lys, digital tools serve merely as a means to an end in the ongoing effort to tackle longstanding societal challenges. In this interview, he sheds light on the importance of focusing on solutions rather than the buzzwords of digital innovation and explores how the public sector can more effectively harness technology to improve services and policies.  Read the full interview below… 

G4I 2026: Which digital government challenges we mostly focus on in our work?  

Igor Lys: Well, it’s a tricky question for a curious reason, because we’re not specifically focused on digital government, because there is no such thing as digital government. There is such a thing as government, and it has digital sides of processes. But in the end, when you really boil it down to the core of how governments function, you will see that in the end it comes down to people and processes, basically. And digital is more of a means to an end. Even now, you can say they are AI and autonomous agencies that are part of government processes. Still, it boils down to human policy decisions.  

What we call digital government is basically, a fancy name for solving the same problems government faced for the last 7000 years, and we do not know, actually, if, that’s the best. Sometimes it’s not the best way to go. At Government Tomorrow Forum, we are promoting our own metric of how to evaluate public services and policies and let’s say technological part of it, which is not necessarily digital, but technological is everything that’s non-human, basically. That’s everything that allows you to get to a result without direct human participation is technological, maybe digital. Sometimes it might be analog. I don’t know, just bringing some robots that go into a warehouse. It might be clockwork, we don’t know.  

In this metric, we think about technology as a factor of things like speed – how fast you can deliver a service. Because digital allows you to deliver faster service. We think about things like quality; it allows you to actually reduce the percentage of errors and mistakes in delivering services or executing a policy and stuff like that. But on top of that, you have things like equality of access. You have things like seamlessness of work, basically how much is done in the back office of the government.  And in that sense the most digital solutions are not necessarily the best. So, this is something that we tell all the governments we work with, is that before using all these fancy words, let’s see what do you really want to achieve? How do you want to make progress? Do you want to achieve it? And then sometimes digital is a good solution for that.  Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes you need to work on processes, etc.  

So, I would say that the most challenging problems that we face is actually people understanding, what’s behind the words, what’s behind the buzzwords, and how to actually do progress, instead of just innovation in the sake for the sake of innovating and reporting to your superiors.  

G4I 2026: What is your motivation to join the Govtech 4 Impact World Congress 2026?  

Igor Lys: I am involved in GovTech 4 Impact for two reasons. Number one is because GovTech is an important part of a modern approach to governance. Because governments try to automate things, they try to explore how technology can ensure that progress, and it’s important to talk about it.  

Number two is because it’s a big and important event. And I think every gathering of people who actually work in governments, who work in applying technologies and governments is important. Why? It is important because and I will say here, maybe the most important thing is that when you look at the society, societies that we live in, in the West, in the East, everywhere in the world, all the problems and all the best things, let’s say all the challenges, and all the advantages that we have come from two points, the process and institutions that we have in place. And then human nature. And both generate a lot of friction and a lot of problems.  

And the interesting thing is that to fix institutions and processes, to make them better, you need to work on institutions and processes. But to fix human nature, you still have to work on institutions and processes, because you cannot change human nature.  

 And all the experiments that tried failed miserably with a lot of suffering. So, whatever the desire, whatever the problem that you want to tackle at a society level, you need to speak to and about governments. And I think, GovTech 4 Impact is a great platform for that.  

G4I 2026: What is the main challenge for leaders in making impact out of technology?  

Igor Lys: Once again, I might give you a more general answer, but I think it’s a more important answer in a sense, because this is something we are facing, in our work and government, reform works with dozens of governments across the world all year. And we also have this great review that we publish. It actually also speaks about you a bit. So, it’s probably the first publication, for the public sector leaders that exists in the world. That’s not in a format of a boring report. And one thing we discovered, well, rediscovered, ourselves, and one thing we face every day is that a lot of leaders today, across different political systems, different cultures share one negative trait. It’s that they become professionals in political survival. And they think about their political position sometimes more than they think about solving a problem. And even they can trick themselves into believing that they’re solving a problem.  

But what they’re solving is their own political positioning.  

Most of the time, the best leaders, of course, actually solve the problem. But they are a minority. And I believe that this is the biggest challenge for leaders to learn how to focus on solving issues. And once again, as I said before, technology and govtech can be one side of the solution.  

Sometimes it’s a good option, sometimes it’s not. But the capacity to actually, unfocused on your political context and focus on solving a specific issue is something that has to be driven, I think, by people who work with governments from the outside, because in the end researchers, advisors, solution designers, govtech people, programmers, entrepreneurs, we have ideas and options and solutions.  

But in the end, it’s the government that applies, that chooses the one and does the policy, and delivers the service. So, I believe that the biggest challenge is to actually bridge these two communities, the government and the private sector and academia, and let’s say non-government enthusiasts, with the goal of making government officials again interested in solutions and finding solutions to problems rather than thinking about their political context.  

G4I 2026: What’s the trend that people cannot ignore? 

Igor Lys: Well, I’m a bit pessimistic here. I think people can ignore every trend. Usually, I mean, our research shows, and I think the common sense also shows that there are two cases where you cannot ignore something is either you have a very powerful leader who just imposes a certain trend within an administration or a culture, or an external crisis.  

You cannot ignore it if ignoring costs you more than doing nothing.  

And it’s easy to say, you know that AI is such a trend. But what does it even mean – AI, especially in government. Like, what does it mean? There are so many projects that use AI that citizens have never heard about. And even if they’re officially turned into the citizens’ direction, I think the only trend that people should not be ignoring is this problem solving. That would be the trend for me, that should not be ignored, but it’s ignored, unfortunately, too often. So, that’s why I think forums like yours (G4I 2026) are important, because it’s a platform to actually talk about it and try to suggest solutions, try to suggest metrics, try to suggest technology, connect private sector and public sector. And of course, I’m happy to participate in that.  

G4I 2026: What kind of people would I like to see in the room?  

Igor Lys: Well, enthusiasts. That’s very simple. The answer here is very simple. I would like to see enthusiasts, both enthusiasts on the private side, people who create products they believe in, enthusiasts on the research side, people who do stuff that they think matters and they’re enthusiastic about the ideas that they bring on the table.  And of course, enthusiasts on the public sector side who are enthusiastic about finding solutions for the problems they’re facing.  

And that is by far my biggest expectations – the energy of people who really want to see change. 

There is a big difference between an actual enthusiast, for example, that has a product he wants to, he or she wants to sell, and just somebody who has a sales plan, and he comes to a conference to, you know, close deals. I definitely expect enthusiasts because the world is driven by enthusiasts. And if something can save us, it’s enthusiasm.