Why is the Prime Minister not leading a national debate about Government-as-a-Platform?
- Summary:
- This week at a TechUK discussion on the much touted idea of Government-as-a-Platform, it was asked why the UK is not having a discussion about changing its business model.
Why is the UK's Prime Minister, David Cameron, focusing on cuts to public services in the run up to the general election in May, instead of shifting his focus to the benefits that could be sought from creating Government-as-a-Platform?
That was one of the most pertinent questions asked at a TechUK debate on the topic of creating a platform for government, this week in London. Government-as-a-Platform is the latest initiative being undertaken by the Government Digital Service (GDS), which focuses on creating common goods and services that can be reused across the whole of the public sector.
For example, GDS's Verify project, an identity authentication system that will allow citizens to choose from a set of providers, such as Experian, to verify who they are in order to gain access to public services online, is one of the first 'common services' to be created. The idea being that instead of each service having its own authentication system, all departments and bodies can use Verify, making it simpler for users, as well as driving down costs.
However, there are still many question marks hanging over GDS's approach to Government-as-a-Platform. For instance, how will it allow for the private sector to participate in creating services on the platform? How will it build an ecosystem? Is the focus on standards? Will Government-as-a-Platform affect how government departments create policy? What does it mean for data?
These are all topics that are still being thought through by those in charge at GDS.
But that aside, if we accept that Government-as-a-Platform is sensible in theory, it raises some interesting opportunities for the 'business model' of the UK and the public sector.
For example, it was suggested by Mark Thompson, a senior lecturer at Cambridge University and an expert on the subject of government platforms, that the discourse of the upcoming general election, which has largely centred around the need for further huge cuts to public services, would be entirely unnecessary if we instead aggressively pursued creating a true Government-as-a-Platform. He said:
However, Thompson recognises that 'disintermediating bureaucracies' essentially requires politicians to accept that a huge number of public sector jobs, largely those that centre around back office administration, will no longer be needed. And this is obviously not an easy political conversation to have. He said:Let's start with a national conversation. For me it's very clear that digital and platforms are business models, it's not about technology. It's not about iPads, it's not about IT, it's not about agile – it's a business model that exploits shared web-based infrastructure. If we apply that to government and think through the implications of reforming a government around shared web-based infrastructure, which is what this is about, we start to get at something very fundamentally deep.
You start to disintermediate bureaucracies up and down the country. The amount we could save is very, very big and not enough attention is being given to the implications of that. Where's the Prime Minister in this? Because what this is talking about is transitioning to a digital business model for the UK public service economy. It's going to be country changing and we aren't getting anything like the right level of interest.
In this election [it has been argued] that we can either raise the taxes or carry on chopping frontline services. I've said before that it's a false choice.
The elephant in the room is wholesale reform of the public sector business model and nobody is prepared to talk about that yet. The reality is that the discourse of the election is frontline cuts and we don't need to have half of these frontline cuts, if only we could get a grip of our business model. It's time for some crazy ideas.
Thompson also highlighted that the UK currently has a problem in getting this right in that all public sector business cases need to be approved by the Treasury, which is currently only possible at a departmental level. But he stated that if we are talking about Government-as-a-Platform, this means constructing businesses cases for digital transformation on a pan-government level.
He also referred to the Estonian government, which is one of the most digitally advanced countries in the world and is probably the best real-life example of 'Government-as-a-Platform'. However, he noted that whilst Estonia's platform is incredibly smart and sophisticated, there are lessons to be learned for the UK. Thompson said:
The Estonian platform, which is much lauded, is really very clever. The issue that they're grappling with is that it is a closed system. It was built by the government and the government is now starting to think that to really get a digital business model, it has to make it open. How do we as government start to consume standard services from the marketplace? Rather than build them all in a place where lots of clever people sit and carry on providing them to people.
For me, Government-as-a-Platform is a commercial model. A platform with no ecosystem is like
one hand clapping, it doesn't make any sense, it's just a piece of tech. I think the challenge is understanding what the hell that means for the wider ecosystem of suppliers, what that means for changed roles right up and down the public sector, and what it means for this notion of open standards.
What will the policy makers think?
Richard Sargeant, director of performance and delivery at the Government Digital Service, was also at the TechUK event to offer an update on where the Cabinet Office is at with developing the idea of Government-as-a-Platform. Sargeant's opening comments centred around the idea that this new 'platform' actually isn't much to do with technology, but is rather about providing a new framework for the UK – which ties in with Thompson's idea about this being a new digital business model. Sargeant said:
Sargeant highlighted two implications for Government-as-a-Platform that haven't yet been discussed much in the public domain. The first of which was how this new approach could greatly impact policy making and decision making. His argument being that if Government-as-a-Platform makes it easy for the public sector to quickly build new services, policy making doesn't have to be separated out from service delivery. He said:This audience will be very familiar with the idea of technology platforms, iOS or Android or Windows - lots of platforms exist in the technology world. But I want to point out that government has been a platform for centuries, but the platform that it has provided has often been in the form of common infrastructure e.g. the roads, the energy networks, the law.
These things have provided a framework for public and private sector activity for cultural and economic life on which citizens and businesses have depended. This really is more similar in some ways than the iOS or Android comparisons that we have heard about and made. I think this is only in part about technology, it's not at its heart about technology.
Policy making is nothing to do with technology, but is something from my experience that takes a very long time to do. The gap between announcement in a budget or a speech, through green papers or white papers, and bills and secondary legislation is often years.
I used to work on intellectual property, where I ran a review whilst I was at the Treasury, and we made a list of recommendations. And one of those recommendations was that we ought to legalise the ripping of CDs to people's computers. It was October last year, about nine years after that first review made its recommendations, that it finally passed into law. It really does take an awfully long time.
And I think part of the reason that it takes such a long time is because of the way in which we separate service delivery from policy making. If Government-as-a-Platform makes it easier to create new services, I think this presents new opportunities for policy makers and a new way of making policy that is simpler, clearer and faster. Digital services are quick to build, easy to iterate and they do provide a rich and objective source of feedback. And they become even quicker to build if you have a platform architecture, instead of needing to build a full stack.
This is a very interesting idea and one that is, again, very politically sensitive. Policy makers are control freaks and owning the whole stack has suited a lot of people. Shifting to a platform model, whereby agile and iterative delivery of policy is possible, will no doubt ruffle a few feathers.
Data, data, data
However, it was Sargeant's second example that I considered to be more pressing and one that needs to be handled correctly for Government-as-a-Platform to be a success. Sargeant highlighted that data management will come to the fore, which is evidently at the top of the Government Digital Service's agenda, considering that GDS's director Mike Bracken has now also taken up the role of the government's Chief Data Officer.
Sargeant said:
The second example I wanted to give was around data management. This is something that is sensitive and deeply important to millions of people, as well as businesses. The appointment of a Chief Data Officer will, amongst other things, create a government data standard that would try to underpin some of the operational consistency, as well as trust and transparency, involved in the way that government uses data for all sorts of purposes.
For the operation of delivery of services, as well as for research and policy making. In managing our data better, we may need something like a service standard for data that tries to give a much clearer sense of the operational rules of the road. That's something that we are beginning to speak to people inside and outside government about.
Given the problems that the NHS has faced with its care.data scheme, and the backlash it faced from the
public regarding how it was planning to use its data, it wouldn't be a huge surprise to me if Sargeant was somewhat underplaying this data management issue – at the moment. In my mind, reorganising, restructuring, sorting and cleansing public sector data is central to the success of Government-as-a-Platform. If a department wants to quickly create a new digital service on the platform, how does it access the data it needs? Where is that data kept? Can it access data from other areas of government? Who is responsible for the data?The approach to data governance needs to be thought through carefully if GDS wants to get Government-as-a-Platform right. That's not to say its an insurmountable task. A lot of it will come down to just being transparent with what it has planned. But I wouldn't be surprised if this will be one of the core initiatives going forward in the next parliament.
I asked Sargeant during the debate whether or not he is worried about this. He said:
I think that no-one would approach the government stock of data without a degree of trepidation. But I think it's more of an opportunity than something to be terrified about. I think the opportunity here is to get an operational grip on what government is doing with the data that is entrusted to it by citizens.
This is rising up the agenda for European regulation and our own political parties have said various things about data. I think that it's absolutely essential, as it is the oil that will allow the wheels to move. I think that the concerns that the public have around trust, the security and what happens to their data, are points that we need to be able to answer clearly and transparently.
I think there will be a lot of debate as to the best way of transporting information around. I also think that it might become quite prosaic and practical about how government is managing data
and the operational practices. We may not have said much yet, but this may well be a theme of the next parliament and I look forward to seeing it unfold.
My take
Plenty of meat in here and we are beginning to see how Government-as-a-Platform will take shape. At the moment GDS is going after low hanging fruit with the common services it is building. But as it has proven in the past, half of the battle is getting a foot in the door and creating some proof points before progressing more aggressively.