Government Digital

Governments all over the world are consistently outpaced by digital change, and are falling behind. Digital government is a better performing government. It is better at providing services people and businesses need. Receiving benefits, accessing health records, registering companies, applying for licences, voting — all of this can be done online or through digital self-service. Digital technology makes government more efficient, reduces hassle, and lowers costs. But what will it take to make governments digital? Good governance will take nothing short of a metamorphosis of the public sector. With contributions from industry, academic, and government experts — including Hillary Hartley, chief digital officer for Ontario, and Salim Ismail, founder of Singularity University — Government Digital lays down a blueprint for this radical change.

This book focuses on the implementation of digital strategies in the public sectors in the US, Mexico, Brazil, India and Germany. The case studies presented examine different digital projects by looking at their impact as well as their alignment with their national governments’ digital strategies. The contributors assess the current state of digital government, analyze the contribution of digital technologies in achieving outcomes for citizens, discuss ways to measure digitalization and address the question of how governments oversee the legal and regulatory obligations of information technology. The book argues that most countries formulate good strategies for digital government, but do not effectively prescribe and implement corresponding policies and programs. Showing specific programs that deliver results can help policy makers, knowledge specialists and public-sector researchers to develop best practices for future national strategies.

Digital Government: Managing Public Sector Reform in the Digital Era presents a public management perspective on digital government and technology-enabled change in the public sector. It incorporates theoretical and empirical insights to provide students with a broader and deeper understanding of the complex and multidisciplinary nature of digital government initiatives, impacts and implications. The rise of digital government and its increasingly integral role in many government processes and activities, including overseeing fundamental changes at various levels across government, means that it is no longer perceived as just a technology issue. In this book Miriam Lips provides students with practical approaches and perspectives to better understand digital government. The text also explores emerging issues and barriers as well as strategies to more effectively manage digital government and technology-enabled change in the public sector. Digital Government is the ideal book for postgraduate students on courses in public administration, public management, public policy, political science and international relations, and e-government. It is also suitable for public service managers who are experiencing the impact of digital technology and data in the public sector.

Opening the Government of Canada presents a compelling case for a more open model of governance in the digital age – but a model that also continues to uphold democratic principles at the heart of the Westminster system. Amanda Clarke details the untold story of the federal bureaucracy’s efforts to adapt to digital-age pressures from the mid-2000s onward. This book reveals the mismatch between the bureaucracy’s closed government traditions and evolving citizen expectations and digital tools. Striking a balance between reform and tradition, lays out a roadmap for building a democratically robust, digital-era federal government.

In sum, the prospects for digital transformation involve the interplay of these four dimensions: service, security, transparency and trust.".

Like most OECD countries, Brazil has been taking steps towards digital government to ensure that public policies and services are more inclusive, convenient and designed to meet citizens’ needs. This report takes stock of the progress made by the Brazilian government, based on good practices ...

Ten Canadians make one powerful argument: we cannot shy away from failure if we hope to succeed. Canadian Failures gathers experts at the top of their field, all of whom have grappled with failure, including astronaut Robert Thirsk; Olympic gold medalist, wrestler Erica Wiebe; and Tom Jenkins of OpenText Corporation.

"Organisations that grew up on the web have changed our attitude to the services we rely on every day. We expect them to work, be simple, cheap or free. They have done this by perfecting new technologies, practices, cultures and business models. However, organizations founded before the Internet aren't keeping pace - despite spending millions on IT. Faced with the digital revolution, many people working in large organisations instinctively see its consequences as another layer of complexity. To some of them, `digital' promises a better fax machine, a quicker horse, a brighter candle. In fact, digital is about applying the culture, practices, business models and technologies of the Internet era to respond to people's raised expectations. It is not a new function. It is not even a new way of running the existing functions of an organisation, whether those are IT or communications. It is a new way of running organisations. A successful digital transformation makes it possible not only to deliver products and services that are simpler, cheaper and better, but for the organisation as a whole to operate effectively in the online era. This book is a guide to building a digital institution. Based on experience and not theory it explains how a growing band of reformers in businesses and governments around the world have helped their organisations pivot to this new way of working, and what lessons others can learn from their experience. It is based on the authors' experience designing and helping to deliver the UK government's successful `Government Digital Service'. The GDS was a new institution made responsible for the digital transformation of government, designing public services for the Internet era. It snipped GBP4 billion off the government's technology bill, opened up public sector contracts to thousands of new suppliers, and delivered online services so good that citizens chose to use them over the offline alternatives, without a big marketing campaign. Other countries, and private sector companies too, took note. Here is a simple map to navigate a path through the blockers, buzzwords and bloody-mindedness that doom analogue organisations."--Publisher's description.