Platformland #23

Hello!

Welcome to Platformland - a newsletter about next generation digital public services and government as a platform. If you find it useful please share platformland.xyz with your team. If not, you can unsubscribe here.

- Richard

Platform news

• 🇺🇸 USA.gov has moved out of beta.
• 🇦🇺 Western Australia is adding digital credentials for seniors card, recreational boat and fishing licenses to it’s Service WA app.
• 🏥 Google has a new health platform that uses AI and digital forms to automate eligibility for access to healthcare in the US (see video). Will automation like this entrench the absence of universal services?
• 📑 The Contract for Data Collaboration has published and international archive of example data sharing agreements. It “aims to improve understanding of the legal conditions that can enable effective data collaboration”. (It also includes a ‘Contractual Wheel of Data Collaboration’, which sounds like a dystopian game show).
• 🇬🇧 The UK government’s Digital Marketplace procurement platform appears to be being wound down. Separately, the UK is developing a Government Data Catalogue. So, one in, one out.
• 🇬🇧 The Target Operating Model for the post Brexit UK border has been published. It includes a single platform for dealing with EU imports and exports (aka a Single Trade Window). It says a supplier will be appointed in spring 2023. Target Operating Models are generally an exercise in false certainty, hopefully this one is not. Here’s The Grocer magazine’s summary of the proposals.
• 🇮🇳 The rules around the private sector use of Aadahaar are being relaxed to include “promoting ease of living for residents and enabling better access to services for them”. This file shows the proposed changes in red. Campaigners from the Rethink Aadhaar campaign argue this may be crossing a red line set in the 2018 Supreme Court judgement.
• 🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia has announced a Whole of Government Platforms policy. Ever wondered how platform government might play out in the context of an absolute monarchy?
• 🇰🇷 Korea has set up a Presidential Committee of Digital Platform Government. You have to wonder how the centralised mandates like this are going to perform against countries attempting an incremental approach to platform government.

Seamless design Designing the seams