Aaron Maniam

Aaron Maniam is Fellow of Practice and Director, Digital Transformation Education at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government. He works on how large, complex organisations like governments can (i) better use, regulate and enable digital technology in a range of domains, and (ii) plan more effectively for the long-term. 

Previously a Singaporean civil servant, he held several policy leadership roles, including Deputy Secretary at the then-Ministry of Communications and Information, founding Head of the Centre for Strategic Futures, which examines long-range trends, and starting the the Civil Service College Applied Simulation Training (CAST) Laboratory, which creates serious games to help policymakers grapple with wicked problems. He co-chaired the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the Future of Technology Policy (2022-2024), and now co-chairs the GFC on GovTech and Digital Public Infrastructure. He is a Senior Fellow of the Centre for Future Generations, a Brussels-based think-and-do tank, and a member of the OECD’s Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Futures. His PhD, also from Oxford’s Blavatnik School, compared the digitalisation of tax and social policy agencies in Estonia, Zealand and Singapore. 

He is also a Fellow of the Singapore government’s Centre for Strategic Futures, Civil Service College, Centre for Liveable Cities, and Culture Academy. He chairs the South African government’s International Advisory Group on digital transformation, and is a member of the UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology advisory panel on redesigning the digital centre of government.