Government as a platform - hype or real?

The Gov 2.0 Expo last month provided a wealth of knowledge about how governments can actually be transformed to serve as platforms. What I found interesting about the Expo -- I was not present, just following from a distance - was this sense of a huge social experiment under way. An experiment that has global implications. A lot of the themes presented were very inspiring, like Think Tank from the Expert Labs. Palantir is an interesting "information infrastructure" technology demonstrating the power of open data (data.gov and similar national data infrastructures).

These infrastructures and the apps that they are driving ought to get us rethinking how our societies function. O'Reilly says the Web 2.0 is not the redesign of the web, but stripping down the web to its essential core, similarly so for Government 2.0. Read and comment Tim O'Reilly's book Government as a platform. My comments hovered around Society 2.0 -- not a redesign of society, but getting back to basics for a more engaging and participative society.

From Expo, I found Tim's conversation with Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra very interesting. It's not that the views or ideas are so very radical or innovative. It's the fact that they are executing to a vision. A vision built on the potential of mass collaboration, tranparency and participation. The core of this vision in driven by something called the Open Government Directive. Simple stuff, not rocket science -- what impresses me is the execution -- and potentially world changing. Ten years from now we will be wondering how we functioned as a society without transparency, collaboration and participation.

See this very rich review of Expo.

From consumer-citizen to participant

Just as the global economy is making its recovery from the global financial crisis, we have the Euro-crisis on our hands. And adding to the excitement, the volcanic ash continues making business difficult for many industries on the continent. One can argue that the volcanic activity is unpredictable -- not so the financial crises. They are symptoms of society going into group-think and freely swallowing what is dished out by politicians and spin doctors. The Euro-crisis - PIIGS crisis is probably more appropriate -- was caused by the nations disregarding established guidelines set by the EU for managing debt and public spending.

If the US-led financial meltdown was attributed to "capitalism gone crazy", then the PIIGS crisis must be "socialism gone crazy". On the face of it, the answer in both cases seems to be stricter enforcement of the law for all including politicians! It is only reasonable to expect that players who have agreed on the ground rules stick to them. Or risk being expelled from the game. Yeah? by who? Maybe we should learn to govern overselves better - by participating. See my previous posts (here and here) where I commented the excellent film "Us Now".

I am not an economics expert, but these events are a cue for citizens to get more involved in how their lives are affected. Is there another option? Admittedly, getting involved is easier said than done - the time crunch, information-overload and complexity is challenging (my reflections here). We must ask for more participation and we need to start participating whereever possible.

The PIIGS crisis is driving austerity measures that threaten the stability of the welfare state. A welfare state reaching newer heights with expenses needed to serve a demanding population that is also living longer. Raising taxes is not going to help! We as citizens need to take more responsibility; we need to participate .... we need learn how to co-produce services. Government agencies regarding citizens as "customers" is misleading and hollow and sets false expectations - there is no 1:1 equivalence between the tax one pays and services received. We are better off if we get rid of the notion of "customer" in public services and focus on including the citizen in the design and delivery of services. Savvy commercial businesses are already advocating customer participation - and are going beyond self-service. Hopefully, the public sector agencies will create their own brand of participation.

But first, politicians and bureaucrats need to truly understand this fundamental shift of citizen participation. They must provide for the trust-infrastructure that encourages participation and drives transparency. Yep, more participatory democracy and less representative democracy.

Welfare 2.0?

Living in a welfare state, I am being increasingly convinced that the next level of welfare must embrace corporate social responsibility (CSR) – in a radically different way. Not very unlike the way that the Indian conglomerate Tata has demonstrated CSR over the years (see this recent article if you are not familiar with Tata).

This radically different way of societal welfare is not just for the developing world. In fact, social media is also empowering grassroot movements, increasing social engagement and making an impact in the developed world. I believe that the best reason to embrace embrace CSR is to alleviate the costs associated with providing quality care while simulatenously strengthening the network in the local community. The "state" - federated or centralized - can only provide care up to a certain point after which it becomes prohibitively expensive. And communities cannot outsource all aspects of care-giving without losing a bit of the feeling of community. (Aside: Robots for care-giving seem to be set to play a dominant role in care-giving in Japan but Sweden approaches the same issue differently. There is room for a combination - depending on demographics and societal practices - though my personal preference is for the Swedish model. I believe it can scale better in the developing world.)

I believe that for CSR to scale up and out, it requires a trusted societal digital infrastructure. An infrastructure that encourages the creation of businesses to provide for eg. care-based services or education services while also enforcing transparency. Transparency generates trust, and trust can be used to provide deeply experiential services for consumers and citizens - while also being of value for service providers. See this article for an analysis on the economic value of trust.

Are public services different from other services?

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

Open Source is more than free software

The open source movement has been popularised by the geeks, who benefited immensely from the collaborative power of the internet. The notion of open source has been around for centuries albeit in small communities where knowledge sharing was a way of life. The concept of bartering and peer production was given shape in the late 19th century. And in 2003, collaborative projects like Wikipedia emerged and have proven to be quite successful.

Yochai Benkler points out in his TED talk, that "social production" is the long term disprutive force that will challenge the players in the commercial market place. Benkler's book "The Wealth of Networks" is made available as a source for open discussion using Yale's annotation platform.

So as the Internet continues its growth, the notion of an open source is moving to other domains. Like the Open Architecture Network that provides solutions to a wider audience. Peer production is here to stay... and a key question is to figure how commercial players and the public sector would respond to this disruption.

Designing public services

I have earlier blogged about service design and last week at the 1st Nordic conference on Service Design and Service Innovation conference I met a number of very skilled people from different domains. It just reinforced my thinking about the need for a multi-disciplinary approach to address the challenges of designing services.

My own contribution on Day 2 was during the workshop on "Designing public services" was enlightening. My role was not as an expert in service design, but as a consumer-citizen; a c-c trying to make a case for participatory design. I am even more convinced that consumer-centered design is critical in the design of services and even more so in the design of public services. This blog was taglined "citizen-driven design. Shaping the agenda for Society 2.0" some years ago and my search for methods and practices for citizen involvement continues. It's not a question of "getting there" -- but more on evolving democratic processes to capture the "requirements" from citizens.

My presentation - that focused on scenarios for health care and wellness - was actually making a point around "capture of requirements". I used scenarios as a means to convey "requirements -- while making the point that we need to be more intention-oriented in understanding services. I view intentions as an abstraction above needs and requirements and suspect intention-orientation will open for citizen participation while also providing a means to "manage" the design process using conventional practices like "requirements management". Besides citizen participation, intention-orientation will also help unify practices from the different disciplines involved in service design.
So it is with some expectations I will be attending Dugnadssamfunnet 2.0 (Norwegian) arranged by the Ministry of Government Administration and Reform.

Just not had enough time to blog -- with so much happening on different fronts. I suspect my posts in the future will be something between micro-blogging and long blogposts. My Twitter feed can fill in the blanks (see right-hand-side column of this blog for Twitter updates).

As I make yet another attempt to scope a research proposal on the Digital Society, I am drawn by Larry Lessig's work and highlight two articles (1) lecture on new media is great because of great content on a relevant theme (2) post on citizen-funding vs public-funding. I find both these posts relevant for the discussion around "deep democracy" --- one where the grassroots are more involved; and where the role of a societal infrastruture is critical.

"Us Now" the film on grassroots democracy had a global webcast last week. The film touched on many topics, the most fascinating was about Ebbfleets United football club where owners can actually choose the team before each match. Interesting use of technology from MyFootball club. Hopefully the message of the film spreads to all corners of the world. What would be cool, is if the film could be sub-titled in a crowdsourced manner. (My tweet).

Just learned that Shashi Tharoor (ex under Secretary General of the UN) has won his seat in the Indian parliament. Last week he wrote and interesting article on the nature of "soft power". Definitely worth the read. The next few months in Indian politics look to be very interesting!

Us Now is definitely a film to watch for those of us interested in the way grassroots movements are exploiting collaborative technologies. Director Ivo Gomley has manged to capture many aspects and examples in the documentary. Also thanks to Sermo for making this happen.

After nearly 4 years of blogging on the topic of the Digital Society -- often times meandering out on to my technology-jaunts -- I have for the first time got a sense of this phenomenon -- Society 2.0 or "deep democracy" -- taking root. I could hardly contain my excitement watching the different examples. Was also busy tweeting to capture my thoughts for later blogging (some tweets in Norwegian).

The debate that followed the screening was not really a debate -- the speakers were more or less in agreement on most issues. Which is just fine. We got some "confirmation to proceed"; what is needed now is to sustain the level of discussion and find ways to uncover the real issues in making Society 2.0 happen. The general election in Sept this year is very tempting to try out some ideas to get the issue up on the table. Anyone out there with ideas?

In earlier posts, I talked about the need to get law-makers and businesses to get together. Watching the film today, I am convinced we must hurry if we are to give ourselves time to evolve our societies and influence the global world order over the next 10-20 years. I would like to see a multi-discplinary think-tank (TT) formed; comprising political scientists, social scientists, computer scientists and business organisations to name a few players. This TT should take no more than 6-9 months to propose a long-term approach (say 4-5 years) to revise some laws and policies for eg in areas like education, healthcare, civil law, welfare and employment. Make changes that are more favourable to this "deep democracy" we want to happen. This will not be a revolution, but a very fast evolution.

In earlier posts I talked about Norway as a test-bed for creating services for the digital world. I'm not quite sure right now. It appears that maybe Norway does not have "enough pain" to want to stretch itself to experiment with participative decision-making. I guess the old adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" holds true. However, I'm not giving up the thought completely. Two areas I'd love to see more work is in Education adn Health care.

Watch this space...

As I learn more about the current global financial crisis and watch the crisis unfold and expand, I cannot help thinking that the crisis is a stark reminder of our increasingly digital existence. The digital society is here and I sense we may have been able to avoid this crisis if we had some of the important bits like global governance in place.

Perhaps if consumers had been more proactive in demanding full traceability of their liability from their financial service providers, then the story could have been different. I believe a consumer-centered design of financial services could have made consumers think twice before taking on loans that they were unable to service.

With the uptake of telephony and commercial air travel our society has gradually gone global over the last 35 years or so. The advanced nature of digitisation of our business transactions has made it very easy to use services that are very complex on the inside but deceptively simple on the outside. Borrowing and lending have grown wildly and without any sense of "ownership", global governance nor traceability. The speed and lack of transparency have made this network of transactions impossible to manage -- at least from the perspective of avoiding negligence and fraud. This has happended despite the fact that the banking sector has a robust institute like the BIS that sets guidelines for monetary stability. However, BIS cannot enforce these guidelines -- that is left to the individual nations.

It is inconceivable that our physical society would have exploited the innovations of the industrial age without the standardisation brought on by national and international bodies like ISO. But, our digital society is still young but moving fast -- and I believe we have not yet even conceived the standards that are needed to enforce security, traceability and interoperability -- some of the key requirements for collaboration without friction. We are barely at the early stages of standards for technical interoperability, something that allows software to collaborate. We have not yet scratched the surface of semantic and organisational interoperability -- that what is needed for organisations to operate and govern in a consistent manner.

Commerce in the world is advancing, and with an increasing amount of value-creation coming from the service economy. Not just finance, but healthcare and education sectors. Interoperability is then a neccessary condition for good and effective governance, but this governance must be global -- not in the sense of a hierarchical "one global head" sense, but in a consensus-driven format -- not unlike the way the Internet is managed.

Can our political and business leaders work on creating this platform without stifling innovation and entrepreneurship? I believe the time is right for government and commercial players to collaborate in creating a platform for innovation for the service economy. And for consumer-citizens to be aware of their role in making this platform useful.

PS! In some earlier posts I refered to this platform as the "societal digital infrastructure"

Last week, on my blog on Digital wellbeing I posted about Medical Tourism as the next level of outsourcing. Having just returned from a trip to India, I could see how medical services were being increasingly commercialised and could relate to the analyses about the "business potential" of medical tourism.

Yesterday, I got to learn of a completely new area of outsourcing -- lifestyle outsourcing (my term). Calling this virtual gaming gold, this BBC article explains how gaming is becoming a means of livelihood for people in the developing world. Developing skills by playing games and then offering services to lift other players' skills to the next level is a source of income for many. Selling virtual goods for real money is another source of income.

"Neccessity is the mother of invention" is an old saying; the internet era will show us creative solutions to address the challenges of poverty.... at least this is what I hope for.

Meanwhile, I am studying the potential of teaching/tutoring outsourcing, and see some creative businesses like HeyMath and EduComp have already taken the service+software business model to the education space. The US' No Child Left Behind act is also driving the business opportunity.

Services without boundaries is here to stay ... Exploring new frontiers have always had an element of lawlessness. At some stage we will need rules and regulations to allow serious players to act. What can - or should - government and trade organisations do? or should the "market" decide? Standardisation has a significant role to play here.

Last year I posted about Microsoft's global launch of Unified Communication. And today, I read Mary Jo's post on Echoes. Echoes is evidently Microsoft's attempt at Unified Communications for the consumer. What is strange, is that just this morning I was installing a VOiP handset I received from my broadband operator (an upgrade of my broadband package). The handset was working in a few seconds but when it came to personalising it, I gave up after entering the first 3 names in the address book. When my wife commented "Why does'nt our broadband subscription come with a networked address book?". Ah ha!

Well, let me start with my user-context. I have all my contacts stored in Outlook, I can synchronize them with my phone via my PC or via the corporate email server (Exchange). I use WiFi, GPRS, Infrared or Bluetooth as the available communication protocols/technology to do this. I use web-access to my email server to access my contacts should I be fortunate enough to leave my phone at home.

Now, here comes the hard part. I would like to share some of those contacts with my family - a few business contacts but mostly family and friends. I can do it today but it requires everyone to have a degree in computer science. I would have expected my Telco to provide me with tools to make this painless and in the process actually have gotten me as a sales agent. Get my social network closer to them (the Telco). But, the story is sad. The solutions offered are so difficult to use, they are hardly used (some are really fantastic). But then, Telcos are so caught up in thinking as network people they forget the value add that usable software brings.

So, I am happy that Microsoft is "pushing" Telcos to offer better services. As for privacy, I'm not all that concerned, my Telcos have long had access some of my very private content -- my conversations. Let them battle with Microsoft to ensure that privacy is not violated. And I'll be expecting my Data Protection Agency to put some pressure too.

As Microsoft (and Apple) are giving Telcos a hard time -- in my opinion, this is for their (Telcos) own good. Hopefully, Telcos can provide a platform that allows for creating value through better services (communication and entertainment) for a Digital Society.

PS! Plaxo users reading this must be wondering why I did not mention their solutions. I am waiting to watch as to how Comcast intends using Plaxo content after acquiring them. See this post. Actually, I am more concerned with privacy through Plaxo than through my Telco.

The semantics of "Healthcare services" are getting richer and "self service" seems to take on a whole new meaning. This article is the latest describing innovative health care solutions that can transform the way health care services are disbursed. There are some interesting opportunities for a welfare nation like Norway to get more out of the tax-kroner -- or other welfare states where health care services are managed and provisioned by the welfare state. My other blogposts on health care.

The opportunities could be just as interesting for the private insurance business -- if not just as obvious. Just yesterday, in a conversation with a financial advisor, I learned of health care services offered by his insurance company -- both supplemental and alternative to what the state offers (not primary health care services). Since welfare states cannot match the service levels needed by a demanding population, there is a huge business opportunity for health care insurance. I guess, expecting some tax reform, in light of this competition, is wishful thinking :-)

PS! The shirt is not a new invention, this technology has been around for some time (for eg Lifeshirt from Vivometrics has served special groups of users). However, what makes it interesting now is to see this technology in the context of recent moves by Microsoft (HealthVault) and Google Health.

So what is new? Could the public and private sectors in welfare states collaborate to benefit from these innovations? The emergence of the multi-polar world and this huge marketplace in India, China, Brazil & Russia should create a solid business case for the export of lifestyle and welfare services. The public sector can then offer better services to their local populations.... they could actually be the test-bed for the next generation of lifestyle services?

Demonstrators for the digital society

What started as an attempt to go beyond alumni reunions led to an interesting scenario of the digital society. On the 28th of November 2007 the alumni association of my high school in Mumbai, India handed over 100 cashless healthcards to teaching and non-teaching staff and ex-teachers (See newspaper coverage here - PS! Vikram and Gerry are the ones who have done all the heavy lifting).

There are a many digital societal elements to this "experiment"

• technology in the use of open source technology (Drupal) to collaborate, online payments (Paypal) to raise funds and support transparency in fundraising
• business models for the development of an insurance product for healthcare with a unique model for users, healthcare providers, insurers and financiers
• organisation design in redesigning the workings of the managing committee of the alumni association to be able to execute such a project, organisational flexibility for the school administration

However, this just the tip of the iceberg of challenges and opportunities -- an attempt to demonstrate that a grassroots driven idea to deliver something of value for many stakeholders can be done and hopefully raise the discussion of how citizens can participate in shaping its society.

For practical reasons, some elements have been out of scope -- elements that are critical for scaling up such ideas and sustaining them. This involves the creation of institutions and solutions that are of a foundational nature. Institutions that are industry-led but not driven by commercial interests, institutions that not only shape legislation but also have the authority to enforce it. The welfare models of the Nordics or Canada can be a source of inspiration but cannot be copy-pasted, they must be designed to suit the diversity, population size, existing infrastructure and maturity of existing institutions.

With the impending rush of baby-boomer retirement (eldrebølge) this is not just a welfare issue, there are some great business opportunities. The challenges are numerous everything from shaping new business models to establishing trust-institutions to harnessing the potential of personal health devices and body sensor network technology that will hit the market.

Now if the Healthcare, Insurance and Telecom providers could pool their resources to drive simple standards for interoperability ... then maybe the Tim Berners-Lee's vision of the semantic web could come to life in a very practical application that affects ordinary people. To my mind this form of catalyst activity is what government should focus on even more.

My recent posts have talked about technology and solutions and less about the Digital Society. Partly due to myopia (its an occupational hazard of working with solution planning) but also deliberately, to show examples of what can form building blocks for the foundation of a digital society. However, today I am suddenly made aware of a live example that can serve as a use case for the Societal Digital Infrastructure (see my other blogposts with this tag).

The TVaksjon is an annual national fund raising event hosted by NRK - the Norwegian state television. An event that, for one day, brings people together to support an organisation that works towards a focused cause. The organisation and cause are carefully chosen to balance multiple perspectives. This year the funds go to UNICEF Norge and the topic is Together for children aimed at helping children face the challenges of HIV and AIDS. This event is a national dugnad has many interesting elements like the use of auctioning technology, use of crowdsourcing techniques to mobilize volunteers nationwide or the use of web technology that helps businesses to leverage their social involvement and profile their products.

For such an initiative to work at this depth of credibility and involvement requires a hidden foundation. A foundation built on a combination of societal practices, social behaviours, laws and governance and enforced and enabled by technology. It is a combination of these that form the foundation of a digital society -- Societal Digital Infrastructure.

It is very likely that similar campaigns exist in other countries or in different communities like this scheme DonorsChoose. Please drop me a note/comment if you have other examples.

Following the announcement of this years Nobel Peace Prize; Renny had an interesting post here - Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore or Vint Cerf? I like the line of thinking and would like to extend this nomination for 2008 to also include Robert Kahn (Cerf's co-inventor) and 3 others:

(1) Sir Tim Berners-Lee -- for taking the TCP/IP and layering a powerful "human interface" on it with the sole purpose of sharing information and driving the rapid evolution we experience. But what I think is even more noble (no pun intendend) is his choice to make his invention open and free -- notable if one considers the potential for commercial gain through intellectual property rights. I think CERN his employer at the time, also deserves credit.

(2) Linus Torvalds for almost single-handedly making Open Source a model, not just for software technology innovation, but for inspiring and driving societal innovation and grass-roots development.

(3) Dr Nicholas Negroponte for his $100 computer initiative -- also known as the One Laptop Per Child project. The success of such an initiative is crucial for bridging the digital divide and helping education become a fundamental human right. The Give 1 Get 1 move could open the floodgates.

What appeals is the vision, selflessness and humanness of these individuals in creating an infrastructure needed for a grass-roots knowledge ecosystem that the world needs. These individuals also represent courage and strength in taking on the commercial giants on their own turf -- and driving change. Like Dr Negroponte convincing Intel to collaborate on the OLPC.

As an aside:
The much publicized "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet." statement from Al Gore during the presidential election drew much fire from the media. I believe the media put a different twist causing misunderstanding and ridicule that "Al Gore claimed he invented the Internet". However, as Internet pioneers Vint Cerf & Bob Kahn set the record straight in this little known article, Al Gore does deserve some credit for making the Internet a global success.

I look forward to hearing Cerf at this years Norwegian Computer Society's annual awards event.

Every now and then it is good to be prodded into blogging. So last week's post by Eirik was indeed welcome! Thanks Eirik! And the encouragement seemed well timed; just as Microsoft had announced their HealthVault initiative. Evidently beating Google to this service (see Google Health)

Enabling consumer-citizens to manage their own healthcare records, the next wave of digital-device invasion of the home is quite clear - healthcare devices! So while MP3 players/iPods, DVDs, and gaming devices have taken their chunk of wallet, the next wave could see a whole range of heart-rate, insulin, blood-pressure monitors and everything the bio-medical electronic firms can conjure up. After all, health is serious business.

To me, this service as another implementation of the Societal Digital Infrastructure (see other blogposts with this tag) -- a service that opens for disruptive changes in the way people and authorities receive and disburse health-care. We in Norway -- and other comparable welfare states -- have health-care served by Government, financed by taxes. While this centralised model works well in a small population -- to get an idea of the depth of integration in Norway see the Electronic prescription intiative -- I am not so convinced it can scale up to work in a diverse and not-so-well-integrated environment like say US or India.

So, will HealthVault offer a means to implement a healthcare service in these environments similar to that of say Norway, with much simpler "integration"? Conversely, will HealthVault challenge the centralised models like that in Norway, by opening up for other options? Microsoft has launched this HealthVault together with some service providers and device manufacturers, in what can be termed as a ecosystem. And Google will soon follow.

I suspect there is sufficient consumer/citizen interest in this domain to make this happen and drive for standardisation of data exchange and device functionality. Then, I hope health-care providers can interoperate in much the same way as telecom providers or banks are forced to interconnect with their competitors to provide a service to their consumers. Ultimately, consumers must benefit from this.

It will be interesting to watch how health-care providers will respond to this service-commodization? And the insurance industry? We all know how reluctant mobile operators were, when number portability was mandated by law. And with bank-number portability in Norway on the drawing-board there is precedent for some interesting times.

As a (software) planning architect I am seeing more examples that convince me that the "S" in SOA should be "Society" :-)

Sam Pitroda was instrumental in driving the telecom-based transformation in India (in particular rural India). He is now chairman of the Knowledge Commission, an initiative to prepare India for the Knowledge Society. An ambitious, brave and breathtaking effort.

This is a patience game as the network effect will take time to bear fruits. However, Nehru and his advisors did that with education -- soon after independence in the 50s -- when they had the foresight to prioritise high-quality indigenious education. Sam Pitroda, with Rajiv Gandhi's initiative did that with Telecom -- where he was instrumental in opening up the telecom services and devices to small-scale entrepreneurs (I viewed this as a kind of micro-entrepreneurship along the lines of micro-credit). I sincerely hope the Knowledge Commission succeeds in driving this change. 

Meanwhile, I have great expectations from Norway's Education Transformation initiative (Knowledge Promotion - Kunnskapsløft) …. And I dream of the possibility to export the Knowledge Promotion programme to other nations. Reading one of the reports from the Knowledge Commission, I understood that there are about 4 million teachers in India; some fewer than Norway's total population of 4.5 million …. And again, it struck me that "Norway as a test-bed for the digital society" can be quite real. Both for societal development and business opportunities; and it seems like it would work well with Norway's own efforts in search for alternative sources of value creation (once the oil and gas wells run dry).

Somewhere in the Knowledge Commision's many reports I recall reading that education was equated with healthcare. At the first read, it seemed odd; but then still dreaming, I wondered if this could be the first small steps to a welfare state ....  and there again the test-bed line of thinking! Societies cannot be exported; but a Societal Digital Infrastructure could and be a strong enabler for societal change.

A long road ahead and some great business opportunties; I continue dreaming ....

Oh yes, Microsoft and Apple both managed to take center stage last week. Clearly the Digital Home appears to be heading in the direction of "commodity service".

However, it is Prof. Lessig, in his column for Wired Magazine, who has triggered this blogpost. He makes some interesting points in relation to the development of "basic infrastructure" for the Digital Society (my term, not his). He draws on his experiences from the Microsoft vs. Dept of Justice case. The learnings from such a landmark case should be used to drive policy-makers and solution designers in deciding on matters of such vital importance.

Prof. Lessig mentions municipalities and network-neutrality -- important aspects in the discussion of basic infrastructure for the Digital Society. I take the consumer-citizen perspective to discuss the scenarios needed to drive the  societal digital infrastructure (SDI) and solutions. SDI is at a higher-level of abstraction than basic infrastructure and is absolutely dependent on a stable basic infrastructure. I hope that a "citizen-driven design" approach can force "infrastructure providers" to agree on standards and terms for competition.
(Aside: At a very early stage, the Norwegian banking industry agreed on what portions of the banking value network were deemed "infrastructure" and what were open for competition; this formed the basis for creation of very advanced banking services. Latterly, the railways were split into an organisation for maintaining the tracks; and opening for companies operating train services. Surprisingly, this has not happened as transparently for the Telecom & broadband industry. Which makes Prof. Lessig's article interesting)

Reading Prof. Lessig's comments on the Linux / Microsoft discussion; I recalled my own observations when the anti-trust lawsuit was at it's hottest. Microsoft was, and still is, very clever in managing its status as the company "people love to hate"; Microsoft have driven the platform development and the solution development tracks simultaneously. Most businesses that are part of their partner ecosystem accept the "carrot" (basic infrastructure) while understanding the "stick" (Microsoft's ability to enters markets that they believe are neccessary to build out the platform). This Darwinistic approach to platform-building has served users well, it has definitely helped Microsoft ... and I suppose partners also have benefitted.

So, is there anything municipalities can learn from Microsoft's strategies? They can learn from another Microsoft'ism -- being user-centric, focusing on making things as simple as possible (but not simpler -- to quote Albert Einstein).

I hope the Trådløse Trondheim (Wireless Trondheim) project can constructively drive the basic infrastructure discussion for the Digital Society. We need to move past the discussions of operating systems and network protocols; we must solve technical interoperability if we are to solve the challenges of semantic interoperability.

The Consumer Electronics Show starts in a few hours in Las Vegas. Bill Gates is scheduled to deliver the keynote (as he has done the last 8-9 years). I have been following the show over the last 4 years (from a distance, have not yet had a chance to visit). The focus has been almost only entertainment related topics and more recently on mobile and wireless topics. While most agree that consumer technology is much more than just entertainment, it is entertainment that drives the volumes and the development of technologies. This year, I noticed that (probably for the first time) CES has a topic on healthcare. I’m referring to “The Future of Consumer Electronics: Convergence with Home Health”.

What triggered this post was a poster I saw while watching the Christmas season special of Extreme Makeovers : Home Edition. The focus of this episode was rebuilding a free clinic in Los Angeles, USA. The poster at the clinic said "Health care is not a privilege it is a basic right". Living in Norway, I tend to take basic healthcare services for granted (they are a basic right mandated by law). Well, this is not a “social work” post; it is about an integration solution creating a win-win-win-wn-win proposition for players in different industries – broadcast, audio, video and display devices, software, broadband --- and ofcourse government, insurance and home security. The benefits are easy to comprehend but some very relevant questions need to be addressed. Questions like
• Who initiates and drives such a project?
• What type of governance structure does such a project need?
• How is a business case formed? Or metrics does one need to measure value?
The technology is probably the least challenging part; but add to the list of questions “patents” and “intellectual property” issues and a nightmare project emerges. So, is this a government or commercial? I’d say a joint-venture?

Hopefully, we have learned from creating railway tracks with different gauges, and can secure digital railway standardization quickly. Or can we? This infrastructure will drive value creation in the Digital Society – with new intermediaries, standards and protocols for digital services. I called this infrastructure “Societal Digital Infrastructure” and am hoping the entertainment industry can play an active role in accelerating the development of this infrastructure. Perhaps we, in the Nordics can leverage our investments in societal infrastructure to exploit hardware and software technologies to create such an infrastructure. Why not use the Nordics as a test-bed for advanced societal services? After all, we showed the way with mobile technologies….

Health care services/solutions was the theme for last year's "Imagine Cup" (Microsoft's student programming challenge competition). I saw some interesting solutions from the Nordics. So, I’m curious as to what Bill Gates would say in his opening keynote starting in a couple of hours… Could he trigger something ambitious enough to match Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child education project?

Societal digital infrastructure -- a term I am coining to capture the concept of fundamental software-powered services and corresponding data structures needed to ensure basic interoperability of services and information exchange at the societal level. For eg in Norway there are a number of different secure registers for companies, vehicles, individuals, properties, insurance claims, securities etc. These registers are used by businesses and government to simplify business and public sector services. For loan processing, insurance claims management, tax returns management etc

For example: I can, at any time check, if a vehicle I wish to buy is put up as collateral for a loan. See http://w2.brreg.no/motorvogn/. Previously this service was manual, it is now digitized and offering many usage scenarios. Used together with other similar services, this offers almost limitless opportunities.

I believe these services and registers will offer a competitive advantage to societies through the exploitation of machine-to-machine communication. This can open the path for a unique value proposition. Caveat: The service needs to interoperate at the global level -- so what we need is a Business equivalent of the DNS and ICANN; some kind of agency that manages the registers and unique identifiers.

Developing and exporting the usage of these services to developing countries could be a unique business opportunity :-) --- there is ofcourse a significant investment needed in building trust and transparency that is a prerequisite so that such services can thrive.

This is an evolutionary process, in the same way mobile telephony and IP has taken to gain momentum ...

So will there be professional Societal Digital Infrastructure Service Providers? I think so...