Solving the Sudoku: 5 Takeaways from Digital Transformation in Uruguay

Bordered by Brazil to the north and Argentina to the west, Uruguay is a nation of 3.2 million people in South America that has spent nearly two decades engaged in a country-wide educational digital transformation. Through remarkable coordination across systems, resources, policies, and people, Uruguay began providing a digital device to every student and ensuring internet connectivity in school buildings in 2007.

Since then, the country has evolved into a robust education ecosystem that provides digital tools, platforms, and professional learning for students and teachers nationwide. While this transformation involved countless individuals, none of this would have been possible without Ceibal.

In May 2025, more than 20 leaders from the Global Cities Education Network and the League of Innovative Schools convened in Montevideo, Uruguay, for an international study tour to explore this digital transformation as part of Digital Promise’s Future of Tech-Enabled Learning Implementation Cohort. While there, they heard directly from Ceibal leaders about their unique approach and experienced the impact of its work first-hand.

The Foundation: Ceibal’s Systems Approach

Ceibal is Uruguay’s publicly funded digital technology center for education innovation, serving more than 675,000 students and 45,000 teachers. Since 2007, they’ve coordinated across government departments and with private sector partners—from telecommunications and energy companies to postal services—to deploy more than 2.9 million devices while ensuring connectivity in every classroom—urban and rural alike.

But their real innovation came from recognizing that digital transformation involves three interconnected challenges, not just one. Beyond digital access (devices and connectivity), they tackled digital use (teacher professional development) and digital design (ensuring students actively create with technology rather than just consume).

This realization led to Ceibal’s evolution from device provider to comprehensive ecosystem builder, focusing on teacher training, research-based pedagogies, and innovative programs like computational thinking pathways and blended learning initiatives.

Ceibal’s Greatest Innovation: “Solving the Sudoku”

Despite all their achievements, Ceibal considers their greatest innovation to be “solving the sudoku”—taking a systems-level approach to digital transformation where solving one problem reveals new challenges and possibilities.

This approach required establishing coherent systems, resources, and policies grounded in human relationships and focused on improving student outcomes. It took substantial time and trial-and-error, but generated invaluable insights. Here are five key takeaways from Uruguay’s digital transformation journey:

1. Solving the sudoku requires coherent and mutually reinforcing systems. Ceibal intentionally builds relationships and creates coherence across Uruguay’s national education system. As the entity responsible for educational innovation—but not curriculum creation or policy implementation—they must collaborate closely with organizational counterparts to create lasting systemic change. Composed largely of former educators, academics, and education leaders, Ceibal brings a 360-degree perspective to teacher and student needs, serving as a uniquely positioned force for research-based innovation.
2. Coherent systems require a shared vision rooted in digital access. Ceibal defined digital access clearly from the beginning: provide a device for every child and connectivity for every school and classroom. Crucially, they framed this as a pedagogical decision—the primary driver was positively impacting student learning. When the vision is clear and system components unite around common values, they can evolve together more effectively.
3. Coherent systems require shifting mindsets. Teacher training and innovative programs like Ceibal en Inglés are entirely optional for educators, but participation numbers are high. Ceibal’s educational innovation expertise and clear mission of leveraging technology to support teaching and learning drives participation. When educators see the impact of powerful technology-enhanced learning, they buy in organically, which is essential for sustainable cultural and mindset shifts around learning with technology.
4. Strategic agility catalyzes coherent systems. Strategic agility—an organization’s ability to quickly adapt to internal or external change—serves as both a catalyst for coherence and a stabilizer amid unforeseen challenges. Ceibal’s deep understanding of their national educational ecosystem from ministry to classroom enabled immediate pivots that helped Uruguay achieve the lowest negative learning impact in Latin America during the COVID-19 pandemic.
5. Solving the sudoku takes time, persistence, and creativity. Ceibal has been working toward digital transformation for more than 18 years, and their work continues. When reflecting on the journey, Ceibal team members noted the tension between politicians’ desired speed and the time required to build intentional systems. Like students learning new mathematical concepts, systemic transformation requires individuals to adopt self-regulation and persistence to fail, iterate, and ultimately succeed.

Looking Forward: Lessons for Educational Leaders

Systems-level digital transformation isn’t a linear journey or final destination—it’s a decades-long process requiring daily commitment and bold vision. While each system’s approach will differ, examining how communities worldwide innovate to close digital divides helps us reimagine 21st-century teaching and learning in our own contexts.

Want to learn more?

• Visit Ceibal’s website.
• Explore the UNESCO case study on Plan Ceibal’s impact.
• Dive deeper into Digital Promise’s work in digital transformation.
• Interested in learning from international systems? Join our next study tour!