Donald Gainsborough is a political savant and a leading voice in the architecture of modern governance. As the head of Government Curated, he has spent his career at the intersection of policy and technology, advising states on how to transition from sluggish, paper-based bureaucracies to agile digital ecosystems. His expertise lies not just in the software itself, but in the administrative engineering required to make that software meaningful for the average citizen. By examining the current landscape of administrative evolution, he provides a critical lens on why reaching high percentages of digitized services is only the beginning of a much deeper journey toward structural transformation.
The discussion explores the nuance between “digitizing bureaucracy” and true digital transformation, the strategic role of physical service centers in an increasingly online world, and the untapped potential of biometric authentication in high-stakes transactions. We also delve into the “Once-Only Principle” for data management and how artificial intelligence can finally liberate civil servants from the drudgery of routine auditing, allowing them to focus on complex legal and regulatory analysis.
Jordan has officially reached an 85.8% e-government service rate, a number that suggests a nearly complete digital migration. From your perspective, does this figure represent a finished transformation, or are we looking at a sophisticated digital veneer over old-fashioned processes?
That 85.8% figure is certainly impressive on a spreadsheet, but we have to look at what lies beneath the surface of those clicks. In many cases, what we are seeing is not a transformation of the process, but merely a change in the medium. If a citizen is still required to manually fill out a digital form, print it, and then re-upload a scan of that same document, we haven’t eliminated bureaucracy; we’ve just given it a digital skin. True structural transformation is measured by the system’s ability to function without a human hand holding every single digital “paper” as it moves through the chain of approvals. When we settle for digitizing traditional bureaucracy, we keep the same sequential sign-offs and the same time-wasting operational costs, essentially just moving the bottleneck from a physical desk to an electronic screen.
The government is currently expanding its physical footprint by establishing 15 Comprehensive Government Service Centers across various governorates. How do you reconcile this push for physical infrastructure with the parallel goal of total digital acceleration?
It is a fascinating paradox that we are seeing today in 2026. On one hand, these 15 centers are vital for digital inclusion, acting as a bridge for citizens who might struggle with smart applications or those who lack reliable high-speed access. They bring services under one roof, which is a massive improvement over traveling between five different scattered departments. However, there is a hidden danger here: the success of these physical hubs can actually dampen the momentum needed for backend automation. When you invest heavily in the logistics, physical security, and staffing of a building, you are diverting budget and focus away from the “invisible” work of software re-engineering. We run the risk of these centers becoming permanent monuments to manual data re-entry, where an officer simply types into a computer what the citizen could have—and should have—submitted through a fully automated system from home.
If we look at the real estate sector, property transfers still require physical presence and “wet-ink” signatures despite the availability of online applications. How could a truly digital cycle replace this traditional field visit?
The current process at the Department of Lands is a perfect example of the “digital gap.” Right now, you get a reference number online, but then the momentum hits a brick wall; you have to schedule an appointment, go to a directorate, and sign a contract in person. In a fully realized digital environment, this entire cycle would start and end within a secure application like Sanad. We would use biometric authentication and facial recognition to confirm identity with 100% certainty, pulling data instantly from national databases to verify zoning plans and tax clearances. Instead of manual escrow, financial obligations would be settled through secure electronic accounts, and the final “signature” would be a digital encryption. A simple QR code scan would then update the registry and issue a title deed instantly, replacing the physical theater of the land office with a process that takes minutes instead of days.
You often advocate for the “Once-Only Principle” in administrative governance. How would enforcing this principle fundamentally change the way citizens interact with the state?
The “Once-Only Principle” is the ultimate enemy of the status quo. It dictates that a government agency is strictly prohibited from asking a citizen for any document or piece of information that another government agency already possesses. Right now, citizens often act as manual “data conduits,” carrying a tax clearance from one building to upload it as an attachment for a license in another building. It’s redundant and, frankly, exhausting for the user. If we enforce this principle, the system becomes a living network where data flows automatically between institutions. Processing happens instantaneously behind the scenes, and the citizen only gets involved when there is a unique exception or a legal complexity that requires their specific attention, rather than just being a delivery person for their own data.
As we look at the role of civil servants, there is a fear that automation will make their roles obsolete. How does the integration of AI and Big Data analytics actually redefine the career of a public employee?
Automation doesn’t delete the human element; it elevates it. When we use machine learning for risk assessment scoring, the system can automatically approve 90% of low-risk transactions—things like simple license renewals or site plan issuances that currently clog up a worker’s queue. This allows the algorithm to flag only the truly complex, high-risk, or legally irregular cases for a human to review. We are shifting the role of the civil servant from a routine auditor who checks boxes to a specialized legal analyst who handles the nuanced “edge cases.” It’s about moving away from the “clerk” mentality and toward a professionalized workforce that handles the intellectual heavy lifting that a machine simply cannot do.
What is your forecast for the evolution of digital governance over the next few years?
By the end of this decade, the measure of a successful government will no longer be the number of services available online, but the number of services that require zero human intervention. We will see a shift where “invisible government” becomes the standard—where your business license renews itself because the system verified your tax status and safety compliance in real-time without you ever opening an app. The physical centers we see today will likely transition into high-tech “consultancy hubs” for complex legal disputes rather than places to drop off paperwork. If we continue to prioritize automated inter-agency data exchange and biometric security, we will finally move past the era of “digitized bureaucracy” and into an era of genuine, frictionless governance.
