GovTech over BigTech

Whether in healthcare, public services or energy transition, many organisations face the same problems, such as staff shortages, bureaucracy and complexity. All of these issues involve similar digitalisation puzzles: how can automation combat staff shortages? How can data exchange between different sectors reduce bureaucracy? How can digitalisation help reduce complexity?

“One related problem in this matter is that the companies developing this technology for use by consumers or other companies and not primarily for the government”, says Marijn Janssen, professor of ICT and Governance at TU Delft. “The government must also include public values such as fairness and equality, while these are of much less importance to a company striving to maximise profits. Some companies test the efficacy of their product on consumers. The government can't do that.”

Bharosa sees Digicampus as a collective tool to shape the government’s digital transformation without making the government dependent on one market party, one ministry or one implementing agency. “Digicampus brings the Dutch ‘poldercultuur’ - consulting with each other, testing and learning - to the digital domain”, says Bharosa. “Within Digicampus, we not only build prototypes of new technology but also an agreement system around it, such as agreements on the standards that technology must meet and what supervision should look like. So it’s about socio-technical solutions – technical solutions embedded in the social domain.”

Professor of ICT and Governance Marijn Janssen gives an example of a GovTech application that works in practice: “Citizens have to knock on the government’s door themselves if they think they’re entitled to benefits such as care allowance or rent allowance. However, some citizens with financial problems don’t know that they are entitled to such allowances. To address this, several GovTech solutions are being worked on within Digicampus that allow public service providers to proactively let citizens know when they are entitled to a particular allowance. As part of this, Delft students have contributed to research, prototype development and testing.”

Proactive service provision is possible because the government already possesses a lot of data on citizens. The only issue that had to be resolved was the facilitation of data exchange between different data sources. Digicampus put the development of proactive services on the map, after which it was adopted by the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations.

Another example lies in the area of digital identity and conducting business online. To this end, a new GovTech solution is currently being built (see box) that should eventually replace DigiD, which allows the government to digitally verify a person’s identity.

Citizen-centric

Over the past two decades, contact between citizens and the government has become increasingly digital. How are citizens actually included in the development of GovTech? Janssen and Bharosa both stress the great importance of this but also acknowledge that it presents a difficult challenge. Janssen: “Citizens often mainly want a solution for themselves and don’t always see the bigger picture. They don’t usually have insight into the specific challenges of developing GovTech, such as ensuring digital security and data privacy. Digicampus can play a role in this by bringing parties together and making those challenges visible.”

Bharosa gives some examples of citizens’ involvement in GovTech development: “We are in close contact with citizen advocacy groups and with the government’s User Central programme, which involves citizens in improving services. Sometimes we even ask citizens themselves to help shape a prototype. A great example of this was an app that allows elderly people to arrange online authorisations for their children. We gathered people from a local retirement home in The Hague to hear their opinions about that app. The gist of the feedback was that they still found it too difficult to arrange an authorisation digitally and preferred to do it in person with an official or a notary. We then passed that conclusion on to the Ministry of Health, as policy maker in this area.”

“The second tip”. says Janssen, “is that the government should have sufficient technology and organisational knowledge in-house and thus not outsource everything to companies and consultants. The third tip is to use collaboration to counteract the fragmentation of knowledge. There is the danger of different departments within the government all trying to reinvent the wheel. That doesn’t work. TU Delft and Digicampus can play an important role in bringing knowledge together. I see TU Delft as a bit like the cook who brings together the right ingredients in the right proportions - from ethics to technology.”