Tim O'Reilly: Gov 2.0: It’s All About The Platform

Hey, this is an important post by Tim: Gov 2.0: It’s All About The Platform

He's one of the leaders helping people fix our Federal gov't.

... the real secret of success in Government 2.0 is thinking about government as a platform. If there’s one thing we learn from the technology industry, it’s that every big winner has been a platform company: someone whose success has enabled others, who’ve built on their work and multiplied its impact. Microsoft put “a PC on every desk and in every home,” the internet connected those PCs, Google enabled a generation of ad-supported startups, Apple turned the phone market upside down by letting developers loose to invent applications no phone company would ever have thought of. In each case, the platform provider raised the bar, and created opportunities for others to exploit.

There are signs that government is starting to adopt this kind of platform thinking.

Behind Federal CIO Vivek Kundra’s data.gov site is the idea that government agencies shouldn’t just provide web sites, they should provide web services. These services, in effect, become the government’s SDK (software development kit). The government may build some applications using these APIs, but there’s an opportunity for private citizens and innovative companies to build new, unexpected applications. This is the phenomenon that Jonathan Zittrain refers to as “generativity“, the ability of open-ended platforms to create new possibilities not envisioned by their creators.

Comments

[NV]

Hi Craig,

Government Services Platform on the web is a profound idea especially for a country like India.

Glad to see that you promote such a vision of Government.

I live in India and understand the significance of such a concept.

I just read about you in Wired.

Craigslist is not built on vision, it is built on Values. Values are bigger than vision.

NV