Next Perspectives – Public Services – Top 10 trends 2025

In Brief

The public services sector in Europe is a fundamental pillar of modern societies, encompassing essential services such as health, labor, social security, internal security, defence, and justice. A key challenge lies in adapting to demographic shifts, evolving citizen expectations, and growing security concerns amid increasing crises and shocks. Technological innovation presents both opportunities and challenges, as public services must integrate digital solutions to enhance efficiency and responsiveness. Digitalization simplifies administrative processes, optimizes resource management, and reduces costs. However, it also raises concerns regarding cybersecurity, user experience, and data protection.

At the same time the current geopolitical situation has intensified debates on Europe's strategic sovereignty. Global instability, the war in Ukraine, and economic dependencies on external actors highlight the urgency of strengthening resilience and autonomy, particularly in defence, energy, and digital infrastructure. Public services play a crucial role in this effort, ensuring operational continuity during crises and minimizing vulnerabilities. European governments are prioritizing supply chain security, independent technological capabilities, and stronger cooperation among member states to safeguard public services from geopolitical risks.

With our Next Perspectives 2025, we highlight the 10 most important future trends and provide recommendations for European public services. We are convinced that a successfully digitally transformed European society is essential for preserving democratic values. Since all European societies face similar challenges, fostering cross-border solutions and formulating collective responses is a priority.
Our trends address the dual challenge currently facing the public sector: the urgent modernization of digital public infrastructure as a foundation for the future legitimacy of democratic governance, while consistently integrating sovereignty requirements. Strengthening Europe’s digital autonomy, securing critical infrastructures, and reducing external dependencies are central to this transformation. Aligning digital progress with sovereignty considerations will enhance resilience and sustain trust in democratic institutions.

Download Next Perspectives – Public Services – Top 10 Trends 2025 and uncover how digital transformation, sovereignty, and resilience will shape the future of European public services.

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The European public sector is transforming through digital identity ecosystems, with governments playing a central role in creating secure, interoperable systems. The development is being driven by the EU regulation eIDAS 2.0 with the European Digital Identity Wallet. If cross-border interoperability is achieved, administrative costs can be saved on a large scale. 

As 25% of public sector employees are over 55 in Europe, governments must embrace a comprehensive approach to workforce transformation that balances traditional recruitment with reskilling, creating an agile, capable, and digitally empowered workforce. 

Imagine a world where health records travel securely and seamlessly, while anonymised data accelerates research and innovation. This is the vision of the European Health Data Space (EHDS), part of the EU’s plan to revolutionise health data exchange for care and research. EHDS presents vast opportunities alongside challenges, shaping the future of healthcare across the EU and its Member States. 

Europe faces complex challenges in countless fields. This requires resilient institutions and advanced technologies. Key priorities include cybersecurity, cross-border cooperation, and climate adaptation, leveraging tools like cloud systems, resilience dashboards, and disaster monitoring for an evidence-based threat management. 

Europe's GovTech sector is growing rapidly but remains underutilised. Unlocking its potential through digital sovereignty, AI-driven solutions, funding, and streamlined procurement could modernise governance, enhance innovation, and bolster global competitiveness. 

Digital leadership has become crucial in the public sector as leaders face the dual challenge of managing complex bureaucracies while embracing rapid technological change to offer better services to citizens. The requirements for future management in the public sector are therefore multi-dimensional and complex. 

Citizens' trust in public digital services is an important measure of their experience of digital government. To fulfil citizens' high expectations, European governments need to focus on both technical and social areas. 

Digitalisation offers significant potential for reducing CO₂ emissions in Europe, particularly in the public sector. With initiatives like the European Green Digital Coalition, there is growing momentum to align sustainability and digital transformation. However, challenges such as limited expertise and insufficient impact measurement must be addressed to fully realise these opportunities. 

The European public sector faces an escalating cybersecurity threat, with rising digitalisation and sophisticated attacks. To strengthen resilience, governments must adapt through advanced technologies, regulatory measures, and a focus on workforce development. 

Automated decision-making (ADM) enhances public administration by enabling faster, data-driven decisions and predictions, improving efficiency. However, it raises transparency, accountability, and fundamental rights challenges. 

Conclusion

At Sopra Steria Next, artificial intelligence is the cornerstone of many of the innovations and transformations we aim to drive in the coming years. It is already deeply embedded in our solutions and consulting expertise, enabling us to deliver tailored, cutting-edge responses to the most pressing challenges faced by public services. We are committed to harnessing the power of AI to empower public institutions, enhance citizen experiences, and ensure sustainable growth across Europe.
At Sopra Steria Next, we firmly believe that the future of European public services lies in embracing these trends collectively. By fostering collaboration across borders and leveraging innovation, Europe has the unique opportunity to redefine public service excellence, ensure democratic values endure, and create a sustainable, inclusive society for generations to come.

Up to 400 million euros a year can be saved by reducing the administrative burden on citizens and end users.
EC: Study to support the impact assessment for the revision of the eIDAS regulation

"With 75% of citizens expecting public services to rival private sector standards, governments face challenges in delivering reliable, user-friendly platforms for tasks like health records access."
Boston Consulting Group, “The Trust Imperative 4: GenAI, the Trust Multiplier” (2024)

We are convinced that a successfully digitally transformed European society is crucial for the continued existence of our democratic values.

AI, especially generative AI, enables public sector employees to automate routine tasks, freeing time for higher-value activities.

With 25% of public sector employees nearing retirement, the need to bridge digital skills gaps is more urgent than ever.

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