Memorandum – GaaP in Mass

                                                       Memorandum 10-05-2018

              To: Hon. Charlie Baker, Governor, Commonwealth of Massachusetts

              From: Brian H, CIO, Commonwealth of Massachusetts

              Re: Proposed framework and feasibility of Government as a Platform

The purpose of this memorandum is to briefly outline Government as a Platform (Gaap) as it works in concept, and to provide you with a framework for the option of adopting the practice in Massachusetts’ public infrastructure.

Traditionally, the relationship between a democratic government and the public it serves is transactional, rather than collaborative. The government determines the services it will offer based on input from its people as well as what it itself deems to be in the public interest. The public pays taxes and receives those set services through the development and delivery mechanisms of the government.

GaaP is a more inclusive and adaptive system that has the potential to increase capability and center the relationship around the user (public). It is a system by which government agencies and departments enable the people to use public data and provide infrastructure for the development of tools and services that they want to get out of their public institutions.

For context, a common analogy is the Apple iPhone. When it was initially released, it had a set 16 apps which were designed internally by Apple. Customers purchased the phone and used its applications as installed. This is the traditional government model.

When Apple decided to make the iPhone a platform and the tools for development were made available to the public so they could make their own applications and have them be available to all Apple users around the world, they transformed the iPhone from a product to a mobile platform and vastly increased its capability and appeal. This is the goal of Gaap.

Democratic governments have a responsibility to represent and interact with the public they serve. What is sure in the coming years is that governments and citizens need to speak the same language. As industry and the general public fully utilize technology (in this case referring to things such as collective intelligence, crowdsourcing, cloud computing, social media and the like), so too must the government utilize these services.

GaaP already exists and is successful in other countries, as well as in this one. Indeed, opening up weather and geographic data collected by the government for the public to build tools with has been successful in the United States for decades, and the successes of the concept is relatively accepted on both ends of the political spectrum.

In the case of Massachusetts, there is much room for GaaP to be adopted. In order to do so, however, there are some criteria that needs to be met. For example, there would need to be an iterative investment cycle. The proposed $1B USD would likely be sufficient, but a lump sum investment and a timeline with milestones would not be effective.The recommended practice is for myself as CIO to put together a small and segregated team. I would identify those who could collectively make for an innovative ecosystem. We would need a few unique authorities, open access to data, healthy and frequent communication with you, as well as sample users to receive constant feedback during development. The process would be highly iterative and fast, building on success and requesting funding injections, and terminating failures quickly. We would look for developers to use their creativity to build some tools on the platform to show its potential. Basically, we would select one project and adopt an agile development process to it.

In regards to selection criteria, we must start with the user, looking at the public and their behavioral characteristics. We should look to isolate a particular area of Massachusetts Government that experiences a lot of pain points, the easing of which would have significant public and social impact. As well as this, it would have to be a project that initial analysis suggest we can solve. The goal is to rethink institutions, making them more digitally native from the ground up. There is no point in investing in a long and difficult project simply to update a current institution.

Wherever we are successful, we can adopt the practice to other institutions and slowly scale laterally. Investing $1B USD of taxpayer funds in an attempt at wide scale reformation in the State Government is not advisable. We should start small, constantly iterate and adapt to test results and build on the successes only.

Options for piloting: Accordingly, the following are a few institutions from which we could select one to begin with;

Registry of Motor vehicles (RMV)

• Significant pain points and inefficiency. Fixes would be very well received by the people and have significant impact. Potential tools that could be built with road and vehicle data are numerous.

Massachusetts Bureau of Geographic Information (MassGIS)

• Potential for new services that help in emergency response, real-estate research, environmental planning and management, transportation planning, economic development, engineering services

Dept. of Housing and Community Development (DHCD)

• Potential for new ways of interacting with community services and funding opportunities that are maybe not well known. Data could be used for community watch services, finding funding for social events and fairs etc.

Final thoughts: Given the nature of this process and the fact that versatility is built into it, standard governance models will be ineffective or obstructive. For example, unlike many traditional development processes, there should not be a governance structure that requires a roadmap upfront, nor milestones. To manage this processes, I recommend an adaptive style of innovation management. Restructuring and rethinking the Government of Massachusetts as a platform will be a process with no end date. It will be a process in constant progress and the public will be constantly increasing their government’s effectiveness as a service provider. Our job would be to build the platform from which innovation and new services can be constantly launched.

We can define success constantly by feedback and observing the extent to which the Massachusetts public engages with the new platform and the extent to which new services are born from it and enjoyed.