In a glossy rollout that included international delegates and a flurry of press releases, President Dr Mohamed Muizzu unveiled Maldives 2.0, a digital transformation agenda promising to bring every corner of the archipelago online. Branded as a revolution in governance, Maldives 2.0 is not simply a tech upgrade. It is pitched as a complete overhaul of how the state delivers services, manages information, and interacts with its citizens.
But for a country that just months ago was rocked by an identity fraud scandal involving government officials and ruling party operatives, questions abound: is the Maldives digitally ready? Can it leap into an e-governance future without a legal safety net to protect its citizens?
The idea of unified government services is not new. In 2023, the former administration launched oneGov, a platform designed to consolidate and simplify public service delivery. Ministries like Tourism began issuing permits exclusively through it. Citizens were encouraged to create eFaas accounts, the digital ID authentication system underpinning the entire infrastructure. At the time, it was hailed as a first step into a more agile, transparent government.
Maldives 2.0, however, is both an evolution and an escalation. President Muizzu’s plan is sweeping in scope, with a four-year timeline and direct collaboration with Estonian digital pioneers. Estonia, often held up as the gold standard for digital governance, took 25 years to reach its current status. Muizzu wants to compress that into four.
The initiative outlines six principles: transparency by design, inclusion by default, unified governance, citizen-centred design, sovereignty and security, and delivery discipline. It’s a manifesto of ambition. But in execution, those ideals face the same vulnerabilities that plagued the previous government’s efforts, and more.
In January, headlines across the country were dominated not by plans for digital reform but by revelations of political fraud carried out through those very systems. Citizens discovered they had been unknowingly enrolled in the ruling People’s National Congress (PNC). Among them were bedridden elderly people, political opponents, and even the wives of rival politicians. Their information had been used to fabricate membership forms, some allegedly signed by Home Ministry officials. The photos came from expired national ID cards, photos only accessible through the state’s own Department of National Registration.
The scandal was more than just a political embarrassment. It struck at the heart of the trust required for digital governance to succeed. Without laws that clearly define and punish data misuse, without independent watchdogs to monitor state action, and without meaningful consent from users, digitisation risks becoming a new tool of coercion rather than a path to empowerment.
The Electoral Commission eventually responded by suspending bulk party registration and requiring all new memberships to be submitted through eFaas. But this reform came too late. By then, the PNC’s official membership had ballooned from 28,000 to 68,000 in the span of a few weeks, eclipsing the main opposition and entitling the party to a larger share of state funds.
Estonia’s model, often cited by the current administration, did not succeed solely because of technology. It succeeded because of the legal and institutional framework that surrounded it. Estonia has a Data Protection Inspectorate, a law on Electronic Identification and Trust Services, and critically, a national consensus on the importance of digital rights. Every citizen has the right to see who accessed their data and when. Violations are investigated, and state access is limited by law.
The Maldives, by contrast, has no standalone data protection law. The DNR is not an independent body. The eFaas system is tied to political infrastructure, and digital literacy remains low across the country. Most importantly, the state has not yet demonstrated it can act as a neutral steward of citizen information.
Rolling out centralised platforms without democratic safeguards is risky. Digital authoritarianism doesn’t require surveillance drones. It can begin with something as mundane as a party membership form, quietly filled out in a government office.
The government has responded to criticism by promising performance. Minister of Homeland Security and Technology Ali Ihusaan, one of the key figures in the Maldives 2.0 initiative, said during the summit that digital service delivery would no longer be optional. “Everyone will have to participate,” he declared. Yet the same minister was photographed where party officials were filling out membership forms at the DNR, a contradiction that is hard to ignore.
President Muizzu’s vision of a paperless, efficient, and connected Maldives is not inherently flawed. In fact, it may be necessary. With its dispersed geography, the Maldives stands to benefit more than most nations from digital services. Hospitals in remote islands could access national databases in real time. Business licenses could be processed within hours. Education could reach beyond brick classrooms.
But if the tools of digital governance are developed before the rules, and before trust is earned, Maldives 2.0 may succeed in modernising bureaucracy only to undermine democratic accountability. To truly serve every citizen, the system must not only be fast, but fair. Not just efficient, but ethical. Not only sovereign in its data hosting, but just in its data use.
Maldives finds itself at a crossroads: it can either use digitalisation to deepen civic engagement and transparency or to further entrench political control. OneGov was the start. Maldives 2.0 is the next chapter. Whether it becomes a blueprint for digital justice or a cautionary tale may depend not on how quickly the technology is deployed, but on whether the country pauses long enough to protect the people who will live inside it.
