Hype or Hope: Can Missions and GovStack Boost Inclusive Digital Transformation?

Noémie Bürkl leads the Digitalisation division at the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) in Berlin since February 2023. Previously she served as the deputy head of division for Multilateral Policy, co-headed the German-Bilateral Cooperation at the German Embassy in Cairo, and worked as a senior policy officer at the Federal Foreign Office as well as a technical program officer at the International Organization for Migration. She studied International and European Relations in France and Canada and completed a master’s degree in international economics and politics in Prague.

Benjamin Kumpf is the Head of the OECD Innovation for Development Facility. Prior to joining the OECD, he worked as Head of Innovation at the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and led the Innovation Facility of the United Nations Development Programme. In these capacities, Benjamin managed flexible funds to support experimentation, exploration and the scaling-up of development innovations, co-led programmes on adaptive management and advised country offices and partners on strategic innovation. Past posts include work with UN Volunteers, with the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ), the International Agricultural Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics and others in India, Jordan, Nepal and Rwanda.
He is a member of several advisory bodies to advance innovation in the development and humanitarian sectors, and teaches as Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, New York and SciencePo, Paris.

Yolanda Martínez has more than 17 years of leading digital transformation initiatives and currently collaborates with different international organizations helping governments implement their Digital Agendas. In the international arena, Yolanda led the Office of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in Chile, has collaborated with various United Nations agencies such as UNDP, UNDESA, participated as OECD peer reviewer for the Digital Government Strategies of various Latin American countries, and as Honorary Advisory Board Member for the Digital Strategy of El Salvador, and the Arab Digital Strategy. In the Public Sector, Yolanda led the National Digital Strategy of Mexico, the Digital Government Unit at the Federal level, and the Zapopan Digital City Program at the local level. She has led several digital transformation initiatives in the private sector as Strategy and Operations Manager at Deloitte Consulting. Yolanda has been recognized by @political as one of the 20 most influential people globally in Digital Government. Yolanda has a degree in Information Systems from the University of Guadalajara (UdeG), a Master’s degree in Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), and a Ph.D. in Information and Knowledge Society at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). She collaborates with the University of Guadalajara as Program Lead for the Center on Knowledge and Information Society.

As a director at the Ministry of Digital Transformation in Ukraine, Maksym coordinates the Chief Digital Transformation Officers in the line ministries. The Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation is pursuing an ambitious digital strategy: All government services are to be digitized by 2024. The core product is the platform and app DIIA. In 2021, Ukraine was the first country that made a digital passport equivalent to a paper passport. This digital ID is the basis for an extensive catalog of digital citizen services. Due to the war the Ministry of Digital Transformation plays a vital role in collecting and providing data on urgent needs across sectors.

Stella is passionate about digital innovations and entrepreneurial ecosystem building and has experience in advising start-ups and ecosystem-builders for sustainable development within the context of development cooperation (amongst others in the context of a sustainable urban development programme implemented by the German International Development Agency (GIZ) in Ecuador, Latin America). Actually she is working as an innovation advisor for GIZ and before that held a position as policy advisor for BMZ with the topic of scaling the most innovative technical solutions for development; She has worked in an impact oriented start-up herself and has extended experience in social business modelling. She has more than 8 years of professional experience in both the private sector (start-up) and development cooperation (GIZ & KfW in Nicaragua, Ecuador and Germany). She holds a B.A. in Philosophy & Economics from University of Bayreuth and an M.Sc. in Development Studies from London School of Economics and Political Science.