interweave's Holiday Reading List 2024
Edition #99 Our readers and authors share their top picks from 2024, and we discuss the three key themes of digital government this year...
Last year, our second Holiday Reading List discussed the emergence of Generative AI in the digital government space in 2023, reflecting on how governments were both starting to incorporate AI into their digitalisation and develop their own products to compete with private tech companies.
This year, as the early hype around LLMs started to die down, the use of AI in public services has almost become business-as-usual. Concerns about safety have caught up with the initial buzz, and many governments around the world are at least in the piloting stage of AI-driven tools, if not fully rolling them out.
But if – as Frans Johansson’s classic of innovation The Medici Effect goes – innovation happens best at the “intersection” between fields, then 2024 has been a digital government story of exactly this intersectionality. Whether through Digital Public Infrastructure, or applications of digitalisation to climate change, digital government is rapidly evolving from a set of transactional, citizen-initiated services into tackling broader challenges proactively and often beyond national borders. For the interweave team, there are three themes that have defined the year in digital government:
Digital government emerged as a tool for resilience: The ability of digitalisation to mitigate large-scale challenges has been on full display since the onset of Covid-19. But this year, whether in our case study of Moldova’s refugee platform or in the numerous climate-related initiatives that we have covered, it is clear that governments are turning to digital tools to support them in their thorniest challenges like never before. This has included anything from data reporting projects to measure biodiversity in South Asia to Digital Twins of Tuvalu to AI-tools in Kyrgyzstan to monitor natural disasters.
Digital Public Infrastructure went mainstream: As David Eaves, Associate Professor of Digital Government at UCL, told us in an interview earlier this year, DPI is something of a 20-year overnight success. It is nothing new, but 2024 has been a huge year for digital government payments, data exchanges and identity. The UN Summit of the Future’s Global Digital Compact recognised the potential of DPI in achieving the SDGs, and just a couple of weeks later the first ever Global DPI summit in Cairo placed seven big bets on the future of the space, including around the Global South’s DPI leadership. Also check out our conversation with UNDP’s Keyzom Massally on how to safeguard DPI if you missed it.
Generative AI became business-as-usual for governments: If 2023 saw governments scramble to build their first use cases for generative AI, then 2024 was the year in which it became business-as-usual. interweave has continued to cover new government LLM products, such as the UK FCDO’s correspondence triage service, but we have also seen much more of a focus from governments this year on creating safe AI products: from Singapore’s safety labels and deepfake bans to the Australian government’s rules on AI safety.
Recommendations from our readers and authors…
Recoding America: why government is failing in the digital age and how we can do better – Jennifer Pahlka
Recommended by Yogesh Hirdaramani
“This is a fascinating inside look into the quagmires of American digital government [...] Pahlka does an excellent job in not only diagnosing the problems, but offering a path forward by way of telling the stories of technologists working in the American government today, and makes a compelling case for a common language of people’s needs as the natural bridge between policy and delivery.”
Recommended by Diane Audras
“The paper examines the evolution of the UK's Government Digital Service (GDS) from its creation in 2011 as a bold digital transformation agency to its current role as a professionalized public digital entity. It highlights three distinct phases—delivery-focused innovation, government-as-a-platform expansion, and professionalization—offering valuable insights into the successes and challenges of scaling agile practices in public sector reform."
Recommended by James Balzer
“Maue debunks the entrenched, myopic myth that government should be risk averse, bureaucratic and driven by stale inertia. Rather, he illuminates the opportunity cost of governments not being more agile, entrepreneurial and tech-savvy. All senior civil servants should be aware of the lessons in this book.”
Platformland: An anatomy of next-generation public services- Richard Pope
Recommended by Nathan Davies
“In his introduction to Platformland, Richard Pope explains his motivation for writing the book - ‘so people can once again get excited about the possibilities of technology, design and democracy’. On the one hand, it offers a template for the next paradigm for digital government […] on the other hand, it’s strangely non-didactic, it gives you just enough of the historical, technical, theoretical, and biographical to enable you to get genuinely excited about imagining different possible futures. One of the books I read this year which is most underlined, annotated, and dog-eared.”
A conversation with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada + an OpenAI whistle-blower speaks out [Podcast]
Recommended by Zoey Soh
“Hard Fork is a weekly podcast from The New York Times exploring technology news and trends. In this episode, the hosts welcome Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada, to discuss his government’s efforts to position Canada as a global leader in AI investment […] It also examines whether governments are equipped to address the new challenges brought by AI, such as misinformation and the increasing power of tech platforms.”
Digital State: How the internet is changing everything - Simon Pont
Recommended by Chloe Lau
“A great starter for understanding digital government and new tech in the public sector, as it breaks down complex ideas into easy-to-understand pieces with real-world examples and case studies. Pont covers a wide range of topics, from e-governance to digital democracy, providing a broad perspective on the positives of digital government and the challenges and potential downsides. A must-read if you're into understanding how technology is reshaping institutional structures and public engagement.”
Recommended by David Gerouville-Farrell
“Most AI newsletters just cover the week's news. James from Paradigm Junction takes a more in-depth angle, picking a few topics and hunting down interesting angles from a range of organizations. When I read this newsletter, I end up internalizing a much wider range of perspectives than most.”
And finally, a few of the best articles we’ve covered this year…
How do you accidentally run for President of Iceland – Anna Andersen, UX Design
In one of the more humorous examples of what happens when digital government goes wrong, at least 11 people accidentally registered themselves to run for President of Iceland earlier this year. For the first time, the country made their endorsement process for President digital. Unfortunately, a collection of generic buttons, overwhelming information, and a lack of visual hierarchy made it not too clear whether a user was signing up to endorse a candidate, or to run for president themselves, leading some Icelandic citizens to have quite the surprise…
Japan finally says goodbye to floppy disks – Kelly Ng, BBC News
Since starting interweave more than two years ago, Japan’s war on floppy disks has been an ever-present news story. In July, Digital Minister Kono Taro finally managed to scrap the more than 1,000 regulations that still required people to submit documents to the government using the outdated storage devices. Now for the fax machines!
Indonesian fishermen are using a government AI tool to find their daily catch – Tonggo Simangunsong
We talked above about some of the business-as-usual use cases of AI by governments. One that is a little more unusual is Indonesia’s AI-powered app helping fishermen to reliably locate the densest fishing grounds, improving daily catches and fuel efficiency. Unlike wealthier nations where startups and Big Tech firms have taken the lead on AI, Indonesia is a case example of where the government can step in and provide innovation capacity. Elsewhere, the same agency has built AI-based applications to study climate change, predict forest fires, and monitor mangrove deforestation.
How are governments adapting to the digital revolution? [Interweave Podcast]
Finally, check out the Brubble podcast, which featured one of interweave’s co-founders talking about some of the biggest digital government innovations of the past couple of years, and some of the themes that have most defined the space.