Digital Academy of Public Administration- Latvia
The Public Administration Digital Academy strengthens Latvia’s state and municipal employees’ digital skills, offering training, e‑learning, and practical projects to build a more capable, innovative public sector ready to improve services and support digital transformation.
About the initiative
The Publiskās pārvaldes digitālā akadēmija (Public Administration Digital Academy) is a flagship initiative transforming Latvia’s public sector into a digitally skilled, resilient, and future-ready administration. Developed under the European Union’s Recovery and Resilience Facility, the Academy addresses a critical challenge: for years, many state and municipal institutions lacked the digital capacity to implement reforms, adopt new technologies, and meet the evolving needs of society.
Instead of hiring new specialists, the Academy focuses on empowering the existing public workforce. Its mission is to equip public servants with the skills, knowledge, and mindset needed to lead digital transformation. Over the course of the programme, at least 62,900 employees will enhance their digital competencies, ranging from data literacy and cybersecurity to artificial intelligence, agile project management, and user-centred service design.
To support long-term impact, the Academy introduces a Digital Competency Framework, personalized learning paths for different roles, and a unified national platform integrating all courses, workshops, and e-learning opportunities. This approach fosters a sustainable learning culture across institutions.
For public servants, the Academy is more than a learning programme: it is a pathway for growth, collaboration, and impact. By the end of the initiative, Latvia will have a stronger, more digitally capable public sector, ready to harness technology to improve services and drive the country’s digital transformation forward.
Why is it a good practice?
The Digital Academy initiative represents a good practice in public sector transformation, by combining hands-on learning through real projects, hackathons, and peer collaboration with strategic alignment to EU priorities like Reskilling and Upskilling, it ensures that training leads to real-world impact.
Rooted in the European DigComp framework and shaped by lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Academy equips Latvia’s public servants with the digital skills needed to design and deliver modern services.
With over 53,000 already trained and a goal of reaching 62,900 by 2026, the initiative is not only ambitious but measurable, thanks to its competency framework, personalized learning paths, and impact assessment tools.
It also fosters a cultural shift toward continuous learning and data-driven decision-making. In the media sector, where AI literacy is essential to combat disinformation, the Academy’s accessible and relevant training has proven invaluable, making it a model worth celebrating and replicating across Europe.
