Beyond Transformation: Designing the Next Digital Frontier
By Artur Assor, Business Area Director, Nortal MEA
The message echoing through GITEX 2025 is transformation has become part of daily life. Governments across the Gulf are no longer asking how to digitalise, but how to do itbetter in a way that creates more value for citizens.
Transformation is a continuous process, but its meaning has evolved. What matters now is how well systems connect, how intuitively they serve people, and how confidently citizens trust them. The success of a digital nation is measured not in the number of platforms it builds, but in how effortlessly those platforms fit into everyday life and generate value.
This is the future that Estonia is charting – and what the ‘Digital Nation Blueprint’ showcases. Our digital journey began with a simple idea: technology should remove friction, not create it. Over time, that principle created an entire ecosystem where secure data exchange, transparency, and trust form the backbone of society.
As the UAE builds one of the world’s most advanced digital infrastructures, it continues to reimagine how economies and communities function. What’s striking at GITEX this year is how far the conversation has matured: AI, predictive governance, and data sovereignty are at the forefront of the discussions.
For those of us designing digital systems, this moment is an invitation to think more deeply about what progress looks like. Technology alone cannot create impact; design, collaboration, and human understanding must lead the way. When governments and innovators work together, digital services stop being administrative tools and start becoming instruments of national growth.
GITEX 2025 is an important space for this dialogue to happen and the future to take shape. This is where ideas and expertise converge to shape the frictionless digital systems that will define tomorrow’s societies.
