Once a crossroad of caravans, Samarkand did something even rarer this June: it made international delegates admit what doesn’t work. The UN Public Service Forum 2025 turned out to be a watershed moment, not for the shiny tech on display or the recycled conference sayings, but for what finally got said out loud. Across marble halls and side meetings, governments came to grips with the fact that digital inclusion is much more than a branding exercise. It’s infrastructure, training, trust, and proof that a platform won’t collapse the moment people actually try to use it.
This year’s Forum, hosted for the first time by Uzbekistan, wasn’t about who had the best vision. It was about who had concrete results. And the hosts came armed with plenty.
5 Key Takeaways
1. Digital Inclusion Is Now a Performance Metric, Not a Talking Point: In Samarkand, ambition didn’t earn applause, uptime did. Not only Uzbekistan launched their government portal; it processed 12 million transactions daily, and that’s what everyone noticed.
2. Albania Proved That Tech Without People Is Just Expensive Hardware: Minister Pirdeni said it best: systems only work if people know how to use them. Albania’s real investment wasn’t just in AI, but in the people behind the screen.
3. If You Can’t Reach Rural Areas, You Haven’t Reached Anyone: Georgia skipped the words and sent vans. Over 500 services now roll into places reform had never touched, and this time, they didn’t forget the countryside.
4. Bosnia Brought a Mirror, Not a Mask: Minister Bunoza didn’t pretend, he pointed out the paper and owned it. In a room full of dashboards, his bluntness hit harder than any demo.
UN Public Service Forum 2025: Not Just a Stage!
No one expected Uzbekistan to dominate the stage quite like this. The country’s Minister of Digital Technologies, Sherzod Shermatov, didn’t offer a soft sell. He spoke of 12 million daily digital transactions, over 760 services on one unified platform, and 11 million actual users. Sure, that’s a country running on clicks instead of stamps. And they’re just getting started.
Shermatov outlined plans for a national cloud infrastructure, 20 new data centres backed by private investment, and training one million citizens to become AI prompters. “Digital transformation is a collective responsibility,” he said. But Uzbekistan didn’t just come to collaborate. It came to demonstrate.
In just two UN assessment cycles, the country jumped 24 places on the E-Government Development Index. Their GovTech system now integrates over 390 services from 49 institutions. That kind of integration happens with daily maintenance, political will, and design choices that don’t forget the user. President Mirziyoyev, speaking through his newly appointed Chief of Staff Saida Mirziyoyeva, emphasized that digital reforms are tied not just to convenience but to justice, inclusion, and survival in a world rattled by climate shocks and geopolitical tension. From the expansion of the my.gov.uz portal to the overhaul of civil service laws, Uzbeks made a big move towards the true digital governance that’s running on systems not empty promises.
Albania: No AI Without People
Over on another panel, Albania’s Minister of Public Administration and Anticorruption, Adea Pirdeni, offered a quieter, but equally powerful, example of perseverance. In 2013, Albania had just 13 services online. Today, it has over 1,200, covering more than 95% of all public services.
That leap came from treating digital delivery as the only game in town. “Digital services reduce corruption by removing physical interaction,” Pirdeni said. “Citizens no longer wonder who’s behind the counter. They simply get the service.”
She also didn’t gloss over the resistance. Many civil servants, she admitted, weren’t rejecting innovation, they were stuck in habits. That’s why Albania now trains public workers not only in generative AI and procurement transparency but in reform thinking itself.
Efficiency, Pirdeni added, “means little without inclusivity.” And that line landed harder than most keynote addresses. In Albania’s case, inclusivity means everything from digital help desks for the elderly to AI tools designed to catch procurement irregularities. Congrats on the clear working shift!
Georgia: Reform Delivered on Four Wheels
Georgia’s delegation rolled in with a different kind of success story. This one was on actual wheels. And Justice Minister Paata Salia didn’t bring mock-ups. He came with numbers. Over 500 services are now delivered by mobile service vans, fully equipped digital units that travel to the villages no ministry had touched in decades. And they’re not done yet. A new e-wallet initiative is in development to give every citizen biometric access to their digital documents.
“These tools reconnect people to the state,” Salia said. “Especially those who felt left behind.”
Beyond the vans, Georgia has passed a data protection law, created an independent oversight body, and digitized property transfers and notary services. There was no boasting, just evidence that digital reach doesn’t stop at city limits.
So good to see that “the vans” weren’t a PR stunt, because let’s face it, they usually are. Georgians used them as a basic correction. A reminder that when reform doesn’t arrive in rural towns, reform hasn’t arrived at all.
UN Public Service Forum 2025:: Honesty Hits Harder
Then came Davor Bunoza, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Minister of Justice, and perhaps the most candid voice at the Forum. “In Bosnia and Herzegovina, we still use too much paper,” he said bluntly. The rooms filled with silent nods.
But Bunoza wasn’t apologizing, he was explaining what comes next. With EU accession talks finally gaining traction, Bosnia is out of time for excuses. The country’s fragmented bureaucracy and outdated workflows are now being viewed less as structural issues and more as political liabilities.
He referenced Uzbekistan’s rapid ascent as something Bosnia hopes to emulate. “Digital tools are crucial for restoring trust,” Bunoza said. “Especially after years of complexity and fragmentation.” His honesty was disarming, and frankly, more persuasive than any performance dashboard.
The RegTech Take: Along Tech, Build Trust
The RegTech saw what was done in Samarkand resemble what we see in the field: ambition isn’t the issue. Commitment is. We work in the Global South, where words often arrive before infrastructure. Where “smart” systems are sold before electricity is stable. Where e-government platforms get rolled out in countries where most people don’t have IDs, let alone logins.
What the UN Public Service Forum 2025 reminded us is that the private sector must step up differently. We’re not there to win bids. We’re there to stay for the updates, the training, the late-night phone calls when the server is down. What Albania’s journey shows, what Uzbekistan proved, is that public-private collaboration is about sitting at the table after launch day and fixing what breaks.
Digital inclusion has nothing to do with press releases. It’s whether the woman in the village can register a land title without paying a cousin. Whether the migrant worker can renew documents without flying home. Whether a taxpayer can pay dues without standing in line for three hours.
That’s what The RegTech is passionate about: not merely delivering tech but helping countries deliver trust. Not just selling systems but sticking around long enough for them to work. And yes, building for dignity, not demos.
UN Public Service Forum 2025: The Samarkand Signal
What made Samarkand different wasn’t the declarations. It was the clear absence of patience for them. Digital inclusion now means whether a citizen can open a portal and actually get a result, no buffering, no call-back, no clerk saying “the system is down.”
It means whether public servants are trained enough to explain a system without printing out a manual. It means whether the platform stays online when 100,000 people log in. And it means telling citizens the truth when something fails and fixing it faster than it failed.
Uzbekistan showed what’s possible when a government doesn’t flinch. Albania reminded us that continuity beats any headline. Georgia brought the state directly to those who had almost forgotten it existed. And Bosnia, by being brutally honest, earned more respect than those still pretending. Finally, the governments left Samarkand with fewer excuses and more pressure.
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