Posts on Emerging Tech

What is government digitalisation and public innovation good for? Rather, who is it good for? In these past few days, I have participated in several powerful events, such as the Tallinn Digital Summit, on the acceleration of digital transformation and innovation in governments. A thought that kept recurring in my mind is that, as the pace of digital transformation accelerates as a structural trend akin of a “game changer,” it is important to remind ourselves...

New technologies, techniques and concepts are rapidly changing policing, border management and law enforcement across the world. For example: The Netherlands is taking a systems approach to community policing through multi-agency collaboration. The police, the public prosecutor’s office, victim support, and the probation service are all based at one single location, enabling them to handle complete cases more effectively. The city of Chula Vista, California have implemented drones as first…

On 22 June, I had the privilege of participating in the conference “Artificial Intelligence: What’s in it for the Public Sector?”, organised in Brussels by the European Commission, the Interoperability Unit of DG DIGIT and the Joint Research Centre. It brought together policymakers and experts to discuss the opportunities that artificial intelligence (AI) brings to accelerate governments’ digital transformation and improve the design and delivery of public services. The event was a…

Fast forward and imagine the year 2035. For almost three decades, social media – also known as ‘persuasive technology’ – platforms, in that they attempt to influence users’ attitudes and behaviours, have dominated global markets. But now, the fall of established tech giants is in full swing. In this hypothetical near future, people and governments around the world demanded change after experiencing the negative effects of persuasive technologies. In this new world, governments in…

Last week, the OPSI hosted a Rules as Code meet-up for government and inter-governmental organisation (IGO) officials. The meet-up was the first of several that the OPSI intends to host in support of a growing movement in public administration inspired by the promise of Rules as Code (RaC). We at OPSI believe in the promise of RaC as an emergent approach, something we explored in our RaC primer. We think that this is something which...

Since 2016, OPSI and the UAE Mohammed Bin Rashid Centre for Government Innovation (MBRCGI) have worked in partnership to surface key activities and case studies in public sector innovation, resulting in a series of annual reports on key innovation trends. However, this year is not a normal year, with 2020 being one of the most challenging years in most of our lifetimes. The COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly and drastically changed the daily lives of nearly...

Since late 2019, we have been working to answer the question “why hasn’t blockchain, and its underlying distributed ledger technology (DLT), made a bigger impact in the public sector?”. It has been over two years since OPSI published the report Blockchains Unchained: Blockchain Technology and its Use in the Public Sector, and over a year since the OECD Digital Government and Data Unit published the report State of the Art in the Use of Emerging...

Convening intentional conversations on crisis implications The crisis of this year has required governments at all levels around the world to respond and adapt. The COVID-19 crisis is unique in the sense that, while many individuals, communities and countries have suffered disproportionate impacts, there has also been a global, collective impact that has spared no one. There has been a terrible shock, one whose aftereffects will continue to be felt for some time. It is...