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<aside> 🛠 See other units in the syllabus
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This is a detailed breakdown of how David Eaves, a Lecturer at the University College London's Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (UCL IIPP), teaches the contents of Unit 2 of the open access syllabus developed by Teaching Public Service in the Digital Age. Read how part two of Unit 2 is taught here.
This page is part of a series of twenty-five classes that David developed originally for the Harvard Kennedy School's master and executive education programs, where he taught for eight years, and are now taught at UCL's master and applied learning programs.
We believe presenting diverse ways to teach the syllabus will help others adopt and teach the material in a range of contexts. See here how Konstanz University's Prof Ines Mergel teaches the same unit.
This page was developed for university faculty who teach public administrators or master's levels students in public policy and public administration. This material may also be suitable for teaching to upper year undergraduates.
The goal of this class to outline a vision of government as a platform.
For the public – and certainly for innovators – Government is often is structured into functional departments, each with their own firmly defined bureaucracies, policies and culture. This structure facilitates accountability within the structure and makes collaboration across and outside of government difficult. Moreover while individual agencies may have distinct missions and policies, many of the underlying functions they perform - such as validating the identity of a citizens, collecting or distributing funds - are shared. Could these common functions be architected in a way to make it easier to collaborate across government as well as lower the cost for any given part of government to achieve its mission? This is the core of platform thinking.
To convey this idea, David draws the parallel between government systems and highways to explain the benefits, opportunities as well as the drawbacks and risks, of platform thinking in the public sector.
<aside> 📖 By the end of this class students should be able to: Explain ****that digital systems are made of components which are connected together to solve problems. Outline a vision of Government as a platform.
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<aside> 💡 This class touches upon each of the eight competencies, but has a specific focus on four of them: Competency 7 - Data Competency 3 - Multidisciplinary Competency 5 - Change Competency 2 - Risks
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As they work through the readings in advance, students should have in mind the following questions to help them prepare for class: