Software platform for Government

Platforms have been disrupting the economic world in the last one decade. Players like Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, WhatsApp, Uber, Ola and many more have redefined the way businesses have been done. Platforms are redefining the way we are now living our life. We are now dependent on platforms to do even our day to day activities like getting information, moving from one place to another, eating out, planning our vacation, business travels, and doing our day to day activities in our work places.

This shift in our daily life now mandates the Government also to move to platforms. The Government should now think of specialized software platform that brings together the citizens, government officials, vendors who offer services to government & also people representatives like Ministers.The need for such a platform is becoming underlined. Let me refer to such a Software Platform for Government as SPG.

SPG should be a specialized platform that is specially made to meet the demands and objective of the Government. A software product or platform that has been made for corporations may not suit this need.  Just like corporations required ERP to increase their capabilities and hence their profits, the SPG should be made for Government to increase the service levels to the people.

Today, efficient software applications run in almost all departments as silos. The first objective of an SPG should be to aggregate master data about officials, people, places & services. This should be integrated with apps running in all departments. Meaningful information can be derived only after this first step is achieved. This can bring down redundancies that can save thousands of dollars for every department.

Let me explain this with an example. Let us consider the case of an officer in Government who has been transferred from department to another. This one act now has to be recorded or changed in hundreds of software applications across the Government because each app will be working with its own master. This is going to cost hundreds of man days resulting in huge cost. In many cases this leads to software apps being not up to date and being scrapped and redeveloped. This again leads to huge spend.

Now, if all apps are referring to a master that is part of the SPG, a change in one place will reflect across apps and hence lead to super efficiency at a fraction of a cost. 

As this is a huge topic and has remarkable impact on IT in Government, I will be writing more on this in coming weeks.