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 speakers for this year’s congress — Jana Krimpe, Founder and CEO of B.EST Solutions, recognized among the Top 100 Influencers in Digital Identity worldwide, and a leading voice for women in technology.

In this exclusive conversation, Krimpe takes us beyond the headlines of digital transformation to address what she sees as the defining challenges of our time: building government systems that are secure, inclusive, and worthy of public trust. Read the full interview below…

What are the most pressing challenges governments are facing right now in terms of adapting to technology and all digitalization processes?

The first is outdated systems. Most governments aren’t building from scratch, they’re trying to modernize while keeping essential services running at the same time. Think of it like replacing the engine of a plane while it’s still in the air. That’s the reality for countries everywhere, whether it’s a European nation upgrading decades-old registries or an African country leapfrogging straight to mobile-based identity systems. The starting points are different, but the challenge of managing that transition without leaving people behind is universal.

The second is trust and this is arguably the biggest one globally. We’re living in a time where public trust in institutions is fragile almost everywhere. Citizens need to believe that when a government collects their data or asks them to use a digital ID, that data is safe, that it won’t be misused, and that the system genuinely serves them. This looks different in different contexts, in some countries it’s about data protection, in others it’s about fears of surveillance, and in many places it’s simply about whether the technology actually works when you need it to. Without trust, even the best digital infrastructure fails, because people won’t use it.

And the third is making systems work together across borders and across agencies. In Europe, we’re working on the Digital Identity Wallet and cross-border frameworks, which is enormously complex. But this challenge is just as real in Africa, where the African Union is pushing for interoperable digital systems across 55 countries with vastly different infrastructure and legal frameworks. Or in Southeast Asia, or Latin America. And then there’s the question of digital sovereignty, every country wants the benefits of connected, interoperable systems, but also wants to maintain control over its own citizens’ data and its own digital infrastructure. Balancing openness with sovereignty is one of the defining tensions of our time, and there’s no one-size-fits-all answer.

What ties all three together is that these aren’t just technical problems. They’re deeply human and deeply political. The technology often exists, what’s hard is building the governance, the cooperation, and the public confidence to make it work for everyone.

What do you think government leaders are struggling with most when it comes to turning technology into real impact?

If I’m being honest, it’s the gap between having a great plan and actually making it happen. Governments around the world have ambitious strategies, impressive roadmaps, bold commitments. But the real challenge starts the moment you try to turn that vision into something a citizen can actually use on their phone or at a service window.

What gets in the way? A few things. Government agencies often work in silos, the health ministry has its system, the tax authority has another, immigration has a third and they don’t talk to each other. So, a citizen ends up submitting the same information five different times to five different departments. That’s not a technology problem, that’s an organizational one.

Then there’s how governments buy technology. Traditional procurement was designed for building bridges and buying equipment, large contracts, rigid specifications, long timelines. But digital services need to be built differently. They need to be tested, adjusted, improved continuously. When the purchasing process takes two years before a single line of code is written, you’re already behind.

And perhaps the deepest challenge is a cultural one. Many government institutions were built to serve the needs of the institution itself, its processes, its reporting structures, its internal logic. The shift to truly putting the citizen at the center, designing services around how people actually live and what they need that requires a fundamental change in mindset. And cultural change is always harder than technical change.

So when people ask me where the bottleneck is, I rarely point to the technology. The technology is usually there. What’s missing more often is the governance, the willingness to collaborate across institutional boundaries, and the political courage to do things differently.

You’ve spent over 15 years not just advising on digital public infrastructure, but actually building it from the ground up. Can you tell us about that journey and what it taught you that you couldn’t have learned any other way?

Most of what I know, I learned by doing things that had never been done before in the places I was doing them.

Over 15 years managing DPI, I conceived, architected, and operated national-scale systems like the Mobile-ID, the X-Road interoperability platform, the Digital Trade Hub and many others. These weren’t pilot projects. They were live infrastructure serving millions of people, processing hundreds of millions of transactions, connecting thousands of e-services across government agencies. When something broke, it mattered. When trust eroded, you felt it immediately. That kind of accountability teaches you things no advisory role ever could.

One moment that stayed with me was the early rollout of Mobile ID. We had built something technically sound, the architecture was solid, the security was rigorous. But adoption was slow, and when we went out to understand why, the answer wasn’t technical at all. People didn’t trust that the government would use their data responsibly. Not because they had evidence it wouldn’t, but because trust in institutions had to be earned from zero. We had to go back and rebuild the communication, the transparency, the proof points, before the technology could do its job. That experience is why I speak about citizen trust the way I do today. It’s not a theory for me. I’ve watched a technically perfect system fail because the human foundation wasn’t there.

What that journey also taught me is the difference between being in the room as a woman and being the one who built the room. Early in my career, I was often the only woman at the table when national-level architecture decisions were being made. I learned quickly that waiting to be asked for my opinion was not a strategy. The decisions that matter, which standards to adopt, which vendors to trust, how to structure governance, happen fast and they stick. So I made it a habit to show up fully prepared, to speak first when I had something important to say, and to make sure the questions nobody else was asking got asked. That instinct eventually became the foundation for everything I now advise others on.

Today, through Trusted Futures, my sovereign DPI advisory firm, I bring that same hands-on operational experience to governments and international development partners who are building their own digital infrastructure. The name reflects what I believe: that the future of digital public services has to be built on trust, and that trust has to be sovereign, rooted in each country’s own values, governance, and people. We work across the full stack, from strategy to software to sovereignty, and the thread running through all of it is that I’ve lived these challenges, not just studied them.

You`ve been named among the “Top 100 Women of the Future” shaping emerging technologies worldwide and you are a founder of Femmes Digitales – Supporting Women in Tech. So as a prominent advocate for women’s leadership:
How do you see the involvement of women in the field?
How can government leaders at G4I move from ‘checking a box’ on gender to making women central architects of public infrastructure?

Let’s start with what digital identity actually is at its core it’s the system that decides who gets access and who doesn’t. Who can open a bank account, who can cross a border, who can prove they are who they say they are. When we talk about digital identity, we’re talking about inclusion in the most fundamental sense.

Now here’s the thing if the people designing these systems don’t reflect the diversity of the populations those systems are meant to serve, we end up with blind spots built into the very foundation. And these aren’t small systems. This is infrastructure that billions of people will depend on for decades. We can’t afford to get it wrong because the room where decisions were made wasn’t diverse enough.

So what does it mean to move beyond the checkbox? It means women need to be at the tables where the actual decisions are made, not just invited to speak on a panel or sit on an advisory board, but involved in designing the architecture, setting the standards, writing the technical specifications. That’s where the real power is.

It also means rethinking how we hire and how we buy. When governments put out a tender for a major digital identity project, do the evaluation criteria reward teams that bring diverse perspectives? In most cases, not yet. That’s a concrete lever that leaders can pull today.

And I want to make one point that I think is often overlooked, inclusion in digital public infrastructure isn’t just the right thing to do. It’s a practical necessity. A system that doesn’t account for the full range of people who will use it is a system with vulnerabilities. It will fail certain populations, it will create gaps that can be exploited, and it will ultimately cost more to fix later. Inclusion is not a nice-to-have. In digital public infrastructure, it’s a security requirement.

What is the most common piece of advice you give to young women entering the GovTech space who want to lead national-scale projects like yours?

The first thing I always say is don’t wait for permission and don’t wait until you feel completely ready. That moment never comes, not for anyone. The people who end up leading transformative projects aren’t the ones who waited until they had every qualification lined up perfectly. They’re the ones who stepped in when the opportunity was there.

What GovTech needs more than anything is people who understand both sides: the technology and the human impact. People who can look at a system and ask not just “does this work?” but “does this work for a single mother in a rural area? Does this work for an elderly person who has never used a smartphone? Does this work for someone who just crossed a border with nothing?” That ability to hold the technical and the human together, many women are exceptionally good at that, and it’s exactly what this field is missing.

My practical advice is this: find the project that genuinely matters to you, the one that keeps you up at night because you see how it could change lives. Then make yourself essential to it. Learn every detail, understand every stakeholder, become the person the team can’t function without.

And build your network with intention. Not just collecting contacts, but genuinely investing in relationships with people who are shaping this space. Mentors, peers, people in other countries working on similar challenges. This field is smaller than you think, and the connections you make early will open doors for years to come.

But if there’s one thing above all to speak up early. In GovTech and digital identity, the decisions that matter most happen when standards are being written, when architectures are being chosen, when policies are being drafted. Those are the moments that lock in how systems will work for the next twenty or thirty years. If you’re not in the room and not using your voice during those moments, someone else will make those choices for you. So don’t wait to be invited. Show up, contribute, and make sure your perspective is part of the foundation.

What is the one ‘leadership superpower’ you think women bring to the high-stakes world of national security and digital identity?

The ability to hold complexity without rushing to oversimplify it.

A national digital identity project is never just about technology. It’s about law, ethics, human behavior, politics, and budget and all at the same time. The pressure to just pick the fastest solution and move on is enormous. But fast decisions that ignore important pieces of the puzzle are the ones that fail at scale.

What I’ve seen consistently is that women leaders are exceptionally good at resisting that pressure. They take the time to understand the full picture. They listen to the voices others overlook, the communities on the margins, the end users nobody consulted, the people who must make the system work day to day.

And there’s one question that I think captures this superpower perfectly “who does this leave behind?” When that question gets asked early enough, before systems are designed and decisions are locked in, it changes everything. It surfaces blind spots. It prevents costly failures.

In my experience, women leaders ask that question more often and earlier than most. And in digital identity, where the systems you build will affect millions of people for decades, that instinct isn’t a soft skill. It’s a strategic advantage..

What made you decide to be involved in GovTech for Impact World Congress?

The real reason is that I genuinely believe the most impactful technology decisions of our generation aren’t happening only in Silicon Valley. They’re happening in government ministries, in standards bodies, in rooms where policymakers and technologists sit together and try to figure out how to make things work for real people.

Think about it, digital identity infrastructure will shape how billions of people access healthcare, education, financial services. It will determine how people cross borders, how they prove who they are, how they’re included in society or left out of it. These are decisions that will stay with us for the next thirty years.

I wanted to be part of building that right. Not just watching from the sidelines, but actually contributing to making sure these systems are secure, inclusive, and built to serve people, not the other way around.

And honestly, if you care about technology that truly changes lives at scale: GovTech is where the action is. It may not get the same headlines as the latest app or AI startup, but the impact is incomparably bigger.

What is an important trend in the Govtech field that leaders cannot ignore right now, and why?

The collision of digital identity and AI. These two worlds are merging fast and most governments are still treating them as separate topics. That’s a mistake.

Here’s why it matters. AI is already being used in public services: detecting fraud, making decisions about who qualifies for benefits, processing border crossings. But at the same time, AI is making it easier than ever to fake an identity. Deepfakes, AI-generated documents, completely fabricated digital identities, these are not science fiction scenarios. They’re happening right now.

So we’re in a situation where the same technology that helps governments serve citizens better is also the technology that makes it harder to know if someone is who they claim to be. That’s a serious problem.

Leaders who are still managing digital identity and AI as two separate items on their agenda need to bring them together urgently. Because you can’t build trustworthy public services with AI if you can’t reliably verify who’s on the other end. And you can’t protect people’s digital identities without understanding what AI makes possible, both the opportunities and the threats.

This isn’t a future trend. It’s already here. And the governments that recognize that first will be the ones that stay ahead.

What kind of people do you think would benefit most from attending G4I?/ Who is G4I Congress for?

It’s for anyone who works where public policy meets technology and who is tired of talking about what should happen and wants to focus on how to actually make it happen.

That obviously includes government technology leaders, CIOs, CTOs, digital transformation directors. But it goes much further than that. Procurement leaders who decide how governments buy technology. Program managers running national identity or digital services projects. Innovators in civic tech who are building solutions for real public problems.

And I want to say this directly it’s also for private sector partners. But specifically, for those who want to genuinely understand how governments work and how to build with them, not just show up with a product and try to sell to them. That’s a very different mindset, and G4I is a space where that kind of honest collaboration can happen.

What makes a congress like this valuable is that it brings all of these people into the same room. Because the truth is, no single group can solve these challenges alone. Governments need the innovation the private sector brings. The private sector needs to understand the realities governments operate in. And everyone needs to hear from the people who are actually implementing these systems on the ground. G4I creates that space.

For a government leader attending G4I who feels overwhelmed by the pace of tech, what should be their ‘North Star’ for 2026?

One thing. Citizen trust. The technology landscape is moving incredibly fast, and nobody can keep up with everything. New tools, new platforms, new threats, it can feel impossible to know where to focus. But if you have one guiding question for every decision you make this year, let it be this: “Does this increase or decrease citizens’ trust in digital public services?”

If it increases trust, you’re probably on the right track. Because here’s the thing about trust, it works like compound interest. Every good experience a citizen has with a digital service, every time their data is handled responsibly, every time a system works when they need it, that builds trust, little by little. And over time, that trust becomes your most valuable asset. It’s what makes people willing to adopt new services, share their data, and support digital transformation.

But it also works in reverse. One major data breach, one system failure at the wrong moment, one scandal about misuse of personal information and years of trust-building can disappear overnight.

So my message to any leader feeling overwhelmed is you don’t need to understand every new technology. You need to protect and grow the trust your citizens place in you. Get that right, and the rest will follow.

Why is it important for people in the field to attend the Congress?

Because we are in a window right now where the decisions being made will be very difficult to change later. Think about it, governments across the world are deciding right now how digital identity wallets will work, how identity systems will function across borders, how AI will be governed in public services. These aren’t temporary policies you can easily adjust next year. These are foundational choices. Once they’re built into

infrastructure, once standards are set, once systems go live reversing course becomes incredibly expensive and complicated, if it’s possible at all.

That’s what makes this moment so critical. We’re still in the phase where input matters. Where a good idea raised in the right conversation can actually change direction. Where the concerns of one country can improve the framework for everyone. That window won’t stay open forever.

And that’s exactly what G4I offers, a space where the people making these decisions come together. Policymakers, technologists, implementers, from different countries and different perspectives, all in one room. Those conversations shape outcomes in ways that no report or email exchange ever can.

So if you work in this field and you care about how these systems are built, being in the room isn’t optional. It’s where the future gets decided.