Author: Benjamin Welby (Page 8 of 18)

I’m Benjamin Welby.

I live in Croydon with my wife and two children. I church at Croydon Vineyard. We’ve had season tickets for Bradford City since 2007. I’ve got degrees in History, Post-War Recovery and Public Administration and have spent the last 15+ years working at the intersection of digital transformation and good governance.

I began my career in local government, went on to help launch GOV.UK and most recently worked on defining global standards for digital government at the OECD. I'm currently currently co-authoring a book integrating biblical values with civic life, encouraging Christians to adopt a hope-filled, faith-inspired perspective on democracy and how we are governed.

I’m interested in too many things: being a good husband and father, following Jesus, the theology of governing well, a warm welcome for refugees and asylum seekers, that ‘digital’ leads to fair, inclusive and equitable transformation, exploring the world, League Two football, Pantomime, various England sports teams and Team GB…

Digital Government Review of Panama

September 20, 2019 / Benjamin Welby / 0 Comments

It was a wonderful privilege for my first experience of completing a Digital Government Review to take place at the invitation of the government of Panama and under João’s excellent leadership.

Available as both PDF or HTML publication

What’s the TL;DR?

Digital Government Reviews give us an opportunity to get under the skin of the digital government practices of a country. We send out a survey to every government agency, we use the material that countries submit for the Digital Government Index, and we spend a week interviewing (with country peers) as many government agencies as possible.

The whole process is quite intense but they offer a fascinating snapshot of what’s happening in a country. It was also great to spend the week on mission with Barbara and João as well as the peers of Frank (from Belgium), Kareen (from Chile) and Cristina (from Spain) to gain their insight and wisdom from their different backgrounds. We were also so well hosted by Irvin and his team at the National Authority for Government Innovation (AIG) in Panama.

In this case the focus for Panama was on governance, capabilities, data and services. I was asked to focus on data and services (chapters 3 and 4 of the review).

We recognised that Panama has long championed the value of digital government and built some good foundations and this sets up a lot of opportunities for future development, if they can build the cross-government momentum to collaborate and work together. We made a series of recommendations that I’ll include below but if you want to really understand the state of digital in Panama you should probably read the whole thing.

A data-driven public sector: Enabling the strategic use of data for productive, inclusive and trustworthy governance

May 17, 2019 / Benjamin Welby / 4 Comments

OECD publications are always a team effort but this, the second piece to have my name on it, is hugely down to the work of my colleague Charlotte. Unfortunately she’s been away from the team since I joined so my contribution here was to pick up the thread of her research and get the paper to completion.

If you’re interested in this subject you may want to take a look at the fuller report we published in November 2019 or the series of seminars I hosted with the Azerbaijani government in May 2024 which unpacks the Framework as a set of presentations.

Available as a PDF

What’s the TL;DR?

This Working Paper argues that governments need to go further in putting the collection, processing, sharing and reuse of their data (the Government Data Value Cycle) at the heart of how they think about digital transformation. It’s a guide to how governments can invest in public servants in order to recognise and use data as a core component of the modern state.

Plenty of governments have pockets of good practice but the challenge is to scale those into whole-of-government approaches that are well supported internally as well as finding favour with the public. This is the vision of the ‘data driven public sector’ (DDPS).

The paper discusses three areas of opportunity:

How digital government impacts citizen well-being

May 15, 2019 / Benjamin Welby / 2 Comments

I’m really pleased with how this paper came together. It’s the first thing I’ve written at the OECD, and the first ‘academic’ work that’s been published in my name.

Available as a PDF.

What’s the TL;DR?

This paper exists because the OECD more broadly is interested in this idea of “citizen well-being”. There’s a cross-cutting horizontal project about it with different teams writing up how their work is important to the concept.

And we’re no different. So what impact can digital government have on citizen well-being? Well, my argument in the paper is that there are three characteristics of government that create outcomes that improve well-being. They are responsive, protective and trustworthy:

‘Honour the emperor’

November 10, 2016 / Benjamin Welby / 2 Comments

It is easy for me to write this as a middle class, white Brit for whom oppression is not something I’ve ever directly had to put up with. My response is therefore more theoretical than what faces people who are already reporting the sorts of post-Brexit hate we had here. I hope I would always seek solidarity, not safety.

Prayer

We spent last night at Central London Vineyard in solid prayer, bothering God about the state of the world.

It was challenging. Challenging to reflect on our own divided country as well as the one across the Atlantic. Challenging to think that most of the world’s desperate people don’t care who’s in the White House or what the EU looks like. And very challenging to hear first hand testimony of recent events in Calais and the treatment of those unaccompanied children who had found some small refuge in the Jungle.

And in all of that it was challenging to respond to the words of Jesus:

‘Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.’

Did Phil Parkinson and Bradford City break Jose Mourinho?

November 5, 2015 / Benjamin Welby / 2 Comments

A colleague of mine is a Chelsea season ticket holder and he just mentioned that last night’s atmosphere at Stamford Bridge had sent a clear message of support for their Special One.

I jokingly suggested that their woes date from the afternoon of January 24th, the day Bradford City turned 2-0 into 2-4. And we wondered what the data said. So I went to Soccerbase and had a quick look.

Fragile states and digital foundations

October 1, 2015 / Benjamin Welby / 1 Comment

When crisis hits it puts unexpected pressures on infrastructure. In some cases the state or its civil society is resilient and can cope but where the physical, societal or administrative fabric is already fragile then issues are compounded and recovery becomes harder. And then there’s the impact of war.

The world has developed coping mechanisms for dealing with this. Government aid and development budgets kick in, international organisations mobilise and individual donors dig deep to help meet needs. And lots of time, money and thought continually goes into making sure that the quality of those coping mechanisms gets better. But the scale of the need can be overwhelming.

Digital can be a huge enabler and a powerful tool in helping to support those responses. Today is the Techfugees conference. That’s a great response to a crisis that has reached the tipping point in the public consciousness. It’s brilliant that the conversations don’t end today but will be followed by efforts to deal with problems: the Techfugees hack day tomorrow, Ich Bin Hihr in Berlin on Saturday and maybe also Code for the Kingdom in London over the weekend. People are getting together to unify around solving identified needs rather than fragmenting into delivering well meaning, but not yet validated, ideas.

Code for the Kingdom challenge: community

September 2, 2015 / Benjamin Welby / 2 Comments

On the weekend of 2nd October Christians with a passion for digital technology are going to gather in 14 cities* on 5** continents for the first ever global Code for the Kingdom hackathon.

I’m part of the Kingdom Code team organising the London event, we’ve got a great venue (the Westminster Impact Hub) and we’re hoping for a good turn out of both professionals and enthusiasts. With just over 4 weeks to go the anticipation is rising (have you got your ticket yet?).

The team in the USA have already secured world-class virtual mentors and this week announced the six sponsored global challenges (#wearables, #purity, #minorityChristians, #games, #virtualreality, #generosity) for people to aim at.

We’ve also come up with some challenges of our own for London: #Christmas, #spiritualdisciplines and #community.

We’re eager to see what London makes of all nine challenges but personally I’m particularly excited about the #community challenge.

We all know that we’re living through an incredible period of technological advance. The digital revolution has completely transformed the way in which we not only stay in touch with our family and friends but also in how we forge, and maintain, connections with (former) strangers.

Transforming Fiveways Croydon (or the bridge in my back yard)

February 12, 2015 / Benjamin Welby / 3 Comments

The trouble with the A23

If you were designing London for 21st century traffic you probably wouldn’t build the A23. It’s only 53 miles long but because it starts at Waterloo Bridge and finishes in Brighton it’s got five different owners. In the 17 miles from Waterloo Bridge to the M25 it snakes through Kennington, Brixton, Streatham, Norbury, Thornton Heath, Croydon, Purley and Coulsdon.

So it’s hemmed in by residential property but it’s also the main artery for the ‘out of town’ shopping along the Purley Way and it’s the route to and from Gatwick. When Christine and I moved from Brixton we inched along it from A to B and back to A again (more than once). There were several pinch points in that journey but one of the ones we didn’t have to deal with is just to our south at Fiveways. Continue reading

Pride (In the name of GOV.UK)

December 23, 2014 / Benjamin Welby / 2 Comments

On Friday 19th December 2014 when the final agency switched on its pages we celebrated GOV.UK being ‘organisation complete’.

Three years ago one of the four things Baroness Lane Fox told government to do was ‘fix publishing‘. She recognised that hundreds of different publishing platforms could do a good job in isolation but required the public to understand the complexity of government and that approaching similar needs in bespoke ways was expensive and inefficient. It wasn’t the first time government had recognised the complexity of its web estate and we’ve stood on those broad shoulders to successfully replace over 600 websites with just the one.

That achievement is only really the end of the beginning but I’ve been reflecting on my highlights so far, in anticipation of what’s to come. I’ve got seven. Continue reading

Can these bones live?

October 27, 2014 / Benjamin Welby / 1 Comment

This is a post about an Old Testament prophet, but it’s not about theology.

It’s also a post about local government, but it’s not about a local Government Digital Service (GDS).

Last week I sat and watched as one of my colleagues showed off government’s digital wares. Not wares built in the GDS offices in Holborn but the work of people elsewhere in government. It’s going on in almost every department. It’s happening across the country. And it’s happening at pace.

It’s a great party. But it’s invite only, and local government hasn’t been included on the guest list.

And it doesn’t look like local government is going to organise one itself.

There’s a consensus that a radically different approach to local government IT/digital delivery is not just a nice to have but something of an immediate imperative and there’s been a lot of debate about what that might look like and who might start that fire.

What’s the TL;DR?

What’s the TL;DR?

What’s the TL;DR?

Prayer

The trouble with the A23

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