Vietnam's digital villages, Hamburg's homegrown GenAI, and the UK's Post Office scandal
Edition #64 Recent revelations over the postmaster scandal in the UK are a reminder of the responsibilities of digital government, while elsewhere India reckons with its norms around election data...
In our previous round up, we focused on government apps, exploring Indonesia’s plans for consolidated super apps and providing a summary of Ukraine’s Diia Summit.
This week, with the UK’s Post Office scandal leading the news, many of our stories consider the responsibilities that come with using digital government tools. While interweave’s roundups often focus on the tremendous upside of digital government, this developing story is an unfortunate reminder of the real human cost of getting digital wrong. We are a big fan of the work of Public Digital, and their deep dive into this issue for their own newsletter is superb.
Elsewhere this week, we look at the issue of data collection and use in India’s elections, digital-ready policy in the UK, and the transformation strategies of Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Our main stories this week:
No more “Big IT”: the failed 90s model has ruined too many lives
The data collection app at the heart of the BJP’s Indian election campaign
The UK’s CDDO publishes a Digital Readiness Check for government
As a reminder, we have recently begun to expand our digital government coverage away from just Substack and onto Linkedin, Twitter and Instagram. For original content, audience engagement, and roundups of all our pieces, feel free to follow us over on those channels.
No more “Big IT”: the failed 90s model has ruined too many lives - Mike Bracken, Financial Times
Over the past few weeks, the UK has been rocked by new attention given to a scandal involving hundreds of post office workers being wrongfully prosecuting for stealing money from the country’s Post Office, on account of incorrect information provided by a computer system called Horizon. Mike Bracken, the country’s former Chief Digital Officer, argues that this should be a wakeup call for governments to stop using large IT consultancies to run entire national services.
The UK’s Government Digital Service (GDS) was created in the wake of technology service failures in tax, immigration, prisons and the NHS National Programme for IT’s £10 billion collapse. 15 years later, argues Bracken, the lessons from the Post Office experience are all too familiar.
According to The Standish Group’s database of over 100,000 US government projects, up to 87% of large waterfall digital government projects partially or fully fail.
Instead, Bracken argues, governments should pursue a test and learn approach, with estimates from the UK National Audit Office separately finding that approaching transformation from the perspective of smaller-scale delivery packages could save the country £20 billion.
Our Take: The Post Office scandal is a moment of digital reckoning for the UK in a comparable way to Australia’s Robo-debt scandal, or the failure of the Dutch childcare benefits algorithm. We recommend reading this week’s Public Digital newsletter - where Mike is a partner - for in-depth analysis of the issue.
The data collection app at the heart of the BJP’s Indian election campaign - Srishti Jaswal, Rest of World
Srishti Jaswal explores how India’s ruling BJP is using its Saral app to shape its election strategy.
The app - which the BJP says is an attempt to digitize some of the party’s operations and better communicate with its workers across India - collects detailed data about users, which it can use to analyze BJP workers’ performance and voter engagement at the most granular level of a “voting booth” (700-800 people).
Saral is becoming increasingly crucial to the party, with local officials being given sign up targets to go door-to-door and get voters to download the app, and use cases extending beyond policy information and data collection to event management and party volunteer coordination.
Given the amount of information collected on voters, some are concerned data of this kind could be used to micro-target voters based on caste and religion, and that this app is being and will be used in conjunction with state apparatus to give the BJP an unfair advantage in the upcoming elections.
Our Take: In the article, one privacy expert calls the Saral app’s data collection “unprecedented in a democratic country”. We should not be surprised by this, given precedents that have been set over the past 15 years in terms of using big data in election strategies. With more than 50 countries going to the polls this year, expect to see each of them wrestle with the form and extent of political party data usage.
UK CDDO publishes Digital Readiness Check for government - Mark Say, UK Authority
In another story coming out of the UK this week, the country’s Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO) has published a new Digital Readiness Check for policy.
One of the central challenges of digital government delivery is the disconnect between policy and delivery teams. Policy is often drafted without the input of digital delivery experts, meaning that digital alternatives can either be missed or their delivery specified in an unrealistic way.
To combat this, CDDO has provided a checklist divided into four categories to “ensure clear, simple and unambiguous rules; assume digital delivery by default; plan for interoperability, sharing and re-use of data; and use existing, common infrastructure”
The idea - following a similar initiative in Germany - is that policymakers will consult the checklist during policy design, prompting them to work in multidisciplinary teams with operational and digital colleagues to design more efficient and deliverable policy.
GovTech News in Brief
New partnerships office launched to broaden and deepen Singaporean Government-citizen partnerships - Tham Yuen-C, The Straits Times
Singapore’s new Government Partnerships Office will provide a central platform for citizens to collaborate with the government, including curating key government resources for partnership, funding and volunteering opportunities.
Hamburg tests homegrown generative AI - Sarah Wray, Cities Today
In the latest government LLM pilot, 100 city employees in the German City of Hamburg are using a model named “LLMoin” to explore the potential impact of AI on local government activities.
Czech Republic rolls out new Digital ID app with over 70k downloads on first day - Avang Macdonald, Biometric Update
After paving the way for a digital ID application with new regulations last September, the Czech Republic has launched an app to allow users to create a digital version of their national ID card and other identity credentials.
From developing to digital: charting the course for SIDS’ transformation - Marcos Neto and Robert Opp, UNDP
From the SIDS Global Data Hub in Antigua and Barbuda to the Digital Pathway in Samoa, the UNDP explores the work that Small Island Developing States around the world are doing to advance their digital agendas.
Experimenting with how Generative AI could help Gov.UK users - Chris Bellamy, Gov.UK
In what is one of the most detailed use case write-ups of governments’ use of Gen AI, Gov.UK’s Chris Bellamy outlines some of the experiments being carried out in the UK to integrate GenAI into its government web-pages.
Our Take: Elsewhere this week, the UK government has also released a Generative AI framework for use across government.
How Vietnam is attempting to build inclusive digital communities - Samaya Dharmaraj, OpenGov Asia
Vietnam’s Ministry of Information and Communications has unveiled the “Digital Village” e-handbook, intended as a catalyst for equipping individuals with insights into the application of digital technologies across various facets of life.
Thailand’s Blockchain to Government Conference
The B2GC provides a forum for the newly elected Thai government to meet with global blockchain leaders to discuss issues such as the Thai Digital Wallet Scheme, which is quickly turning into a headache for the administration.
Our Take: We covered Thailand’s digital wallet initiative back in November. Since then, the rollout has been dogged by complications and delays. The Thai government will be hoping that this conference gets it back on track.
Digital payments can help accelerate climate action by speeding up aid - Si Ying Thian, Govinsider
The UN and partners are advocating for responsible financial infrastructure modernization to help get disaster relief money to those in need faster, launched as part of the “Better than Cash Alliance.”
Upcoming GovTech Events
Masters of Digital 2024 - Digital Europe
DIGITALEUROPE - a conglomeration of all of Europe’s largest tech industry groups - has their 2024 conference scheduled for late February in Brussels and online, with a theme of “Europe 2030: A Digital Powerhouse.”