Leaving the metaphors behind

The internet changes everything. For good and for ill, it collapses distance and it compresses time. As a society, we’ve barely begun to respond to its impact. And governments? The vast majority have frantically ‘added internet’ to their existing public services, despite these public services being conceived in an analogue era.

Only a couple of governments are fundamentally redesigning their public services that make the most of the internet’s positive affordances - real-time, joined-up, transparent, mutable. The rest of us are all busy making faster horses.

As explained in Richard Pope’s extraordinary new book Platformland - an anatomy of next generation public services, simply ‘adding internet’ has often resulted in coldly transactional public services. These online services might be more efficient for the government, but they are frequently worse at responding to the oft-messy realities of real people’s lives. Too often our digital engagement with the state is purely transactional, not relational.

If your circumstances fit neatly, these new digital services can seem slick. But if ‘computer says no’, you can get totally screwed, with little recourse to effective redress. If you are fostering a child, please do not try to apply for their first passport online. It won’t end well. Sadly, it is those who need government support the most who suffer the most. Our faster digital horses unseat vulnerable riders.

I used to think that the reason for this was a lack of imagination. To some extent I still do. But reading Platformland taught me that what we’ve also been missing is a new vocabulary - or more precisely, a new anatomy. The secret to appreciating this book is right there in the title.

Until now, public servants have literally not had the words and concepts to describe, deconstruct and debate what is now possible; how we should use digital technology to improve and reinvent public services, not just plonk the old ones online in the name of efficiency.

There’s a particularly powerful section in the opening chapter about dangers of using pre-digital metaphors to describe digital capabilities that are simply beyond the language of the physical. There is no metaphor that can describe what you can do with a modern database, let alone an LLM. We have to embrace and understand what was previously unimaginable and describe what was previously indescribable.

If it does nothing else (and it does a lot else), Platformland gives us that missing vocabulary. The concepts it describes are - literally - an anatomy of the concepts and patterns from which an enlightened government could create natively digital public services. Public services that served the public, did the hard work for you, that embraced relationships between people at its core. A relational digital state, which rebalances the power dynamic in favour of the citizen.

I’ve been able to apply for my plastic driving licence online for years. But the next step is not to simply digitise the driving licence. Reading Platformland helps you appreciate that what is needed next is a political, societal debate as to how the policy intent currently served by a physical driving licence might be better served in a world of digital platforms, where the vast majority of people are carrying internet-connected, sensor-loaded supercomputers in their pockets.

At times reading Platformland felt almost vertiginous; it’s like reading a book from the future. Yet it grounds its vision with a range of practical examples of how countries like India are starting to use these new concepts to serve the needs of billions of people. Concepts like digital credentials, data as infrastructure and accountable automation.

Yet it is far from being starry-eyed; there are some excellent passages on the essential checks and balances needed to help make this immensely powerful digital public infrastructure tyranny-proof.

These new concepts are not always simple ideas to digest. But it’s worth fully engaging your brain, and investing the time to re-read anything that doesn’t land the first time.

The payoff is to see the landscape of public services with entirely fresh eyes, and a renewed sense of energy, possibility and responsibility. It’s not often a generation gets the chance to reinvent the state. We are desperately in need of wise sherpas like Richard, encouraging boldness leavened with empathy and an awareness of all the potential downsides.

Platformland is a triumph, something will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever had the privilege of working with Richard Pope. He was easily the most influential thinker and doer when setting up the Government Digital Service, where he was the second person hired. Since then his thinking and his writing have inspired many public servants all over the world. This book distills all that wisdom.

If you’re interested in the future of public services, you simply must read this book. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Platformland is available from publishers LPP for £18.99.

Also available for Kindle and from Amazon.