#digitalgovtip #4: Think ‘exponential’ when it comes to digital government services.

#digitalgovtip shares quick advice to inspire, empower and help governments move their digital efforts forward.

When we talk about digital government services, there’s often a particular aspect that’s emphasized, such as the technology, procurement process or delivery model. Rarely do we hear a holistic vision for how to execute from an exponential perspective and bring digital agility to scale for civic-focused institutions.

While we’re beginning to see the emergence of digital services teams, the government technology community is still largely executing technology at a more bespoke, expensive approach to service delivery. This works for large organizations, such as federal and (some) state agencies and large cities, however, as the organization, and its resources, get smaller, that bespoke, expensive approach isn’t an option.

These smaller organizations must think exponential when it comes to digital government.

Exponential digital government

I’ve been working on my thoughts around ‘Exponential Digital Government‘ and have started to outline principles and a general technology approach to help explain a vision for how this works.

Principles

Before taking a technology-first prescription to digital government services, I wanted to create some fundamental operating principles that serve as a foundation to help drive technology decision-making. Here’s where I am currently.

Government technology should be:

• Sustainable
• Scalable
• Open
• Evolving
• Empowered

Technology

From a technology perspective, I wanted to think about how best to execute on these principles. Here’s where I am currently.

Continuously improving, cost-effective government technology is:

• Platform-based
• Open source
• Extensible
• Data-enabled
• Software-as-a-service (+ OpenSaaS)

I’m continuing to refine this concept of exponential digital government and would love feedback from the community. Please feel free to add your comments to the deck. In the near future, I will publish a more refined, ‘final’ version.

Regardless of whether my initial draft is the perfect framework to adopt, remind yourself to think exponential when it comes to digital government services.

Related: Exponential Government from e.Republic’s Dustin Haisler and Paul Taylor.