This chapter introduces the digital transformation agendas of the BRICS grouping, which are explored in this volume. We stress that digital transformation is a unique opportunity to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), triggering a structural change in existing economies, societies, and governance models, in synergy with technological projects. Therefore, we argue that digital transformation offers Global South countries in general and BRICS countries—namely, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—in particular a unique opportunity of leapfrogging years of underinvestment in development to become global leaders in technology production, adoption and governance. In this context, this chapter provides an initial understanding of how the BRICS countries are planning and implementing their digital transformation processes, with particular regard to how they are evolving into “smart countries”, reorganizing their digital public services and providing digital public goods. In offering this overview, we adopt a critical approach towards what constitutes the intelligence of a supposedly “smart country.” Indeed, digital transformation processes are not exempt from criticism and, while mapping the digital transformation policies of the BRICS countries, this introductory chapter emphasizes that the grouping offers an ample range of success stories but also of telling tales revealing the challenges that emerging economies may face when shaping and implementing their digital transformation processes.