What can be learned from Digital Government Units around the world?
The evolution of Digital Government Units (DGUs) is a topic of interest to governments seeking to digitally transform government services. The first "e-government" programs were often shaped by New Public Management (NPM) and the trend towards governments outsourcing IT functions to the private sector. This resulted in lower digital capability inside government and frequently led to long-term contracts with favoured suppliers that had diminishing levels of utility and value for money.
At this time, digital procurement was frequently impacted by siloed government structures, due to NPM's preference for decentralization. Unfortunately, this fragmented approach frequently resulted in disparate digital systems across government and poor cross agency interoperability.
A number of countries began to respond to the evident downsizes of the NPM approach. In the UK the Government Digital Service (GDS) was created (2011) as an attempt to shift toward innovative government digital services. GDS became a global leader, prompting the establishment of DGUs worldwide, such as the United States Digital Service (USDS) and the Australia's Digital Transformation Agency (DTA).
DGUs evolved as governments focused on addressing digital deficiencies and transforming public digital practices. Political leadership became a crucial component in many jurisdictions and led to the creation of more DGUs globally.
Examples of DGU's that could be reviewed include:
United States - 18F: Digital service delivery | Home (gsa.gov)
Australia - Digital Transformation Agency (dta.gov.au)
United Kingdom - Government Digital Service - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Denmark - Agency for Digital Government (digst.dk)
New Zealand - Home | NZ Digital government
Canada - Government in a digital age - Canada.ca
This discussion reflects on the findings of Clarke's (2020) 'Digital government units: what are they, and what do they mean for digital era public management renewal? article to consider DGUs to understand the contextual grounding, governance structures, resources, and what this means for public management more generally.
Digital Government Units
DGUs are fundamentally focused on reforming government digital services. In the realm of digital-era public management, DGUs across the world frequently share a common approach to reform that used contemporary best practice digital service design and management. This was underpinned by a departure from the typical government IT model prevalent in the 1980's through to the 2000s that was recognised to be responsible for e-government failure.
This new approach incorporated terms such as "agile," "platform," and "user experience" which reflected the ideas of the tech sector. These ideas were introduced into government practice and became key aspects of the DGU shifting away from outdated models and embrace of the opportunities of contemporary digital service design.
The approaches adopted by Digital Government Units
A visible component adopted by DGUs has been to challenge the traditional 'waterfall' approaches frequently used within government. Instead, DGU's encouraged agile, user-centric methodologies. This agile approach promoted the development of prototypes and continual improvement based on user experience. This contrasted to the waterfall model which usually utilised long timeframes and internal development premised on carefully defined government requirements. The DGUs' accentuated the ideas of 'design thinking and used approaches such as releasing iterative versions of new offerings and refining them based on user interactions and feedback.
Another feature of the new approach relates to procurement. By building in-house solutions, DGUs sought to avoid the need for external procurement and the usual reliance on outsourced IT capability. There is a level of pragmatism here too however, with some digital categories still procured in a more traditional fashion (i.e. usually proprietary products or services) alongside open source solutions which supports breaking down large contracts into components and enabling a more competitive marketplace.
The DGU methodology further advocates for open standards and adopting a 'platform-based' approach to support interoperability of digital services across government. This model is often described as the "intelligent centre/devolved delivery" model that seeks to aggregate overall demand centrally while disaggregating supply in single agencies.
The new digital government methodology seeks to differentiate its physical, organisational, and cultural spaces to create a 'startup' like feel that operates outside and challenges the traditional bureaucratic constraints. The underlying premise is a greater orientation towards 'delivery' (see "Delivery is the strategy" - U.S. Digital Service - 18f).
At a broader level, DGU's also seek to influence the wider government bureaucracy by promulgating the 'digital' operational model and philosophy. This can occur informally due to the different kinds of professionals of varying backgrounds who are attracted to work in DGUs. This culture frequently challenges traditional public sector roles and culture and promotes a more agile, user-centered approach and questions governance structures, powers, and the way resources are utilised.
Digital Government Units - governance structures, authorities, and resource use
DGU's usually exhibit a different approach to governance structures, authorities, and resources allocation. Although most DGU's are placed in a central administrative location, there is variance in the allocation of budget, staff numbers, and their specific authorities.
In the US the 18F has a relatively modest budget and workforce versus the more substantial budget and workforce in the UK's GDS. The 18f operates as an in-house consultancy, that is funded on a project-by-project, cost-recovery basis, rather than the more typical funding arrangement of the GDS. This does have an impact on the characteristics and roles and capacities within the broader landscape of digital government transformation.
On one hand, the centralized control approach enables a strong, top-down model, with standard setting and the exertion of direct influence. In contrast, more diffuse governance over digital initiatives dispersed among various agencies does mean DGUs struggle to influence digital strategies and resource allocation. Here the approach is more to offer support and guidance without the power to dictate matters like hiring or spending.
The benefits and risks of different approaches to Digital Government Units
It is evident that DGU's need to demonstrate value to a government to ensure ongoing support. Cost savings and service enhancements are often prioritized as 'low-hanging fruit' to showcase early success. Longer term, more complex public sector challenges have been harder to come by.
The governance models of DGUs, whether top-down control or through diffuse leadership are hence clearly an important determinant. The optimal model for a country will be highly variable based upon its context and ability to embed a whole-of-government management. In the UK, the GDS encountered department level resistance to a top-down approaches. Each country needs to understand its starting position and the effectiveness of different cross government models in fostering collaboration and reform.
DGUs face threats from a number of sources and for different motivations. Technology firms and suppliers will see a more efficient centrally coordinated approach as a direct threat to their ability to 'clip the ticket multiple times across government agencies'. Individual agencies and senior officials will see DGU's as a challenging their control of budgets as will short sighted political leaders who want to make decisions within particular portfolios.
These threats to DGU's need to be openly talked about and worked through in order to explore alternative models of digital government that work for more stakeholders. In saying that, some sacred cows and vested interests may need to be challenged in order to move government forward.
There are possibly also issues around blurred accountabilities with DGUs reshaping digital services and infrastructure. On one hand shared accountability structures can enable more data sharing and interoperability across government agencies. Conversely, however this creates new challenges around ethical data governance and data sharing, decision making, and the clash between user-centric principles and bureaucratic accountability.
Conclusion - Digital Government Units
Digital technologies offer significant opportunities to governments wanting to modernise the delivery of public services. Unfortunately, however, governments frequently lag behind due to technical debt and underlying issues with governance, funding, and capability.
Digital Government Unit have evolved as a means to address some of these challenges. Clarkes article highlights four key issues for further attention including:
Where DGUs' are successful - considering governing contexts and underlying public management challenges. It is helpful to keep monitoring other jurisdictions to assess how alternative machinery of government arrangements work.
Comparing the top-down models with the diffuse leadership approaches. While all jurisdictions will start with different configurations, they can over time move towards similar models (i.e. centralised or diffuse) - hence, it is necessary to understand what advantages and disadvantages each carry.
External threats and accountability challenges pose risks to DGUs' sustainability. Following a delivery-first, user-centric, agile model with hierarchical as well as bureaucratic accountabilities is a balancing act. Open discussion about these threats will enable the development of pragmatic 'win-win' solutions.
More research needs to be undertaken to enhance the understanding of DGUs and how they need to be governed and managed in the wider context of public sector reform.
#DigitalGovernmentUnits #lessonsfrom digitalGovernmentUnits
References
Amanda Clarke (2020) Digital government units: what are they, and what do they mean for digital era public management renewal?, International Public Management Journal, 23:3, 358-379, DOI: 10.1080/10967494.2019.1686447
About 18F - We help other government agencies build, buy, and share technology products. 18F is a team of designers, software engineers, strategists, and product managers within the General Services Administration. We collaborate with other agencies to fix technical problems, build products, and improve public service through technology. https://guides.18f.gov/
Digital Transformation Agency (dta.gov.au) The DTA is responsible for strategic and policy leadership on Whole-of-Government and shared information and communications technology (ICT) investments and digital service delivery.
Government Digital Service
GDS is here to make digital government simpler, clearer and faster for everyone. Good digital services are better for users, and cheaper for the taxpayer. About the Government Digital Service - Government Digital Service (blog.gov.uk)
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