Addressing the GovTech Skill Gap
It’s a woman who doesn’t need her husband to collect her welfare. A pensioner who gets his money on time, without chasing officials. A migrant worker who can send money home in seconds — and know it will reach.
This is what digital public infrastructure looks like. What began with Aadhaar in 2010 is now the world’s largest digital identity system — over 1.3 billion people enrolled, 90 million authentications every day. In December 2024 alone, Indians made over 16 billion UPI payments worth Rs 23 trillion.
And this shift isn’t limited to India. Estonia has moved nearly all public services online. Ukraine’s official digital platform Diia, lets citizens access government services and legal documents—like passports, licenses, and social benefits—directly from their phone.
That’s the power of DPI.
- Author's Name Darshana Ramdev
- Posted On 10th Mar 2025 at 15:12 PM
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The success stories we’ve seen around tech that ‘solves for billions’ only prove that digital systems can effectively scale to serve entire populations. That’s why governments worldwide are betting big on digital transformation – experts predict the GovTech market will grow to $1.4 trillion by 2030. But where are the engineers skilled in building this technology?
The demand for talent
The trouble is, we’re building sophisticated systems faster than we’re developing talent to sustain them. It’s a gap that eGov Foundation has seen firsthand. Over the past two decades, we’ve worked with governments across India to support digital transformation, helping build the infrastructure behind essential services. DIGIT, our open-source platform, provides the foundational digital components that power large-scale public systems. But technology alone isn’t enough—without a skilled workforce, even the best-designed platforms won’t be sustainable.
To address this, eGov is working with Scaler School of Technology to build a dedicated GovTech program that prepares engineers for the challenges of public-sector technology. Leaning into the foundation’s experience with building GovTech, the program was rooted in real-world challenges, attuned to the needs of the sector and gives students the chance to actually apply their learnings on our platform, DIGIT.
What’s causing this talent gap?
Digital transformation of public service delivery is now a foundational pillar for the future, and – governments are rolling out cutting-edge technology like AI-powered systems and blockchain solutions, but who’s going to run them? India produces about a million engineers annually, and China churns out even more at 1.5 million. However, barely a handful of these graduates find their way to GovTech. Most head straight for the highly-paid corporate jobs, or to try their luck in their startup ecosystem. GovTech simply isn’t on their radar. This creates a serious problem: we have the technology, but we’re running short on talent to make it work.
The trend is understandable, and young engineers at the start of their careers can hardly be blamed for choosing private companies. That’s what they learned at university, where the focus was on consumer products, not public sector platforms that support millions. As a result, digital public infrastructure relies on a fragmented, informal workforce rather than a structured talent pipeline.
Why is GovTech different?
Why is this structured talent pipeline so needed? Creating technology for public services presents unique challenges that aren’t addressed by traditional software engineering education. When building government systems, engineers face requirements that don’t exist in the private sector.
Their platforms must work for everyone from day one – from tech-savvy urban youth to elderly citizens in remote villages. There’s no room for beta testing when essential services are at stake. These systems must integrate with decades-old government databases while maintaining cutting-edge security. They need to handle massive scale while remaining accessible across varying devices and internet speeds.
And most importantly, the systems must be built to last. Private sector applications can be replaced or updated every few years, but government infrastructure needs to be maintainable and upgradeable for decades.
GovTech professionals must understand how policy and governance influence technical design, how to ensure security and accessibility at scale, and how to create platforms that integrate with decades-old government systems. These skills are not taught in traditional engineering programs.
There’s no room for failure. A breakdown in public infrastructure doesn’t mean customer churn—it means millions of people lose access to essential services. A commercial software failure can be patched overnight, but a failure in a national identification system or a public payments network can cause disruptions that take years to fix.
Closing the talent gap
If this gap isn’t addressed, governments will struggle to sustain and expand critical digital infrastructure, slowing the next phase of India’s digital transformation. The Scaler + eGov partnership is working to change that by embedding GovTech into structured technical education, ensuring that the next generation of engineers is equipped to build the future of digital governance.
The Scaler + eGov initiative is one of the first large-scale efforts to close this gap. Instead of treating public-sector technology as an afterthought, the program trains students specifically for the demands of digital governance.
Students in the program don’t work on hypothetical exercises. They train directly on DIGIT, eGov’s open-source platform for digital public infrastructure. This hands-on approach exposes them to real-world challenges in public service delivery—from digital identity management to urban infrastructure planning—ensuring they graduate with experience that directly translates to GovTech roles.
The initiative also teaches more than technical skills. A GovTech engineer must understand how governance structures shape technology decisions, how to ensure accessibility across diverse populations, and how to design systems that can handle large-scale deployment without failure.
By 2025, the partnership will establish a GovTech Innovation Lab—a dedicated space for research, experimentation, and collaboration between students, policymakers, and industry leaders. This model ensures that graduates don’t just enter the workforce—they enter as professionals ready to lead in GovTech.
What’s next?
The Scaler + eGov partnership is an important step, but it cannot be the only one. If GovTech is to scale, India must invest in structured training programs that create direct career pathways into digital governance.
Without this, India’s digital future will be built on temporary solutions and short-term expertise rather than a sustainable workforce. The challenge is clear, and so is the solution. GovTech talent cannot be left to develop by chance—it must be built with intent, just like the systems it will support.
