Richard Pope Profile Photo

Richard Pope

Articles

    ∞

    Institutions for the long-term

    The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the Omidyar Network for supporting their research. The views herein, however, do not necessarily reflect those of the funder.

    ∞

    A transparency stack for digital public goods

    The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the Omidyar Network for supporting their research. The views herein, however, do not necessarily reflect those of the funder.

    ∞

    From products to digital public goods

    If digital public goods are going to have the effects hoped for, there will need to be clear routes for their creation, maintenance and adoption. Otherwise, there is a risk of ‘performative openness’, where source code is published in the hope that it is reused. Or because it is seen as the ‘right thing to do’.

    So, what might the routes be for creating digital public goods that meet genuine user needs?

    Five models for creating digital public goods?

    It is obviously early days in the story of digital public goods, but I think we can guess at some patterns from existing projects and software development more generally.

    Placing a bet (The MOSIP model)

    There is a strong enough indication of a common need to create a dedicated new team. The team is independently funded to create a bit of reusable infrastructure from scratch. The hypothesis is tested through implementation.

    Organic adoption (The Notify model)

    A government or agency creates a digital product for its own purpose and releases the source code under an open licence. Other governments fork that code and implement their own version, and they may or may not share code back into a common repository.

    Export (The X-Road model)

    A government or agency creates a digital product and spins out into a new or pre-existing organisation responsible for managing the codebase. This could be as a logical next step of the organic adoption model, or potentially aiming to create global public value or soft power.

    Professionalisation/takeover (DHIS2 model)

    A government or agency has created something that has the potential to be reused. A team is funded to support ongoing development and reuse (as opposed to for a single use case). This could be a logical next step of the organic model. There may also be situations where a philanthropic organisation unconnected with the initial project identifies potential value and essentially undertakes a ‘friendly acquisition’ of the project.

    Corporate ‘donation’ (Exposure notifications model)

    A technology company creates a piece of shared infrastructure or standard. The motivations for doing this may vary. As technology companies move more into the civic space, there may be more instances of this. The Apple/Google exposure notification system is probably the closest example to this (although much of it is not open-source).

    It may well turn out that there are additional models to these five, but, regardless of the number, it feels like a good hypothesis to have that a healthy digital public goods ecosystem will require a mix of different approaches: an ecosystem that allows for routes for both emergent and top-down routes to usage.

    Measuring usability as a route to adoption?

    What about adoption? We know from the adoption of government as a platform components, and from general open-source development, that it is not enough to write code. The needs of the developers, administrators and designers need to be understood and met. Things like good documentation, self service and example code are important.

    Usability is hard to measure in the abstract, after all, the existence of documentation does not mean that it can be followed. One option that could be explored by funders is commissioning a team to independently review the usability of different digital public goods from the point of view of teams needing to implement them. How easy is it to set up? Does it have updated documentation? Is it interoperable with other systems? How responsive is the support community?

    Separately, funders of digital public goods should be routinely interviewing the implementation teams to understand what works and what can be improved. This should be in addition to any attempts to measure the impact of the technology on a particular policy outcome.

    ∞

    Open-source and platform behaviours in digital public goods

    The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the Omidyar Network for supporting their research. The views herein, however, do not necessarily reflect those of the funder.

    ∞

    Digital public goods as infrastructure: government as a platform for all?

    The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the Omidyar Network for supporting their research. The views herein, however, do not necessarily reflect those of the funder.

    ∞

    Exploring digital public goods — introduction

    The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the Omidyar Network for supporting their research. The views herein, however, do not necessarily reflect those of the funder.

    ∞

    15 questions for the future of digital practice in government

    Originally published at https://richardpope.org on May 24, 2021.

    ∞

    How many project management paradigms do you have in your organisation?

    How many project management paradigms do you have in your organisation?

    If you are trying to do upfront design upfront and iteration, you probably 1 have a problem.

    If you have fixed deadlines and fixed scope, you probably have a problem.

    If you are trying to centrally control of design and technology, and delegate decision making to teams, then you probably have a problem.

    If you are trying to work in an agile way and using waterfall governance processes (or vice versa), you probably have a problem.

    1. ‘probably’, because, as Simon Wardley regularly points out, different paradigms make sense in different contexts. However, it should be a choice, not an accident. ↩︎

    ∞

    Public interest technology and covid data - whose job is it?

    Lockdown rules differ across the UK and are set by different, overlapping layers of government - UK, devolved, local. The result is it’s hard to understand what the current rules are for any given location. GOV.UK lists the rules for England, set by the UK government only, not those set by the devolved administrations or local authorities.

    Business over a certain size have been made to write risk assessments about the measures they are taking to keep staff and the public safe. They have been asked to publish these, but it seems few have, and those that have are mostly published as PDFs. So it’s not possible to understand the measures in place at a particular venue or report back if they are being stuck to.

    A range of apps and practices have sprung up to support contact tracing by recording who attends a venue. But the public has to relearn the process at each venue.

    These are all problems that good design, shared standards, and digital platforms are good at solving. Well designed digital services can abstract away the complexity and organisational boundaries. They can push important information based on context using structured data. And they can crowdsource datasets where they are incomplete.

    Whose job is it to do this during the pandemic? There is a clear public interest.

    ∞

    Public interest technology and covid data — who’s job is it?

    Originally published at https://richardpope.org on August 6, 2020.

    ∞

    Rishi Sunak's 'Plan for Jobs' speech - some digital gaps

    I just listened to Rishi Sunak’s announcement about the first steps towards restarting the economy and getting people back to work. I can’t comment on the economics of it (beyond the size of the numbers), but I think there are a few digital policy gaps that will need filling:

    • To close the policy feedback loop, the government will need much better data about what types of jobs are being created and where. It can get some of this from job adverts, but that’s not enough on its own. It also needs to look at data from RTI and Universal Credit claims, and low friction ways for companies to report new jobs directly.
    • Hiring more work coaches is a good thing, but they will need better situational awareness of the local job market. This means revisiting the tools that DWP provides to work coaches so the investment becomes an increase in support rather than an increase in compliance monitoring. (Work coaches also need to be empowered to help solve problems for people beyond the organisational boundaries of DWP — anything that might help people get back to work).
    • There are some big ethical questions about how the welfare system is used to encourage people back into work in the age of COVID. Getting those wrong will undermine the argument that the government is doing what is right. One way to navigate that is with better data about what DWP requires of claimants via their Universal Credit accounts, and if it actually results in better outcomes.
    • Not all jobs are equally free of risk. However, because there is no standard way for employers to publish their COVID Secure risk assessments, data about how safe particular workplaces are is hard to come by. And risk assessments are not the only data gap. Encouraging people back into work will be easier if the safeguards in place are clear.
    ∞

    The UK’s digital strategy should be the wholesale elimination of administrative burden

    The UK government’s aim to use digital to grow the economy as we learn to live with COVID-19 is probably the right one. But will policymakers go looking in the right place for growth?

    The old policy framings of regulation vs deregulation, central vs local, public vs private are increasingly invalid. A focus on ‘more digital’, or ‘more data sharing’ could mean a growth agenda fails on its own terms.

    The real opportunity of digital is in the reduction in administrative burden across every part of society. The automation of the mundane everywhere. The move from transactional to real-time. And doing this in a way that maintains public trust by aligning how data and technology are used with our democratic values.

    This is not a question of removing ‘red tape’ (‘red tape’ is not a problem if it is handled by machines!). And it’s not just about business. It’s about health, welfare, education too. It’s about making everything from buying a house, to applying for benefits or understanding changes to the built environment, something that ‘just happens’ while happening safely.

    The elimination of administrative burden will require policymakers to think beyond tweaks to existing activities in the digital economy. They will need to focus on fixing the plumbing of the UK’s data infrastructure, public and private. It will mean breaking the silos of government so that joined-up services can be delivered in the civil servants, private companies and charities. This needs to be done in a systematic way.

    The UK should aim to emerge from COVID in the years to come as a truly digital country. The route to that (and growth) is the ruthless removal of administrative burden.

    ∞

    If government is mostly service design, is most government service design databases and rights?

    With apologies to Matt Edgar for re-purposing the title of his excellent blog post Most of government is mostly service design most of the time. Discuss.. If you’ve not read it, you should.

    It often seems that the design of government services comes down to three things:

    1. Making it easier to manage, use and join datasets so that administrative burden can be reduced to as close to zero as possible for the public; services can be made more real-time; and enabling the creation of value in the form of new businesses, service offerings or insights.

    2. Choosing to make it harder to join or use datasets, so that people’s rights are respected and there is less opportunity for misuse.

    3. Mechanisms to correct errors, address misuse and understand how things work so that we, as a society, can hold to account people responsible for the design of a service.

    In the UK today, 1 and 2 are essentially determined by the structure of government departments rather than choice. 3 is too often absent from the design of digital public services and hard to prioritise when business cases are based primarily on efficiency. A systemic understanding of all three is just generally missing.

    In part, these things are the domain of database theory, and rule of law principles and digital rights. In addition to an understanding of service design, senior civil servants across government need a better understanding of the accordances of databases and the ability to prioritise the design of rights into public services.

    ∞

    Who governs? Platform privilege, contact tracing and APIs.

    Apple and Google have, through the design of their contact tracing APIs, removed choices from democratic governments seeking to respond to the COVID-19 crisis. If (if) a centralised model will lead to better public health outcomes (and some people are a making the case that it is) then their design choices have made this harder. As Peter Wells points out, in creating an arbitrary limit of one-app-per-country, they have also removed the ability to meet different types of need (for example, an app for NHS workers where they can use check-in type design pattern to register that they are on a non-COVID ward, or record the PPE that they are wearing).

    This is policymaking by API design. It also represents a new type of technology exceptionalism: not that technology must be the answer, but that the most pressing problem to solve is one of data privacy, rather than efficacy. Efficacy gets to play in the space demarcated by the APIs.

    It’s easy to see why they have taken this approach. Government’s abuse their power. iOS and Android are global platforms, and their APIs will be used in a range of political circumstances. Google and Apple are also both American companies, so if they were not, unconsciously, calibrating their response to the risks of their own country’s political and healthcare systems, I’d be surprised.

    The UK has a centralised, publicly owned, democratically accountable healthcare system. There are precedents for centrally held healthcare systems, and Public Health England has shown it can be very vocal when there are attempts to use health-related data for immigration purposes. There are also technologists working in government who can help shape policy.

    That’s not for a second to say there is no risk of unethical use of data the UK. There is also more that can be done to increase the transparency of the UK app in addition to the welcome open-sourcing of part of the system (something that as far as I can tell, Apple and Google have not done). But it seems like a statement of the obvious that different countries will have different risk profiles and circumstances. So why shouldn’t we, as a country, get to choose?

    For the record, I’d much prefer a decentralised model if it can be shown to meet the needs of the public, both directly as users, and indirectly through public health officials. But that is not the point of this blog post.

    ∞

    Getting people back into work: ethics, efficacy and trust

    Government ministers have a choice about how they use the welfare system to help people who have lost their jobs or businesses get back to work. That choice includes questions of ethics, efficacy and trust.

    The working-age welfare system has always existed as a set of rights and responsibilities. Since the Welfare Reform Act 2012 and the introduction of Universal Credit, the responsibilities side was dialled right up. DWP gets to set a set of tasks and expectations for each household claiming and is the arbiter of if they have been met. If people fail to meet their ‘responsibilities’ — if they fail to take a job that is offered to them, or fail to spend up to 35 hours a week searching for work — then households have their benefits reduced in the form of sanctions. This does not just apply to people out of work, but people on low incomes too.

    It’s crude, but Universal Credit is basically Task Rabbit for government. The question for ministers is how they use this system in a world where:

    • There are significantly more claimants, many of whom may be new to the welfare system and may have different expectations now they find themselves reliant on it
    • There are substantially fewer jobs, and many of those that are may carry a risk of exposure to COVID-19

    Some of the ethics of this are hopefully obvious — when is it acceptable to force people into essentially taking a job that may carry a health risk? What assurances should DWP have about the social distancing practices of an employer and the exact location of the work, before applying sanctions against a household?1

    The efficacy question comes from the fact that (at best!), the jury is out on sanctions and their effect on people’s long-term prospects. (How they will work in the context we find ourselves today, we can only guess). Ministers need to decide what their offer will be to the public. If they want to get people into work, potentially in totally different professions, they will need to give DWP staff other tools than the sanctions hammer.

    On trust, ministers need to understand that people’s trust in the government’s response will not come from the simple employment figures. The way the process makes them feel and the sense that it feels like a fair deal will become an issue of long-term trust.

    1. Job adverts are going to need to change to include this information ↩︎

    ∞

    The boring side of tech, transparency and contact tracing

    The tech-twitter conversation about contact tracing apps has focused on privacy and decentralisation. Regardless of the form it takes in the UK — and it looks like for now it will be a centralised system, (hopefully with some very strong legal constraints) — there are eight things* that the NHS should do to make sure the process enables a healthy and open public debate.

    1. Publish a list of all the names of the different bits of technology (app, admin system, design system, etc) used to deliver the service along with the current version number and the date and time it was updated. This should be kept up to date each time a new version is deployed.

    2. In line with the Government Service Standard, wherever possible, the source code and database schema for each of these should be published in the open. Given the NHS will be likely using modern development practices and deploying updates regularly, publishing as a one-off will not be sufficient. Source code should be published as soon practically possible after each release. Commercial ownership of bespoke or customised code developed for the service should be not a valid reason for not publishing.

    3. Any data sharing agreements used to deliver the service should be published in one place on either GOV.UK or NHS.UK.

    4. Elements with a user interface (e.g. public-facing apps and admin systems) should display the current version number. The NHS App already does this). For each version, the NHS maintain an archive of the user interface changes. This is important because mall design choices can have big impacts on how people access and understand services. If the tinkering with the branding/advertising campaign is anything to go by, the temptation to tweak will be strong (and there may also be legitimate uses of A/B testing). As such, it is important that a record is maintained of how people are experiencing the service.

    5. The design should clearly explain when notifications have been triggered automatically, vs when it has been done by a person. It doesn’t need any wizzy design; words should do it. (Maybe something could be fast-tracked through the GOV.UK/NHS design system?)

    6. Given this will be a real-time system, it should regularly publish data about how the service is being used. This should include the number of users, but also information that will help the public understand if it is advantaging or disadvantaging particular groups. (This is a knotty problem and runs counter to some of the debate around privacy — sometimes you need to collect more data to know if you’ve built something discriminatory).

    7. Relevant civil society organisations should have access to the categories and absolute numbers of issues that users are reporting.

    8. There should be a clear, well-designed process for users and those involved in delivering the service to understand their rights and raise or escalate concerns about how data is being used. This should be part of the design of the service, not an add-on.

    * This is not an exhaustive list. I’m hoping people will have their own.

    ∞

    The UK government should negotiate free access to Faster Payments to speed up COVID-19 payments

    The thing about infrastructure is that it fades into the background to the point where people stop questioning how it works. So when the US government announced plans to make payments to citizens, the focus has been on delays needed to change the printing process to include the president’s signature, rather than the fact that cheques are being printed at all.

    Similarly, when the UK Chancellor was asked yesterday about the dates for Job Retention Scheme payments to companies, he cited the need to include the delay required by the BACS electronic transfer system (which typically takes three working days). BACS is the same system that contributes to the five week wait for Universal Credit payments.

    Since 2009, the UK has had a system for immediate bank transfers called Faster Payments. Despite this, the vast majority of UK government payments to the public and companies are done via the older BACS system (although DWP does use Faster Payments for advance Universal Credit payments).

    This probably comes down to cost. While banks do not charge the public for Faster Payments, this does not appear to be the case for government. Data about costs are not easy to come by, but based on an answer to a written question from an MP in 2014, the costs to DWP of a BACS transfer was £0.004, compared to £0.16 per transaction for Faster Payments.

    In much the same way that the government has successfully secured the removal of data charges for NHS websites, it should secure free payments for government services to access the Faster Payments system to speed up payments to those in need. This should apply to all benefit payments for the duration of the crisis as well as exceptional payments such as the Job Retention Scheme.

    ∞

    Digital public services: cross-civil society collaboration during the COVID19 crisis

    What other opportunities are there for charities and support groups to work together on datasets during the COVID19 crisis?

    ∞

    Government as a Platform, the hard problems: part 4 — Data infrastructure and registers

    1. HM Government, “Search”, GOV.UK,https://www.gov.uk/search/all?keywords=data+sharing&content_purpose_supergroup%5B%5D=news_and_communications&content_purpose_supergroup%5B%5D=research_and_statistics&content_purpose_supergroup%5B%5D=policy_and_engagement&order=relevance. Retrieved 5th June 2019. ↩︎
    2. See this for a longer argument about why this the idea of “data sharing” needs resetting: https://medium.com/digitalhks/data-sharing-in-government-why-democracies-must-change-direction-badfaa2463ec↩︎
    3. Paul Downey, “The characteristics of a register”, 13th October 2015, https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2015/10/13/the-characteristics-of-a-register/ ↩︎
    4. Rainer Kattel and Mergel Ines, “Estonia’s digital transformation: Mission mystique and the hiding hand”, UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose working Paper Series, (IIPP WP 2018–09) (2018), p10 ↩︎
    5. Richard Pope, “Digital service standards and platforms”, digitalHKS, 26th November 2018, https://medium.com/digitalhks/digital-service-standards-and-platforms-c11e060cacd ↩︎
    6. Etalab, “API”, https://adresse.data.gouv.fr/api ↩︎
    7. Etalab, “Foire aux questions”, https://adresse.data.gouv.fr/faq ↩︎
    8. See this article for a definition of “Yak shaving”: “Yak Shaving”, Techpedia, https://www.techopedia.com/definition/15511/yak-shaving. ↩︎
    9. OpenStreetMap, “Map Features”, https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_Features ↩︎
    10. HL7.org, “Http — FHIR v4.0.0”, http://hl7.org/fhir/http.html ↩︎
    11. “IETF | Internet Engineering Task Force”, https://www.ietf.org ↩︎
    12. “Singapore HIV registry data leaked online in health breach”, BBC News, 28th January 2019, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-47027867 ↩︎
    13. “Aadhaar: ‘Leak’ in world’s biggest database worries Indians”, BBC NEws, 5th January 2018, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-42575443 ↩︎
    14. Arvind Narayanan and Vitaly Shmatikov, “Robust de-anonymization of large sparse datasets: a decade later”, 21st Map 2019, http://randomwalker.info/publications/de-anonymization-retrospective.pdf ↩︎
    15. Atockar, “Riding with the Stars: Passenger Privacy in the NYC Taxicab Dataset”, research.neustar.biz, 15th September 2014, https://research.neustar.biz/2014/09/15/riding-with-the-stars-passenger-privacy-in-the-nyc-taxicab-dataset/ ↩︎
    16. Denis Campbell, “NHS will no longer have to share immigrants’ data with Home Office”, Guardian, 9th May 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/09/government-to-stop-forcing-nhs-to-share-patients-data-with-home-office ↩︎
    17. Alan Travis, “NHS chiefs urged to stop giving patient data to immigration officials”, Guardian, 31st January 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/31/nhs-chiefs-stop-patient-data-immigration-officials ↩︎
    18. Open Data Institute, “Data trusts: lessons from three pilots (report)”, 15th April 2019, https://theodi.org/article/odi-data-trusts-report/ ↩︎
    19. Open Data Institute / Register Dynamics, “Putting the trust in data trusts”, 14th April 2019, https://www.register-dynamics.co.uk/data-trusts/index.html ↩︎
    20. Emily Mattiussi, “Monitoring cloud data with Trillian”, IF Journal, 3rd April 2019, https://www.projectsbyif.com/blog/monitoring-cloud-data-with-trillian/ ↩︎
    21. google/trillian”, GitHub, https://github.com/google/trillian. Retrieved 25th June 2019 ↩︎
    22. “Amazon Quantum Ledger Database (QLDB)”, https://aws.amazon.com/qldb/. Retrieved 25th June 2019. ↩︎
    23. Petteri Kivimäki, “There is no blockchain technology in the X-Road”, Nordic Institute for Interoperability Solutions blog, 26th April 2019, https://www.niis.org/blog/2018/4/26/there-is-no-blockchain-technology-in-the-x-road ↩︎
    24. Cynthia Dwork, “Differential Privacy”, 33rd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming, part II (ICALP 2006), July 2006 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/differential-privacy/ ↩︎
    25. Differential Privacy Overview, apple.com, https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/DifferentialPrivacyOverview.pdf ↩︎
    26. Eric Miraglia, “Privacy that works for everyone”, 7th May 2019, The Keyword, https://www.blog.google/technology/safety-security/privacy-everyone-io/ ↩︎
    27. W3C, “Verifiable Credentials Data Model 1.0”, https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-model/ ↩︎
    ∞

    A working definition of Government as a Platform

    1. Tim O’Reilly, “Government as a Platform”, Innovations, Vol. 6, Issue. 1, Pages. 13–40, January 2011, [www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/1...](https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/INOV_a_00056)

    2. See this for a more comprehensive literature review: Alan Brown, Jerry Fishenden, Mark Thompson and Will Venters, “Appraising the impact and role of platform models and Government as a Platform (GaaP) in UK Government public service reform: towards a Platform Assessment Framework (PAF)” Government Information Quarterly, 34 (2). pp. 167–182, 2017, [epubs.surrey.ac.uk/841964/](http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/841964/)

    3. “Government as a Platform is a new vision for digital government; a common core infrastructure of shared digital systems, technology and processes on which it’s easy to build brilliant, user-centric government services.” Mike Braken, “Government as a Platform: the next phase of digital transformation”, GDS Blog, 29th March 2019, [gds.blog.gov.uk/2015/03/2...](https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2015/03/29/government-as-a-platform-the-next-phase-of-digital-transformation/)

    4. “In a world of easily shared government as a platform, services will be cheaper and easier to make. When that happens there will be more services, more closely targeted at user needs.” Louise Downe, “Good services are verbs, bad services are nouns”, Design in Government Blog, 22nd June 2015, [designnotes.blog.gov.uk/2015/06/2...](https://designnotes.blog.gov.uk/2015/06/22/good-services-are-verbs-2/)

    5. Jerry Fishenden, “The political opportunity — and threat — of better public services”, New tech observations from the UK (ntouk), 7th January 2019, [ntouk.wordpress.com/2019/01/0...](https://ntouk.wordpress.com/2019/01/07/the-political-opportunity-and-threat-of-better-public-services/)

    6. Sam Trendell, “‘We have only scratched the surface’ — Estonia’s CIO on what’s next for the world’s most celebrated digital nation”, PublicTechnology.net, 18th February 2019, [www.publictechnology.net/articles/...](https://www.publictechnology.net/articles/features/)‘we-have-only-scratched-surface’-–-estonia’s-cio-what’s-next-world’s-most

    7. GovTech Singapore, “The Tech Behind The Moments Of Life (Families) App”, [www.tech.gov.sg/media/tec...](https://www.tech.gov.sg/media/technews/the-tech-behind-the-moments-of-life.) Retrieved 13th June 2019.

    8. Aneesh Chopra and Nick Sinai, “Wholesale Government: Open Data and APIs”, Medium, 9th April 2015, [medium.com/@Shorenst...](https://medium.com/@ShorensteinCtr/wholesale-government-open-data-and-apis-7d5502f9e2be)

    9. David Eaves and Ben McGuire, “Lessons from Estonia on digital government”, Policy Options, 7th February 2019, [policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines...](http://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/february-2019/lessons-estonia-digital-government/) — See this for a description of duplication and waste

    10. [gds.blog.gov.uk/2015/03/2...](https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2015/03/29/government-as-a-platform-the-next-phase-of-digital-transformation/)

    11. “Building a 21st Century Platform to Better Serve the American People”, [obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/def...](https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/omb/egov/digital-government/digital-government.html)

    12. Australian Government, “Digital Service Platforms Strategy”, [www.dta.gov.au/our-proje...](https://www.dta.gov.au/our-projects/digital-service-platforms-strategy/our-future-vision-built-digital-platforms)

    13. Clare Mills, “Payments Project — Introducing the Payments Project”, Scottish Government Digital Blog, 12th march 2019, [blogs.gov.scot/digital/2...](https://blogs.gov.scot/digital/2019/03/12/payments-project-introducing-the-payments-project/)

    14. HM Government, “Design and build government services”, [www.gov.uk/service-t...](https://www.gov.uk/service-toolkit#gov-uk-services.) Retrieved 26th June 2019.

    15. “Interview with Will Myddelton — UK Government as a Platform programme”, 29th October 2018, [medium.com/platform-...](https://medium.com/platform-land/interview-with-will-myddelton-government-as-a-platform-3aff4ebcb3e8)

    16. Mark Thompson, “Government as a platform, or a platform for government? Which are we getting?”, Computer Weekly, 3rd June 2015, [www.computerweekly.com/opinion/G...](https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Government-as-a-platform-or-a-platform-for-government-Which-are-we-getting)

    17. “About India Stack”, [indiastack.org/about/](https://indiastack.org/about/)

    18. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, “Put VA Data to Work”, [developer.va.gov.](https://developer.va.gov.) Retrieved 5th June 2019.

    19. Nandan Nilekani and Viral Shah, Rebooting India: Realizing a Billion Aspirations, Penguin Books, 2016, page xxviii

    20. Societal Platform, “Societal Platform Thinking: Catalyzing Ecosystems to Resolve Societal Challenges”, [societalplatform.org/articles/...](https://societalplatform.org/articles/societal-platform-thinking-catalyzing-ecosystems-to-resolve-societal-changes/.) Retrieved 4th May 2019.

    21. Government of India, “National Health Stack, Strategy and Approach”, July 2018, [niti.gov.in/writeread...](https://niti.gov.in/writereaddata/files/documentpublication/NHS-Strategy-and-Approach-Document-for-consultation)

    22. ODI, “What is data infrastructure?”[theodi.org/topic/dat...](https://theodi.org/topic/data-infrastructure/)

    23. Peter Wells, “Aim to be boring: lessons for data infrastructure”, ODI Blog, 26th August 2015, [theodi.org/article/a...](https://theodi.org/article/aim-to-be-boring-lessons-for-data-infrastructure/)

    24. Jonathan Dupont, “Redesigning government in the era of intelligent services”, [policyexchange.org.uk/wp-conten...](https://policyexchange.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/The-Smart-State-1.pdf)

    25. In India, the Goods and Services Tax Network operates APIs and other infrastructure needed to operate the national harmonized sales tax. GSTN is a non-profit company owned partly by the national and state level governments. (The harmonization of sales taxes itself required a change to India’s constitution). Aadhaar, the identity verification platform, is operated by the Unique Identification Authority of India.

    26. OECD, “Digital Government Review of Sweden: Towards a data-driven public sector”, October 2018, [www.oecd.org/gov/digit...](http://www.oecd.org/gov/digital-government/key-findings-digital-government-review-of-sweden-2018.htm)

    27. David Bartlett, “Government as a Platform” Opening Government: Transparency and Engagement in the Information Age, 2018, pp. 37 — 44

    28. Lydia Ottlewski and Johanna Gollnhofer, “Private and Public Sector Platforms — Characteristics and Differences”, Marketing Review St, 2019, [www.researchgate.net/publicati...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331980681_Private_and_Public_Sector_Platforms_-_Characteristics_and_Differences)

    29. Some of these may well be collaborative in nature

    30. David Eaves and Ben McGuire, “Digital service teams: the end of the beginning?”, Apolitico, 29th November 2018, [apolitical.co/solution_...](https://apolitical.co/solution_article/digital-service-teams-end-of-beginning/)

← Newer Posts Older Posts →