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Thoughts from the mind of Ben Welby

Category: Work (Page 3 of 8)

Digital Government in Chile – Improving Public Service Design and Delivery

May 30, 2020 / / 0 Comments

The e-government era saw efforts to move government services online, automate internal processes and reduce administrative overheads for the public. Often technology led, those efforts sometimes led to the exclusion of some users and created digital-by-default siloes rather than coherent, cross-government, omni-channel services. Now, with the move toward digital government, OECD countries are giving greater priority to how services are designed and delivered, to ensure that digital progress benefits everyone, including those who rely on face-to-face interactions.

This report presents a conceptual model for service design and delivery that challenges governments to develop a design-led culture and ensure access to the enabling tools and resources necessary to deliver services that improve outcomes, efficiency, satisfaction and well-being. This model is used to analyse the situation in Chile and provide recommendations about how the ChileAtiende service delivery network can bring the state closer to citizens through a simpler, more efficient and transparent approach. By considering the intersection of digital, telephone and physical service channels, it recommends digital government approaches that ensure consistently high-quality service experiences for all users, in all contexts, and through all channels.

Available as a HTML publication or a PDF (behind the OECD’s paywall)

The Path to Becoming a Data-Driven Public Sector

November 28, 2019 / / 2 Comments

This paper was a team effort under my leadership with Arturo contributing the chapter on data governance, Lucia working on data for trust and my developing the introduction, conclusion and the material around data for public value.

The bones of the framework are being used in our Digital Government Reviews and it is our hope that you could take the 12 elements of the framework and apply it into any context. Indeed, there are two appendices to the report that, thanks to our colleagues Gavin and Daniel, apply the framework to the context of 1) integrity actors and 2) human resources.

If you’re interested in consuming this report in a different format then I’ve posted the series of seminars I hosted with the Azerbaijani government in May 2024 which unpacks the Framework as a set of presentations.

Available as HTML or a PDF

What’s the TL;DR?

This report builds on our earlier working paper by doing two things:

  • It introduces country-level practices and insights provided by several OECD member countries that contribute to the E-Leaders Thematic Group on Data
  • It uses those insights to develop a framework setting out the steps that countries need to take in order to build out an effective approach to the data-driven public sector

With ‘Data-driven public sector’ being one of the six elements which we argue form the basis for digital government maturity it is incredibly important for governments to address all the elements that go into achieving maturity in this regard.

To that end the framework consists of three pillars:

Pillar 1: Governance: we cast the vision for ‘governance’ wider than legislation, regulation and responsibility for data which is what people tend to understand this means. We argue that effective governance involves strategy (leadership), tactics (implementation and rules) and delivery (infrastructure and architecture).

Pillar 2: Public value: the point of putting data to work is to meet user needs and deliver societal value. We draw on country practices to show how important data is to looking ahead to future (anticipating and planning), responding to immediate needs (delivery), and then understanding what can be learnt from the past (evaluation and monitoring).

Pillar 3: Public trust: it is far easier to lose trust than it is to build it. That means governments need to be thinking about all the ways in which the use of data could undermine public trust. We explore dimensions of ethics, privacy, consent, transparency and digital security.

In our work we find that governments may hive off different elements of this under different organisations and while they may have good plans and practices in place, often there is not a holistic and strategic overarching sense of how these elements interact. The starting point has to be strong strategic leadership, but that leadership must be mindful that there’s almost nothing that can be achieved with data in the public sector without making public trust the guiding priority.

A circular diagram divided into three equal segments labeled 'Governance,' 'Public value,' and 'Trust.' Around the 'Governance' segment are five boxes: 'Leadership and vision,' 'Coherent implementation,' 'Rules and guidelines,' 'Data infrastructure,' and 'Data architecture.' Around the 'Public value' segment are three boxes: 'Anticipation and planning,' 'Delivery,' and 'Evaluation and monitoring.' Around the 'Trust' segment are four boxes at the bottom: 'Ethics,' 'Privacy and consent,' 'Transparency,' and 'Security.'

The blurb

Twenty-first century governments must keep pace with the expectations of their citizens and deliver on the promise of the digital age. Data-driven approaches are particularly effective for meeting those expectations and rethinking the way governments and citizens interact. This report highlights the important role data can play in creating conditions that improve public services, increase the effectiveness of public spending and inform ethical and privacy considerations. It presents a data-driven public sector framework that can help countries or organisations assess the elements needed for using data to make better-informed decisions across public sectors.

Available as HTML or a PDF

Digital Government in Chile – Digital Identity

October 1, 2019 / / 0 Comments

In a world increasingly driven by digital transformation, governments are navigating the complexities of verifying identity in an online environment. Chile is one of the leading countries when it comes to digital government in Latin America but wants to build on that progress by tackling digital identity.

This was the first occasion on which I worked with an external consultant to complete a publication at the OECD. They had already been working on this for a while before I joined so as with the Data-Driven Public Sector working paper, I picked up a piece that was already quite well advanced.

Unfortunately on this occasion that meant I ended up having to do quite a bit of rewriting and rewiring of the content to make sure we were giving the most value to the Government of Chile. I also wrote an additional chapter that in the end wasn’t included here. Edit: It subsequently came to inform work done for the G20 and the OECD Recommendation on the Governance of Digital Identity.

This study tries to detail all the elements that need to be thought about in terms of the roadmap towards implementing effective digital identity in Chile, drawing on the comparative experience of 13 countries.

Available as a HTML publication or a PDF

What’s the TL;DR?

This paper explores how Chile can implement a fully functional digital identity system that transforms how citizens prove who they are in a digital world. By building on existing national infrastructure, Chile can streamline identity management while ensuring long-term financial and political support.

An Analytical Framework for Digital Identity

This report doesn’t just focus on Chile in isolation, the Chile study draws on the experiences of Austria, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, India, Italy, Korea, New
Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom and Uruguay to establish a robust framework. The framework we’ve developed assesses everything from national identity infrastructure and adoption levers to transparency and monitoring. It allows Chile to not only evaluate its progress but also ensure its model is positioned for future scalability and international interoperability.

A chart outlining key components of digital identity (DI) initiatives, divided into four main sections: 1. Foundations for DI (National identity infrastructure, DI policy, Governance and leadership), 2. Digital identity solutions (DI platform, Browser-based solutions, Smartcards, Mobile devices, Biometrics), 3. Policy levers and adoption (Legal and regulatory framework, Funding and enforcement, Government services, Private sector services, Enablers and constraints), and 4. Transparency and monitoring (Citizen control of their data, Performance data, Impact assessment).

Chile’s Foundations: Leveraging the Cédula de Identidad

Chile has a strong foundation in its existing Cédula de Identidad and ClaveÚnica systems. We think these can serve as the backbone for further development, eliminating the need to reinvent the wheel. We hope that this means Chile can move quite quickly, building on its strengths while simplifying access to digital services for both citizens and businesses.

The road(map) ahead

This report is more than just a technical guide—it’s a roadmap for how Chile can establish itself as a global leader in digital identity. The recommendations provide the building blocks to ensure that digital identity isn’t just about access, but about trust, empowerment, and seamless service delivery.

Chile has already made impressive strides, but with the right governance, collaboration, and long-term planning, its digital identity strategy can become a model for the region and beyond. As the study emphasises, digital identity is not just a technical solution – it’s a societal transformation.

Policy recommendations

The Recommendations are designed to ensure Chile’s Digital Identity efforts are sustainable and impactful. Here are the most critical points:

  • Build Chile’s Digital Identity on the existing infrastructure provided by the Civil Registry Service of Chile (Servicio de Registro Civil e Identificación, SRCeI) and the Cédula de Identidad. As a result Chile does not need to pursue the generation of validated identities with the private sector.
  • Ensure the focus on Digital Identity within the Government’s Digital Transformation Strategy is sustainable through the provision of long term financial and political commitment.
  • Identify or create a senior responsible role with responsibility to shape and deliver identity according to the vision established by the Government’s Digital Transformation Strategy.
  • Consider the design of identity management (both physical and digital) as an end-to-end process throughout a citizen’s life from birth, through life and at death. This should consider the future possibilities of technology in the physical identity card, creating the conditions to iterate the service, and ensure a clear understanding of the needs of users both within and outside government.
  • Prioritise development of ClaveÚnica to support putting the citizen in control of their data and being able to grant, and revoke, permissions to access and use it.
  • Reach an understanding of the identity needs for businesses and develop a shared roadmap with the relevant organisations for the future state of Digital Identity in general. This may need to include the convergence of business and citizen Digital Identity and the transition of users to consolidate usage around a single approach.
  • Identify priority private sector services for the use of ClaveÚnica and establish a working partnership to ensure ClaveÚnica works for the private sector as well as the public sector.
  • Establish the adequate legal and regulatory framework to manage the use of
    ClaveÚnica credentials to access private sector services, particularly where that opens the possibility of personal data being reused.
  • Explore with regional partners how interoperability of identity can facilitate crossborder services and meets the needs of Chilean residents abroad.
  • Use the expansion of ClaveÚnica as an opportunity to provide citizens with digital literacy and digital skills training through ChileAtiende and other face to face locations whilst people are activating their ClaveÚnica for the first time.
  • Include Digital Identity as an explicit topic in spend controls, quality assurance processes,
    design guidelines and training and capacity building. This is to maximise awareness and adoption within government and avoid the development of duplicate solutions.
  • Make funding available to meet the needs of government teams in seeing
    ClaveÚnica as a reliable and respected service. This should ensure the design of ClaveÚnica’s technical solution is easy to implement and supported by ongoing reference materials, guidance and, where necessary, consultancy. It should also include the necessary support to service teams in producing clear cost-benefit analysis and rationale for identifying return on investment when making business cases for implementation and adoption.
  • Review the mechanisms by which public agencies agree to exchange data and
    provide guidance and boilerplate templates to support a more efficient process. This should complement efforts to implement interoperability standards across both legacy and newly developed systems.
  • Identify Key Performance Indicators relating to the time and cost involved in
    providing non-Digital Identity enabled services to provide a baseline for measuring, comparing and demonstrating the benefits of implementing Digital Identity. Publish this as Open Government Data and within the performance dashboards detailing the quality of service provision in Chile.

The blurb

In our interactions with the people we know we don’t give any thought to the proof of their identity. When we meet someone for the first time we trust they are who they say they are. Sometimes an introduction is brokered by a mutual, trusted, acquaintance who knows both parties. However, in our transactional dealings with government there is a greater expectation – and need – to be able to prove who we are, where we live and what we can access. The provision of digital identity (DI) is critical to government ambitions for transforming the quality of public services.

This study discusses Chile’s experience of DI alongside a comparison of 13 OECD countries, and aims to support the Government of Chile in developing and enhancing their approach to the development of DI as a piece of core digital government infrastructure and an enabler of seamless service delivery. The study uses a framework that covers the foundations for identity in terms of existing national identity infrastructure, policies and governance, the technical solutions that have been explored, the factors which impact adoption, and the ways in which DI can empower citizens through greater control of their data, transparency and measurement of impact.

Available as a HTML publication or a PDF

Digital Government Review of Panama

September 20, 2019 / / 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.

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

May 17, 2019 / / 3 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:

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The impact of digital government on citizen well-being

May 15, 2019 / / 1 Comment

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:

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Fragile states and digital foundations

October 1, 2015 / / 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.

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Pride (In the name of GOV.UK)

December 23, 2014 / / 1 Comment

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 / / 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.

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Local government digital service and the GDS design principles

June 19, 2014 / / 4 Comments
This entry is part 7 of 7 in the series Local government digital service

This is the final entry in a series of blogposts unpacking my opinions about the local government digital service debate. In the first post I set out my opinion that a single entity with the mandate and resource to address the common needs of the public is overdue; in the second I wondered about what that might mean from a democratic point of view; my third wondered about the distinction between building and buying services and my fourth explored how this might work in practice. I hope it goes without saying that I don’t claim to have all the answers and want to know where my assumptions are completely barmy!

In this series of posts I’m expressing an opinion. I find the idea persuasive and the need obvious for a local government digital service. I’m certainly not claiming to have all the answers! I think your position on this matter will have a large amount to do with whether you think Baroness Lane-Fox’s cry of “revolution not evolution” is as appropriate in the local context as it was centrally. I believe it is. Happily, local government doesn’t need to revolt from scratch – GDS doesn’t have all the answers but we’ve got some very useful experience about trying to bring all the things together. I think the GDS design principles are brilliant and so to conclude I’m going to think about what they might mean in a local context.

Start with needs*

*user needs not government needs

Local governments have different priorities, different political makeups, different challenges and different histories. They are all unique. And our experiences as citizens can’t be separated from the characteristics of where we live.

But are our needs unique?

The Local Government Services List says not always. It’s imperfect but it is a helpful starting point for the user needs of a resident in any given postcode: if services or information can be described in a consistent fashion then why can’t they be surfaced and accessed in a consistent fashion?

Do less

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