The 2025 Asia Public Governance Forum on Public Administrative Services was held on 19 November 2025 at the Amari Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand. Organized by the OECD Korea Policy Centre in partnership with the OECD and OPDC, Thailand, the forum gathered senior public service officials and experts from eight Southeast Asian countries — Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Viet Nam, and Lao PDR (with Lao PDR unable to attend due to domestic circumstances) — together with the OECD Secretariat and specialists from Korea and Spain.

The forum provided the world’s first preview of the forthcoming flagship report Government at a Glance Southeast Asia 2025, which will be officially launched on 11 December 2025 in Jakarta. Participants engaged in in-depth discussions on the region’s notable progress in making public services more accessible, user-friendly, and trusted by citizens. At the same time, they openly addressed persistent challenges, including low utilisation of digital identity systems and the limited presence of government-wide coordination mechanisms.

Korea’s integrated government portal, one-stop life-event services, and systematic real-time citizen feedback mechanisms were repeatedly highlighted as practical and achievable benchmarks for the region. Thailand shared its ambitious rollout of the ThaiD digital ID, Malaysia presented the success of the MyGOV unified portal and performance dashboards, and Spain illustrated the impact of a dedicated coordination unit directly under the Presidency.

Through intensive group sessions based on the OECD Recommendation on Human-Centred Public Administrative Services, participants reached a strong common understanding that the most urgent priorities for the coming years are establishing dedicated cross-government coordination bodies, accelerating digital identity adoption, breaking down data-sharing barriers, and embedding continuous citizen feedback into policy and service improvement.

All countries expressed firm commitment to translate the insights from the forum and the forthcoming 2025 report into concrete national action plans over the next two years.

This forum represented a significant milestone in advancing more inclusive, responsive, and truly human-centred public services across Southeast Asia.