Definitions: government-as-a-platform (a proposal)

This is the second of several posts about definitions. The previous one looked at the range of ways people have been talking about government-as-a-platform to date. This blog post is an attempt to come up with a single working definition of government as a platform.

Firstly though, why bother?

A good definition, like a good strategy, should help answer questions and make better decisions. Things like: “Does this project we are starting really fit as part of government as a platform?”, “Is that smart-city-blockchain-widget Consultancy X is trying to sell really going to help?” or “how should we measure the impact of this work?”.

So the aim here is to have a definition that can help digital service units who are beginning to think about platforms to make better decisions. To that ends, below is my current best attempt at a definition of government-as-a-platform.

Reorganising the work of government around shared APIs, open-standards and canonical datasets, so that civil servants, businesses and others can deliver radically better services to the public, more safely, efficiently and accountably.

It is trying to achieve a few things:

Firstly, that the most critical thing about government as a platform is the opportunity to deliver better public services. Ultimately, that is what government should be about.

Secondly, that you can only realise that opportunity by reorganising the work and institutions of government.

Finally, if you don’t do that in a way that is:

ethical and secure
fails to build in accountability and recourse for users
does not make it quicker, cheaper and simpler to deliver services

Then there is probably something missing from your plans.

Thoughts?