The recently published 2025 State Digital Development Index (IDDE) offers a clear snapshot of Mexico’s digital progress. While technological infrastructure continues to grow, its social impact remains uneven. States like Jalisco, ranked eighth nationally, show solid advances in connectivity and accessibility, yet still face persistent challenges around adoption, digital skills, and interoperability.

For public servants working on digital transformation, this paradox is very familiar: the main barrier is not the absence of technological infrastructure, but rather the lack of mechanisms to scale what already works. Innovation does not always mean starting from scratch. In many cases, it means adapting, reusing, and sharing proven solutions. This is where open-source software and digital public goods, such as Visor Urbano and LlaveMx, become a strategic public policy choice. Governments should not repeatedly pay for solutions that already exist; instead, they should document them, replicate them, and collectively improve their impact.

The real bottleneck is not technology

Mexico has taken an important step in this direction with the launch of the National Public Technology Repository, which allows states and municipalities to access already-operational government solutions and replicate them without duplicating costs or effort. From this perspective, anything developed with public funding should function as a public good.

Treating public software as a public good

This vision aligns with international initiatives such as the Inter-American Development Bank’s Code for Development program, which curates more than 200 open tools to modernize public sector processes. Beyond cataloguing proven software, the IDB supports governments in opening their solutions, piloting new approaches, and strengthening technical capacities. The goal is not only cost savings, but greater impact, stronger digital sovereignty, and more resilient GovTech ecosystems.

Collaboration is digital infrastructure

Now more than ever, it is clear that digital transformation cannot happen in isolation. Through international collaboration, peer learning, and the adaptation of proven solutions, Mexico can accelerate its digital maturity without reinventing the wheel. In this context, the country’s participation in the 50-in-5 campaign is both timely and strategic. Led by a global coalition that includes the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Centre for Digital Public Infrastructure, Co-Develop, the Digital Public Goods Alliance, and the United Nations Development Programme, with technical support from GovStack and the IDB, the initiative is grounded in a simple principle: no country should face digital transformation alone.

50-in-5 brings together countries at different levels of digital maturity with the shared objective that, within five years, each will design and scale at least one component of digital public infrastructure that is secure, inclusive, and interoperable. This approach emphasizes sharing lessons learned, methodologies, standards, and digital public goods. It is not about producing more software, but about building shared digital infrastructure where each country benefits from the experience of others.

If Mexico takes seriously the recommendations of diagnostics like the IDDE, and fully leverages public repositories and international technical cooperation, it can move from fragmentation toward structured collaboration, one that reduces inequality, avoids duplicated spending, strengthens local capacities, and drives social development.

In that scenario, digital transformation will no longer be the result of improvisation, but of evidence, cooperation, and open code. And for the first time, that agenda is truly within reach.