Project update — April 2019 A reminder My name is Richard Pope and I’m a senior fellow at digitalHKS. digitalHKS is focused on understanding the relationship between digital technology, data, and rights as it relates to the public interest. It’s based at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
The focus of my work is ‘digital platforms in government’ aka Government as a Platform. The aims of the work are:
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Government as a Platform, the hard problems: part 2 — The design of public-facing services
Tom Loosemoore, “Making government as a platform real”, Public Digital blog, 25th September 2018, http://public.digital/2018/09/25/making-government-as-a-platform-real/ This article includes screenshots of a prototype of a single service for starting a company in the UK Angelica Quicksey, “Service Design for Public Policy”, Medium, 29th September 2018, https://medium.com/@angelquicksey/service-design-for-policy-b0a9408dced1 Bryan Glick, “GDS is ‘sidelined’ and government as a platform ‘is dead’, says Francis Maude”, Computer Weekly, 14th September 2017, https://www.computerweekly.com/news/450426316/GDS-is-being-sidelined-and-government-as-a-platform-is-dead-says-Francis-Maude Maude said attempts to build new central functions to coordinate across departments — such as GDS — were thwarted by “mandarins” and “heavily resisted by the HM Treasury”.
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Government as a Platform, the hard problems: part 1 — Introduction
Definitions: government-as-a-platform (a proposal)
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?
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Definitions: quotes and themes on ‘government-as-a-platform’
If you think we’ve missed a relevant quote, please get in touch
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The politics of making it easier to design digital services
The politics of making it easier to design digital services A couple of weeks ago I asked on Twitter if there was a term in service design for the explicit, political choice to make something harder to do through sub-optimal implementation.
I was not thinking of the intentional designing-in of inertia to help users reflect, to prevent a service from being overwhelmed, or to allow for additional checks. I was thinking of situations where there is a genuine political will for making a service less good than it could be, either indirectly by restricting its funding, or directly through the passing of laws.
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Digital service standards and platforms
You can find the list of service standards here and search them using this Google custom search.
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Platforms for government? Platforms for society?
Footnotes:
1. GOV.UK Notify and GOV.UK Pay are now available to all local authorities — Government as a Platform. (2018) https://governmentasaplatform.blog.gov.uk/2018/07/05/notify-pay-local-authorities/
2. #VerifyLocal pilots moving from discovery to alpha – GOV.UK Verify. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2018, from [identityassurance.blog.gov.uk/2017/03/0...](https://identityassurance.blog.gov.uk/2017/03/02/verifylocal-pilots-moving-from-discovery-to-alpha/)
3. Banks may use Aadhaar QR code for paperless KYC — Times of India. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2018, from https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/banks-may-use-aadhaar-qr-code-for-paperless-kyc/articleshow/66370303.cms
4. e-Residency Benefits | Digital Nomad, Freelancer, Startup Company. Retrieved October 30, 2018, from https://e-resident.
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Digital proofs
Footnotes:
1 . View or share your driving licence information https://www.gov.uk/view-driving-licence
2. Things For Which Cryptographic Signing Would Be Useful. (2018, May 27) [shkspr.mobi/blog/2018...](https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2018/05/things-for-which-cryptographic-signing-would-be-useful/)
Ankur Shah Delight. (2017, June 22). Zero Knowledge Proof of Age Using Hash Chains. Retrieved October 21, 2018, from http://blog.stratumn.com/zkp-hash-chains/
3. Zero Knowledge Proofs: An illustrated primer. (2014, November 27) https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2014/11/27/zero-knowledge-proofs-illustrated-primer/
4. Verifiable Claims Data Model and Representations. (2017, August 3) https://www.w3.org/TR/verifiable-claims-data-model/
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Real-world government platforms
Real-world government platforms ‘Government as a platform’ normally gets talked about in terms of shared digital capabilities– things like hosting, identity or payments.
The GOV.UK Notify platform applies the concept of shared capabilities to the physical world too. As well as sending emails and SMS messages, Notify can send physical letters, via a standard API for printing and postage.
This gives the public servants designing user-facing services, a standard, well-documented way of sending letters – one which is quicker and simpler than creating something bespoke.
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Platform land – a new project looking at platforms and government
Platform land – a new project looking at platforms and government I’m starting a fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. The Kennedy School is a graduate school for students specialising in public policy or administration — broadly people who want to go on to either set public policy and regulation, plan on going in to politics in some form, or aim to go on to implement and manage a public service at the highest level.
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A Right to the Digital City
Conclusion Responding to emerging urban issues from gentrification to forced evictions & the privatisation of public space, the United Nations 2016 New Urban Agenda historically incorporated the concept of a “right to the city”: We share a vision of cities for all, referring to the equal use and enjoyment of cities and human settlements, seeking to promote inclusivity and ensure that all inhabitants, of present and future generations, without discrimination of any kind, are able to inhabit and produce just, safe, healthy, accessible, affordable, resilient and sustainable cities.
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A Guide To The New Field Of Software Politics
A Guide To The New Field Of Software Politics 2016 was the year it became impossible to ignore the power software exerts on society. Today, in 2018, we can start to identify the companies and organizations that are putting power back in the hands of consumers. [Source Images: Federica Galli/Unsplash (photo), Vanzyst/iStock (pattern)]Software is politics. I wrote that back in 2016, arguing that the digital services we all rely on should not just be designed for ease of use–they also need to be understandable, accountable, and trusted.
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A model planning condition for digital infrastructure
Following from my previous post about the ability of the UK planning system to deal with digital infrastructure like the InLink, it seems there may be a mechanism to give communities a say over what sensors, data collection practices and targeted advertising they invite in.
It’s the same one we use to regulate things like the opening hours of shops: ‘[planning conditions’.
Planning conditions allow a local authority to list the things that must not change without prior agreement - things like opening hours or the number of carparking spaces in the car park.
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InLinkUK - targeted advertising, planning permission and public space
Our local high street is going to have one of its phoneboxes replaced with an ‘InLink’.
InLink is a public wifi network provided by BT through on-pavement ‘structures’ and funded through advertising displayed on a big screen on the side of them.
They have some additional functions, like making a free phone call or looking up local information, but given smartphones are a thing most people now have, advertising and wifi are the main play here.
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Bye2k - government IT and Brexit
As Mat points out, one of the unwritten stories about if Brexit can be implemented is that of the changes required of ‘government IT’.
How many databases will need to be updated to store a distinction between U.K. and EU citizens? How many government services rely on access to EU systems and APIs? What EU systems do we rely on today that will need to be rebuilt from scratch in the next 18 months?
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GDS Retrospective #5: things that have changed
To finish of this seris of retrospective posts I thought I’d list 7 things that have changed for the better as a result of the things GDS and others across government have done over recent years:
Understanding the needs of users through research (and other methods) is part of how digital services get designed and built. So is testing real things early with real users.
It is now accepted that it is OK to use open-source in government, and that code and designs can be shared across government.
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GDS Retrospective #4: transformation and mental health
Transformation projects can be hugely rewarding, but something that needs talking about more is this: they can take a toll on the people doing them.
With transformation projects, you generally can’t talk publicly about the work you are doing. If it fails, it’s like you never did it. And if it works, it (rightly and justifiably) has to be other people’s success.
You can find people who feel threatened by a transformation project, if not quite shouting at you, or subtly trying to undermine your work, then at least being non-cooperative.
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GDS Retrospective #3: professions and design
In reality, it’s something I think to be simultaneously true and not true.
It’s true because you only get good stuff from people with different skills working together, when every member of a team can contribute to the design of products and that it is important to use and understand the materials available.
I also think it’s also true because how we build digital products was changing - platforms like Twilio and Heroku, and mature CSS and web frameworks making just easier to build things.
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Google Jobs will break 90 years of welfare policy — here’s what the policy response should be
Google Jobs will break 90 years of welfare policy — here’s what the policy response should be In 2013, Ian Duncan-Smith said “looking for work should be a full-time job”. This was to be policed through the ‘claimant commitment’ a document that details, among other things, the number and type of jobs that someone is expected to apply for. People would then present evidence that they were spending up to 35 hours a week trying to meet those targets when they signed-on.
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