IIPP UCL MPA Module IIPP0011 Blog

Purposes of this blog

As some of you will know I am currently in the second year of a part time Master of Public Administration (MPA) degree in the Institute of Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) at University College London (UCL). I’m writing and publishing this blog primarily to meet one of the assessment requirements of a module on Digital Transformation that I am taking this semester. The assessment guidelines require me to publish a series of blogs reflecting on, and demonstrating insight into, topics covered in lectures seminars and readings.??

I’ve chosen to write my blog on my LinkedIn account. This allows friends and colleagues to obtain a “glimpse” of one aspect of my current studies – creating if you like a digital “positive externality” out of the academic requirement.

The Digital Transformation module at IIPP

The digital transformation module is taught by David Eaves and Mike Bracken CBE. Part 1 of the module focuses on ‘Skills and Team’ and has a very practical orientation. Parts 2 and 3 of the module will cover: Structures and Concepts; and Scaling and Application.

Blog 1. Government as a platform

The assessment guidelines require me to use this first blog to ‘reflect on any course concept discussed to date.’

Towards the end of his third lecture Mike made reference Tim O’Reilly’s chapter ‘Government as a Platform’ in Lathrop and Ruma (2010) Open Government. I have read the chapter and chosen ‘Government as a platform’ as my concept for reflection.?

There are competing definitions of what ‘a platform’ means in a digital context. I find the definition offered by the technology consultancy Gartner clear and relevant – ‘A platform is a product that serves or enables other products or services.’??

In the afore-mentioned chapter O’Reilly links the concepts of Web 2.0 and Government 2.0.?O’Reilly defines Web 2.0 (a term he is credited with popularising, if not inventing) as ‘a rediscovery of the power hidden in the original design of the World Wide Web.’ He amplifies this definition by observing that ‘the secret to the success of [Web 2.0] bellwethers like Google, Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter is that each of these sites, in its own way, has learned to harness the power of its users to add value to—no, more than that, to co-create—its offerings.’

In the same chapter O’Reilly asserts that: ‘Government 2.0 is not a new kind of government; it is government stripped down to its core, rediscovered and reimagined as if for the first time. And in that reimagining, this is the idea that becomes clear: government is, at bottom, a mechanism for collective action. We band together, make laws, pay taxes, and build the institutions of government to manage problems that are too large for us individually and whose solution is in our common interest. Government 2.0, then, is the use of technology—especially the collaborative technologies at the heart of Web 2.0—to better solve collective problems at a city, state, national, and international level.’?

I deduce from the above that O’Reilly’s vision of Government 2.0 is bigger than that of ‘government as a set of public services to citizens’ although it includes such services within its vision.

Rather, I infer that O’Reilly’s vision of Government 2.0 encompasses all the ‘tools of government”, originally defined by Christopher Hood, and further refined by Patrick Dunleavy et al in their 2006 chapter ‘The Theory of Modern Bureaucracy and the Neglected Role of IT’ in Digital Era Governance: IT Corporations, the State, and e-Government. These tools are Nodality, Authority, Treasure, Organisation and Expertise.??

The module to this point seems rather focused on the potential of eGovernment regarding the government tools of Organisation and Nodality and to a lesser extent those of Treasure and Authority. It would be particularly helpful to have more information and insight regarding the current IT tools and skills required to support the government tool of Expertise. This is particularly germane because I hypothesis that it is in the tool of Expertise (and its associated accumulation of knowledge) that governments will, over time, discover the greatest gains in capacity and capability. I expect that gains in Expert capability within governments will come from both human agency and artificial intelligence, derived from both ‘big data’ and ‘thick data.’

The further development of the internet, underpinned by the further development of specialist microprocessors, will enable further developments of global computing, and associated government capacity and capability – if not disrupted by geo-political tensions and conflicts fracturing digital technology development, manufacture, assembly and supply. The medium-term opportunities and risks have been elegantly summarised in the latter chapters of the book Chip War (2022) by Chris Miller.???

It is perhaps pertinent to conclude by reconsidering one of the key points made by Christopher Hood in his classic, but now dated, chapter ‘The Tools of Government in the Information Age’ in Goodin, R. et al (2008) The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy. Hood addressed the question whether digital technologies would create fundamentally new tools of government. At that time Hood concluded probably not. Perhaps we should now address a different but adjacent question: Will multiple ‘order of magnitude’ increases digital capacity and capability fundamentally change the nature, if not the categorisation, of the Hood/Dunleavy tools of government? Will increases in government Expertise eventually drive changes in government Authority and capability to grow Treasure? And as Mike observed in his final slides of his third lecture: to what end???

It may also be timely for governments and academics to reflect further on a fundamental point made by Marshall McLuhan in (1962) The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. McLuhan elucidated some of the fundamental differences between oral and visual cultures, catalysed by the development of western typography. It is yet unclear if digital technologies will catalyse a similarly profound cultural shift and, if so, what its characteristics will be.