There must be other people who also react to the notion of services from the public sector. What exactly are services from the public sector? How do these services compare to commercially provided services? Admittedly, the term "services" is overloaded, but to me - these "services" are just the provisioning of citizen rights. Are the public sector services actually a platform for service production? Something that allows commercial service providers to develop deeply engaging and experiential -- and mainly trust-based services
NHIN Direct is one such platform effort for the health sector. I am posting this here and not on my health and wellness blog because NHIN Direct appears to take the form of the Societal Digital Infrastructure that I have talked about for a long time. This platform can be duplicated for the education sector and other government-driven industries.
Tim O'Reilly provides excellent commentary on NHIN in the context of a wider topic of Government as a platform. In fact, he refers to Dr Halamka's excellent post that goes into more detail. I believe that as platforms emerge, entire sectors have the potential to innovate. The role of such public sector services are also catalytic.
Service innovation could become mainstream activity for commercial and public sector enterprises - project portfolio management is the (somewhat dull) practice most likely to absorb service innovation practices. But, how should enterprises open their practices to include external partners? The answer is far from obvious. Lot of work to be done there. And how can this spread to the masses where the seeds of innovation originate and germinate?
Consumer/citizen-centered design will eventually get there ... I'm even more convinced than before.
Note: This post was started on the 28.2 but completed on 15.3
