New necessities: the need for businesses and individuals to shift activities online during the pandemic helped sweep away resistance to digital transformation, says Shahar Bracha.
The pandemic has supercharged progress on Israel’s digital services, says the head of its Government ICT Authority – and cleared the path ahead for radical reforms to create corporate IDs and dismantle legislative obstacles. Matt Ross interviews Shahar Bracha
“We moved four or five years into the future due to this pandemic,” says Shahar Bracha, the acting chief executive of Israel’s Government ICT Authority. Ever since lockdown and social distancing rules closed offices and prevented face-to-face service delivery, digital technologies have kept the public sector in operation – enabling staff to meet the huge volume of need generated by COVID-19. And the pandemic has driven rapid growth in the uptake of online services, accelerating the public migration that lies at the heart of many digital