Platform and Government: reflexions
Lets start with the basics. What is a platform? Sounds easy right? Well it appears it’s not that simple. There are multiple definitions out there and specialists do not seem to agree on everything. That being said, a negotiation slash coding genius hiding at HKS as a lecturer in public policy came up with the following interesting definition.
A platform is a group of technologies that are used as a base upon which other applications, processes or technologies are developed. David Eaves
Imagine a set of overlapping layers, with the stratum at the base representing the platform, and the subsequent hosting services or their party applications;
From the definition above, we can deduct two great advantages of a platform:
- reduction of transaction costs
- enabling of new services (often from third parties)
Let’s consider Facebook for a second. The mega social network of 1.71 billion monthly active users started as a place to connect with people, friends and family, and quickly evolved into a platform, increasing significantly it’s number of users, as companies like Zynga plugged in successful games like mafia wars or farmville and generate multi million businesses.
Another example of successful platform would be the apple store. Can we imagine how would Apple made these significant progresses if it was not for third party applications? Is it even possible for the company, whatever their resources, to deliver that level of excellence? What would have been the cost?
What can governments learn from that?
In what follows, I will focus on the example of the Niger Tax Administration. They put online a web portal that was intended to provide information and allow users to access their services, and gain in efficiency.
In the reality, the website is closer to a static display than a platform. As I write these lines, 9 people in total, including me, are connected. Almost no service can be done online.
Now let’s imagine the Tax Administration inspires from successful platforms in the private and public sectors. By adopting a open approach, they could allow people to pay their monthly, quarterly and annual taxes online and save the hours spent in line at each deadline. The platform approach would allow accounting firms to develop interfaces from which they can directly work and compute their clients’ taxes. Moreover, the administration would gain in efficiency, and, with the time freed, focus on advising and adding value to users instead of administrative time consuming tasks.
The way forward
Platforms are certainly powerful ways for governments to look into the future. They allow better services to users, reduce transaction costs, foster co-creation, and improve integration. Several questions such as power balance, privacy or cyber security/responsibility are to be taken into account, but in the the big picture, the net gain is far superior, in almost all the cases.
As we commit our time, energy and talents to make the world a better place, let us consider efficient platforms as a way to bring the public sector to high levels of performance.
