GOVERNANCE GOVERNANCE EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT Interoperability Towards a Data-Driven Public Sector Supported by the GovTech Global Partnership - www.worldbank.org/govtech EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 1 © 2022 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank 1818 H Street NW, Washington DC 20433 Telephone: 202-473-1000; Internet: www.worldbank.org This work is a product of the staff of The World Bank with external contributions. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this work do not necessarily reflect the views of The World Bank, its Board of Executive Directors, or the governments they represent. The World Bank does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or currency of the data included in this work and does not assume responsibility for any errors, omissions, or discrepancies in the information, or liability with respect to the use of or failure to use the information, methods, processes, or conclusions set forth. The boundaries, colors, denominations, and other information shown on any map in this work do not imply any judgment on the part of The World Bank concerning the legal status of any territory or the endorsement or acceptance of such boundaries. Nothing herein shall constitute or be construed or considered to be a limitation upon or waiver of the privileges and immunities of The World Bank, all of which are specifically reserved. Rights and Permissions The material in this work is subject to copyright. Because The World Bank encourages dissemination of its knowledge, this work may be reproduced, in whole or in part, for noncommercial purposes as long as full attribution to this work is given. Any queries on rights and licenses, including subsidiary rights, should be addressed to World Bank Publications, The World Bank Group, 1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20433, USA; fax: 202-522-2625; e-mail: pubrights@worldbank.org. >>> Contents Acknowledgments vi Abbreviations vii Executive Summary 1 1. Introduction 7 1.1 Interoperability: A Key Enabler for GovTech 8 1.2 Digital and Nondigital Interoperability 11 1.3 Achieving Interoperability From a GovTech Perspective 12 2. Why Interoperability Matters 15 2.1 Laying the Groundwork for a Citizen-Centered and Data-Driven Public Sector 16 2.2 Interoperability for… 16 2.2.1 …Efficiency Gains 16 2.2.2 …the Once-Only Principle and a Focus on Life Events 17 2.2.3 …Automated and Proactive Services 17 2.2.4 …Omnichannel Service Delivery 18 2.2.5 …Transparency, Accountability, and Integrity 18 2.2.6 …Service Composability 19 2.2.7 …System Resilience 19 2.2.8 …Multiactor Data-Driven Value Creation 20 3. Setting the Right Policy and Organizational Conditions 21 3.1 Module 1: Creating the Basis for Operations: Policy and Institutional Setting 22 3.1.1 Embed Interoperability in the Overall GovTech Strategy 22 3.1.2 Establish the Institutional Structure with Leadership to Support Interoperability 23 3.1.3 Ensure Solid Coordination Mechanisms to Prioritize Interoperability 24 3.2 Module 2: Ensuring Proper Legal and Regulatory Frameworks 25 3.3 Module 3: Setting up Trustworthy Data Governance 28 3.3.1 Focus on Guiding Data-Driven Value Creation 28 3.3.2 Enhance Trust, Ethics and Data Rights in the Digital Age 31 3.4 Module 4: Promoting a Data Culture and Cultural Interoperability 35 3.5 Module 5: Using Policy Levers for Coherent Implementation 37 3.5.1 Adopt Preevaluation of ICT Investments and Public Procurement 37 3.5.2 Implement Standard Business Cases and Agile Project Management 38 3.5.3 Improve Capacity for Monitoring and Evaluation 39 3.6 Module 6: Fostering Digital Skills and Talent 39 4. Implementing Digital Interoperability 42 4.1 Module 7: Ensuring Data Readiness 43 4.2 Module 8: Anticipating Key Technology Trends 43 4.3 Module 9: Designing a Modern Data Architecture 44 4.4 Module 10: Harnessing Application Programming Interfaces and Enterprise Service Buses 51 4.4.1 Adopt an API Mediation and Service Mesh 51 4.4.2 Understand Cybersecurity Considerations for Harnessing APIs 52 4.4.3 Enterprise Service Bus and Government Service Blockchains 53 4.4.4 Cyber Security Interoperability 53 4.5 Module 11: Working with Open Standards and Open Source 54 5. Conclusion: Interoperability for a Connected and Data-Driven Public Sector 57 Annex I: Checklist for a Sound Interoperability Approach 59 Annex II: Emerging Technologies Trends 68 Web 3.0, Cloud and Edge Computing 69 Internet of Things 70 Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology 71 Artificial Intelligence 72 Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) 72 Metaverse 73 Security by Design and Zero Trust Architecture 74 Annex III: Modern Reference Architecture 75 Annex IV: Members of the Interoperability Working Group 81 Notes 85 References 94 Figures Figure ES.1. The GovTech Approach to Interoperability 2 Figure 1. Interoperability in the Public Sector 8 Figure 2. Interoperability Status by GTMI Group 9 Figure 3. The GovTech Approach to Interoperability 12 Figure 4. Data Legal and Regulatory Frameworks 25 Figure 5. OECD Government Data Value Cycle 29 Figure 6. World Bank Data Governance and Data Management Structure 30 Figure 7. A Social Contract Founded on Value, Trust, and Equity 32 Figure 8. Presence of Both Data Protection Law and Agency by GTMI Group 34 Figure 9. Right to Information Law by GTMI Group 34 Figure 10. Core Approaches to Reduce Digital Skills Gaps in the Public Sector 41 Figure 11. Conceptual Flow of Data through Different Stages for a Data Architecture 45 Figure 12. Six Foundational Shifts for Data Architectures (McKinsey) 46 Figure 13. Steps to Design or Upgrade a Modern Data Architecture 48 Figure 14. Mesh App and Service Architecture 52 Figure A2.1. Edge Continuum 69 Figure A2.2. Evolution of the Web 70 Figure A2.3. Blockchain Interoperability Challenges 72 Figure A2.4. Open Metaverse Concept 73 Figure A3.1. Modern Reference Architecture for Unified Data Infrastructure 76 Figure A3.2. Blueprint 1: Modern (Cloud-Native) Business Intelligence 77 Figure A3.3. Blueprint 2: Multimodal Data Processing 78 Figure A3.4. Blueprint 3: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning 79 Figure A3.5. API: Multiple Complementary Mediators 80 Tables Table ES.1. Six Modules for Nondigital Interoperability 4 Table ES.2. Five Modules for Digital Interoperability 5 Table 1. Key Questions for Prioritization in Interoperability Projects 14 Table 2. Top 10 Jobs in Increasing Demand 40 Table 3. Steps to Design or Upgrade a Modern Data Architecture 49 Boxes Box 1. Interoperability Challenges 10 Box 2. Digital and Nondigital Interoperability Layers 11 Box 3. Regulating Data: The European Union Example 27 Box 4. Thailand’s Government Digital Journey (Group A, GTMI 2020) 31 Box 5. European Digital Rights and Principles 33 Box 6. Fostering a Data Savvy Organizational Culture 36 Box 7. E-Government Standard Framework in the Republic of Korea (Group A, GTMI 2020) 55 Box 8. Additional Interoperability Reference Examples 55 >>> Acknowledgments This How-to Note has been developed under the World Bank GovTech Initiative by a team led by João Ricardo Vasconcelos and Youngseok Kim, both Senior Governance Specialists on the GovTech global team and Task Team leaders. Co-authors were Stela Mocan (Manager of ITSTI); Olushola Ibironke Joanne Martins (IT Officer, ITSTI); Rachel Alexandra Halsema, (IT Officer, ITSTI); Charlotte van Ooijen, Associate Director, Digital Government and Data, Alice Iordache, Research Associate, and David Osimo, Director of Research, all from the Lisbon Council. Additional contributions came from World Bank colleagues: Kimberly D. Johns (GovTech Global Lead and Senior Public Sector Specialist); Constantin Rusu (Senior Public Sector Specialist); Silvana Kostenbaum (Senior Public Sector Specialist); Do Kyu Lee (Senior Digital Development Specialist); Serdar Yilmaz (Lead Public Sector Specialist); Ildrim Valley (Public Sector Specialist); Daniel Ortega Nieto (Senior Public Sector Specialist); Huong Thi Lan Tran (Senior Public Sector Specialist); and Serena Cocciolo (Economist). Arturo Herrera Gutierrez (Global Director, Governance Global Practice) and Tracey Lane (Practice Manager) provided overall guidance for the report. Editorial services were provided by Richard Crabbe. The report leverages input from Prema Chandrashekhar and Raunak Mittal, IT Officers, ITSTI. The World Bank GovTech team would like to highlight the relevance of having an analytical deliverable codeveloped with the Lisbon Council. This note also benefited from the valuable contributions of the Interoperability Working Group that brings around the table the following 18 governments, private sector organizations, think tanks and international organizations: Indonesia (co-chair), Portugal (co-chair), Argentina, Cabo Verde, Canada, Citibeats, Denmark, EU-DIGIT, Republic of Korea, Lisbon Council, Mozambique, New Zealand, Open Group, Public Digital, Saudi Arabia, Timor-Leste, United Kingdom and UNU-eGOV. Members of the Interoperability Working Group are listed in Annex IV. In line with the multistakeholder thinking of the GovTech Global Partnership, the engagement of these relevant partners added experience, quality insights and strategic outreach to the work developed. This report was made possible by the World Bank’s GovTech Initiative and the GovTech Global Partnership trust fund, building on the support of financial and in-kind partners that include the Ministry of Finance of Austria, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) of Switzerland, the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MOEF) of the Republic of Korea, the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Interior and Safety (MOIS) of the Republic of Korea, the Government of Japan, and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) of Germany. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< vi >>> Abbreviations AI Artificial Intelligence AMA Agency for Administrative Modernization API Application Programming Interface CTI cyber threat information CTII cyber threat information intelligence DLT distributed ledger technology ECLAC Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean eID electronic identification EIF European Interoperability Framework ESB enterprise service bus EU European Union GTMI GovTech Maturity Index ICT information and communications technology IT information technology ML machine learning NIFO National Interoperability Framework Observatory OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development RNI Register of non-residents (Netherlands) EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< vii >>> Executive Summary Interoperability frameworks are a key enabler for GovTech, the World Bank’s whole-of- government approach to public sector modernization, as they reduce system boundaries between government agencies by setting standards and guidelines across government systems to allow for seamless exchange of information and communication between systems. But governments may face several challenges when setting up and implementing interoperability frameworks, related to a mix of technical, semantic, legal, organizational, and cultural factors. This How-to Note provides advice on what interoperability in the public sector is, why it is needed and how it can be implemented with various examples and a whole-of-government approach to interoperability taking into account both digital and nondigital aspects is of the essence. What Is Interoperability? Interoperability in the public sector is about enabling connections between ministries, departments, agencies, sectors, government levels and countries through data, information systems, legal agreements, organizational processes, and shared values and customs. For responsive and efficient public service delivery, it is crucial to move from a silo-based approach to a whole-of-government approach. Instead of every government entity working in isolation towards organization-specific goals, departments across government levels, sectors, and country borders can work together to achieve joint goals. Setting up a basic infrastructure for interoperability may be an important enabler to advance the overall GovTech performance. On the other hand, having in place a whole-of-government approach to GovTech is likely to be favorable to the development of interoperability initiatives. As such, interoperability is considered as a multilayered concept consisting of both nondigital and digital elements, namely legal, organizational, cultural, technical, and semantic layers as well as their overall governance. This note presents 11 modules to highlight the different elements of both nondigital and digital perspectives. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 1 > > > F I G U R E E S . 1 - The GovTech Approach to Interoperability Nondigital Interoperability Digital Interoperability Module 1 Creating the basis for operations: policy and institutional setting Module 7 Ensuring data readiness Module 2 Ensuring proper legal and regulatory frameworks Module 8 Anticipating key technology trends Module 3 Setting up trustworthy data governance Module 9 Designing a modern data architecture Module 4 Promoting a data culture and cultural interoperability Module 10 Harnessing APIs and Enterprise Service Buses Module 5 Using policy levers for coherent implementation Module 11 Working with open standards and open source Module 6 Fostering digital skills and talent Goal Orientation - Cocreation – Context Sensitivity - Iteration EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 2 Why Interoperability Matters • Automated and proactive services. • Omnichannel service delivery. • Transparency, accountability, and integrity. Achieving interoperability is crucial for the delivery of integrated • Service composability. citizen-centered public services and the path to a data-driven • System resilience. public sector. The immediate effects of an interoperable public • Multiactor data-driven value creation. sector are an increased connectivity of information technology (IT) systems and that governments can access, share, interpret and reuse data more easily and at a larger scale. In Setting the Right Policy and the longer run, these developments can support governments in becoming more citizen-centered and data-driven. Organizational Conditions The benefits of fostering interoperability towards a more Whole-of-government approaches are required to secure citizen-centered and data-driven public sector are manifold the implementation of interoperability policies in the different and within reach of countries across all GovTech levels, sectors and levels of government. Although there are not albeit not at the same pace nor scale. It will become clear unique models to develop these approaches, different that interoperability produces benefits for both government cross-cutting policy dimensions should be considered—from and citizens and that most of these benefits are interrelated setting the right policy and institutional setting to ensuring the and mutually reinforcing. Key benefits that governments can presence of the necessary skills among the public workforce achieve from interoperability are: to accompany the transition to interoperable systems and ways of working. • Efficiency gains. • The once-only principle and a focus on life events. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 3 > > > T A B L E E S . 1 - Six Modules for Nondigital Interoperability Module 1: Creating the Basis for Operations: Policy and Institutional Setting • Embed interoperability in the overall GovTech strategy. • Establish the institutional structure with leadership to support interoperability. • Ensure solid coordination mechanisms to prioritize interoperability. Module 2: Ensuring Proper Legal and Regulatory Frameworks • Include diverse domains such as privacy and data-protection, data standards, right to information, the application of the once-only principle, and data ownership and consent. • Secure proper regulation of the digital transformation and ensure that citizens’ interests and rights are legally covered. • Develop a proper assessment of the existing situation of the legal and regulatory framework. Module 3: Setting up Trustworthy Data Governance • Focus on guiding data-driven value creation. • Enhance trust, ethics and data rights in the digital age. Module 4: Promoting a Data Culture and Cultural Interoperability • Ensure clear leadership and institutional coordination to promote the required systems thinking approaches for a data- driven public sector. • Recognize the role of organizational and individual incentives. Module 5: Using Policy Levers for Coherent Implementation • Adopt pre-evaluation of information and communications technology (ICT) investments and public procurement. • Implement Standard Business Cases and Agile Project Management. • Improve capacity for monitoring and evaluation. Module 6: Fostering Digital Skills and Talent • Define the right option to foster digital skills from building, buying or borrowing. • Modernize human resources management (HRM) policies and practices to assure the necessary interoperability and skills are available. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 4 Implementing Digital Interoperability Based on the right policy and organizational foundations, architecture, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and governments need to reflect some essential considerations Open Standards and Open Source – for establishing technical – data readiness, key technology trends, a modern data and semantic interoperability. > > > T A B L E E S . 2 - Five Modules for Digital Interoperability Module 7: Ensuring Data Readiness • Understand what data is needed, what is available, what do we want to so with this data, and why and who can and needs to access this data. • Develop a data strategy that may require a current state baseline assessment. • Establish data governance to ensuring data quality, integrity, availability, harmonization, legal and regulatory frameworks, and overall management of data. Module 8: Anticipating Key Technology Trends • Understand new technology trends and how they might change the need to rethink interoperability. • Identify new challenges through the lenses of technology, people, process, and ecosystem. Module 9: Designing a Modern Data Architecture • Design a modern unified data architecture that provides the blueprint of the overall setup of a system, or a group of systems put together to manage data throughout the data lifecycle. • Consider six steps from current state assessment of tools and systems to reporting and analysis. Module 10: Harnessing Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and Enterprise Service Buses (ESB) • Adopt an API mediation approach and Service Mesh. • Understand cybersecurity considerations for harnessing APIs. Module 11: Working with Open Standards and Open Source • Ensure that interoperability is open to new software modules and new providers, and avoid lock-in. • Encourage mature GovTech countries to share their code as open source and publish their standards as open standards. • Benefit from already published open-source material and open standards to develop interoperability initiatives. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 5 Key Considerations Key considerations to note for practitioners involved in of-government approach that covers setting policy designing and implementing interoperability in the public and organizational conditions and implementing digital sector are: interoperability is essential for sound interoperability. • Critical questions for successful interoperability projects • In order to establish data-driven public sectors, practitioners are goal-orientation (focus on the desired outcome and need to consider 11 modules of both nondigital and value for stakeholders), co-creation (co-designing and digital interoperability. -constructing with stakeholders), context sensitivity (adapting to local priorities and limitations), and iteration All modules need to considered, but the order and sequence (considering the different elements of interoperability in a of modules may differ from country to country depending on non-linear way). their baseline. To provide better understanding of prioritization, Annex I presents a checklist for sound interoperability, with • Interoperability is one of the key enablers for a whole- suggestions regarding priority actions for each item. of-government approach. At the same time, a whole- EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 6 1. >>> Introduction • • • Interoperability in the public sector is about enabling connections between ministries, departments, agencies, sectors, government levels, and countries through data, information systems, legal agreements, organizational processes, and shared values and customs. KEY MESSAGES It is important to take a holistic, whole-of-government approach to interoperability, taking into account legal, organizational, cultural, technical, and semantic layers as well as their overall governance. Successful interoperability initiatives are goal-oriented, shaped through co-creation, sensitive to the overall GovTech maturity level and country context, and implemented through iteration between all interoperability layers. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 7 1.1 Interoperability: A Key Enabler for GovTech Interoperability frameworks are a key enabler for GovTech, the a silo-based approach to a whole-of-government approach. World Bank’s whole-of-government approach to public sector Instead of every government entity working in isolation towards modernization, as they reduce system boundaries between organization-specific goals, departments across government government agencies by setting standards and guidelines levels, sectors, and country borders can work together towards across government systems to allow for seamless exchange the achievement of joint goals (Figure 1). Interoperability can of information and communication between systems.1 As bring great benefits for both government and citizens and such, interoperability is crucial in facilitating the move from businesses as the end users of public services. > > > F I G U R E 1 - Interoperability in the Public Sector G2C Interoperability G2G Interoperability - Intragovernmental G2G Interoperability - Intergovernmental Country A Country B Country A Citizens Source: Authors’ elaboration. Governments may tackle the issue of interoperability from different starting points. These range from specific considerations regarding cost savings, more effective planning, enabling cross-sector service delivery to more general ambitions on the redesign of data management and sharing, and leveraging data-driven technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Blockchain. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 8 When looking at countries’ progress on GovTech as captured government cloud, service bus, and application programming by the World Bank’s GovTech Maturity Index (GTMI), it interfaces (APIs) as cost-effective shared platforms in future becomes clear that interoperability is a core challenge for many GovTech initiatives.3 This is especially true for countries with countries.2 The 2020 results suggest that countries should focus an overall low GovTech maturity level, as the presence of a more on improving the interconnectivity and interoperability government service bus or interoperability platform is tightly of existing systems and portals, and the benefits of having a linked to the overall GovTech maturity level (Figure 2). > > > F I G U R E 2 - Interoperability Status by GTMI Group Is there a government service bus/interoperability platform In place? 100% 2 3 18 80% 60% 14 51 35 33 40% 26 20% 6 6 3 1 0 0 0 A B C D Yes (mandatory for all gov institutions) Yes (not mandatory) Planned/In progress No Source: WBG GovTech Dataset, December 2020. Only 71 out of 198 countries assessed have a government service bus or interoperability platform in place, of which only four have made its use mandatory. Not surprisingly, the majority (61) have very high (Group A) or high (Group B) overall GovTech level. Only two out of 43 A-level countries, Israel and Japan, do not have such initiatives in place or plan on developing these, suggesting that having an interoperability platform or service bus in place is an important characteristic of advanced countries. Among the economies with ongoing activities to improve some of the GovTech focus areas (Group C), only a small minority either have such initiatives in place or are planning on developing them. Iran, Kosovo, Malawi, Nigeria, República Bolivariana de Venezuela, and West Bank and Gaza all report having an interoperability platform or service bus in place, despite their moderate GovTech level and may serve as inspiration for the other economies in this group. Among the countries with a minimal focus on GovTech initiatives (Group D), no action on interoperability has been reported. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 9 When setting up and implementing interoperability frameworks, governments may face several challenges related to a mix of technical, semantic, legal, organizational, and cultural factors (Box 1). > > > B O X 1 - Interoperability Challenges • Trust and Security: Ensuring that data security and privacy are maintained when datasets and APIs are opened up, and maintaining the integrity of underlying systems and data. • Financial resources: Limited institutional financial capacity and a potential decline in revenues due to new approaches that do not involve charging other government entities for access to data or systems. • Legacy technology: Managing interoperability with legacy systems that may support only certain methods of integration or architectural approaches. • Human resources: Need to upskill staff to adapt to new architectures. • Data quality: Messy or incomplete datasets that require careful review and assessment before they can be made accessible to other systems and entities. • Data discoverability: Difficulty knowing what relevant data are already available through APIs. • Process agreements and global coordination: Inability to implement interoperability due to lack of systemic governance, shared processes, and common standards. • Inability to scale: Challenges moving from small, one-off interoperability efforts to a broader and more systematic approach. • Varying levels of digital maturity across government: Dealing with a heterogeneous public sector environment in terms of digital adoption and organizational preparedness. • Political leadership and institutional engagement: Ensuring all related agencies’ participation and budget investment. Source: Authors’ elaboration and inputs from the Interoperability Working Group. On the one hand, setting up a basic infrastructure for likely to be favorable to the development of interoperability interoperability may be an important enabler to advance the initiatives. Consequently, a whole-of-government approach to overall GovTech performance. On the other hand, having interoperability taking into account both digital and nondigital in place a whole-of-government approach to GovTech is aspects is of the essence. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 10 1.2 Digital and Nondigital Interoperability In the 2021 Implementation Guide for Interoperability in Digital in the public sector is about enabling connections between Government, the United Nations’ Economic Commission ministries, departments, agencies, sectors, government for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) stated that levels, and countries through data, information systems, legal most countries primarily focus on technical aspects of agreements, organizational processes, and shared values and interoperability without a holistic vision of the needs of public customs. In line with the European Interoperability Framework institutions for public service delivery.4 ECLAC also states that (EIF), the guiding framework for European Union (EU) member those countries fail at putting citizens and their needs to obtain states and the European Interoperability Framework for Smart solutions from the government at the center of interoperability Cities and Communities (EIF4SCC), interoperability can be efforts. This state of affairs is not only true for countries in understood as a layered concept, consisting of elements with Latin America and the Caribbean. Interoperability is in large a digital and nondigital focus (Box 2).6 If any of these layers part about technology and data, but it is not enough to set up is missing, incomplete, or damaged, the connection between middleware – an operation, process, or application functioning the government entities that want to interact becomes faulty as a software “pipeline” between the operating system and and no joint benefits can be reaped. This is why the overall the end user.5 While middleware is necessary to make governance of interoperability and clear leadership to ensure diverse digital systems, programs, and databases talk to each coordinated action across all interoperability layers are of other, interoperable IT and data systems do not make for an critical importance. interoperable public sector. Fundamentally, interoperability > > > B O X 2 - Digital and Nondigital Interoperability Layers NONDIGITAL INTEROPERABILITY Cross-cutting governance layers Interoperability governance concerns decisions on interoperability frameworks, institutional arrangements, organizational structures, roles and responsibilities, policies, agreements, and other aspects of ensuring and monitoring interoperability. Integrated service governance focuses on the planning, implementation, and operation of the public services that build on integration, seamless execution, and the reuse of services and data. As such, this layer covers all of the following five specific layers. Component-specific layers Legal interoperability is about ensuring that organizations operating under different legal frameworks, policies, and strategies are able to work together, for example, by establishing specific agreements or putting in place new legislation. Organizational interoperability refers to the way in which public administrations align their business processes, responsibilities, and expectations to achieve commonly agreed and mutually beneficial goals. Cultural interoperability refers to the approach taken by individuals and organizations to align their social and cultural differences and, if applicable, organizational cultural differences, all of which can be at the root of different responses to the same interoperability challenge.7 EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 11 DIGITAL INTEROPERABILITY Semantic interoperability refers to the ability of different information technology systems and software applications to automatically interpret the information exchanged meaningfully and accurately to produce useful results. This layer also covers syntactic interoperability, which is about describing the exact format of the information to be exchanged in terms of grammar, format, and schemas. Technical interoperability covers the applications and infrastructures linking systems and services, such as interface specifications, interconnection services, data integration services, data presentation and exchange, and secure communication protocols. Source: European Commission, Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, Directorate-General for Informatics 2021, pp 68-74; and European Commission, n.d. 1.3 Achieving Interoperability from a GovTech Perspective It is not easy to achieve interoperability in the public sector. Module 2 than Module 4. All countries are strongly advised As a multilayered concept consisting of digital and nondigital to start with Module 1, which creates the basis of operations aspects, it requires a whole-of-government approach. At the by determining the governance mechanisms, including clear same time, when prioritizing actions, it is necessary to take into leadership, and connecting to relevant strategic objectives account the different economic, social, and political contexts and existing initiatives. Once this basis is established, iteration across World Bank countries. An additional consideration is between modules is recommended to ensure that relevant how governments can develop an interoperability framework developments from subsequent modules are taken on board and approach that works for them in an often-heterogeneous in the implementation of those that had an earlier start. public sector in terms of digital maturity. Throughout the note, World Bank country examples at different Recognizing that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to GovTech maturity levels will serve to illustrate the modules interoperability, this GovTech How-to Note aims to: and measures under discussion. This note’s goal is to build on the wealth of previous and ongoing interoperability initiatives • Empower task teams in the World Bank and government around the globe and provide actionable insights. Throughout officials in client countries to determine what interoperability the note, concrete references will be provided to relevant measures may be most relevant for their context. external documentation and available online tools that can be reused and repurposed for the specific context. To facilitate • Provide practical guidance on how to develop and the application of the provided insights, a checklist for a sound implement these measures. interoperability approach is provided in Annex I. The checklist specifies high priority actions (must have) and lower priority It does so by explaining the different elements through a actions (nice to have) for each module taking into account modular approach (see Figure 3 below). The whole-of- the GovTech maturity level of countries. Managers may use government approach to interoperability entails that regardless the suggested prioritization for the planning of interoperability of a country’s GovTech level, all modules must be considered. projects. While A- and B-level countries will get a sense of However, the order and depth of working with these modules how they can build on their GovTech accomplishments and may differ from country to country and will highly depend on take their interoperability efforts to the next level, C- and the baseline for a specific module and available resources D-level countries can find an indication of how they can lay to implement the suggested measures. For instance, if a the groundwork for a particular module. country already has a strong data culture, but is lacking supporting legal provisions, it is more pressing to work on EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 12 > > > F I G U R E 3 - The GovTech Approach to Interoperability Nondigital Interoperability Digital Interoperability Module 1 Creating the basis for operations: policy and institutional setting Module 7 Ensuring data readiness Module 2 Ensuring proper legal and regulatory frameworks Module 8 Anticipating key technology trends Module 3 Setting up trustworthy data governance Module 9 Designing a modern data architecture Module 4 Promoting a data culture and cultural interoperability Module 10 Harnessing APIs and Enterprise Service Buses Module 5 Using policy levers for coherent implementation Module 11 Working with open standards and open source Module 6 Fostering digital skills and talent Goal Orientation - Cocreation – Context Sensitivity - Iteration Source: Authors. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 13 The note is structured as follows. Section 2 explains in to accompany the transition to interoperable systems and more detail why it is important for World Bank countries and ways of working. Finally, Section 4 covers technical and partners to pursue interoperability as part of their GovTech semantic interoperability and explains how to implement this strategies and projects, focusing on the advantages in terms digital interoperability through five modules, ranging from data of more citizen-centered services and stepping up data-driven readiness to working with open standards and open source. policymaking. Section 3 kicks off the guide on how to achieve an interoperable public sector by explaining six modules on While reading this note and then implementing interoperability nondigital elements of interoperability moving from setting in their specific contexts, GovTech leaders are advised to the right policy and institutional setting to ensuring the continuously revert to four questions, which help to prioritize presence of the necessary skills among the public workforce specific actions proposed in the modules (Table 1). > > > T A B L E 1 - Key Questions for Prioritization in Interoperability Projects Goal-orientation What is the overall goal and scale of my interoperability project, in terms of both user needs and strategic objectives? • For example, enabling a joint policy monitoring tool between agencies x and y, developing a specific new digital service, improving proactive service delivery across the public sector. Co-creation Which actors should be involved to make this project a success, in terms of both expertise and support, and what are their needs? • For example, the agencies holding data, citizens as service users, legal experts. Context sensitivity What is the most viable course of action in light of the country context, my organization’s GovTech accomplishments, and available resources? • For example, building on an existing technical infrastructure, linking to an emerging social need. Iteration What digital interoperability module is affected by the nondigital module I am working on and vice-versa, requiring what action? • For example, are the data holders willing to share their data (cultural interoperability) through the technical infrastructure that is under development (technical interoperability)? EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 14 2. >>> Why Interoperability Matters KEY MESSAGES • Achieving interoperability is crucial for the delivery of integrated citizen-centered • • public services and the path to a data-driven public sector. An interoperable public sector entails several interrelated and mutually reinforcing benefits for governments and citizens. Interoperability enables efficiency gains, the implementation of the once-only- principle and a service focus on life events, automated and proactive services, omnichannel service delivery, service composability, system resilience, and data- driven value creation. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 15 2.1 Laying the Groundwork for interoperability supports a transition from data projects in organizational silos to a system-wide and more strategic use a Citizen-Centered and of data, which also supports more citizen-centered services. Data-Driven Public Sector While interoperability is a necessary condition for countries to leverage data as a strategic asset, it is not sufficient to unlock all the potential benefits and protect against the dangers of a The immediate effects of an interoperable public sector are data-driven public sector. For instance, interoperability does an increased connectivity of IT systems and that governments not guarantee the correctness of data, it does not correct can access, share, interpret, and reuse data more easily and biases in artificial intelligence systems, and it does not on a larger scale. In the longer run, these developments can ensure the quality of data-driven decision making.13 Arguably, support governments in becoming more citizen-centered interoperability can contribute to the enforcement of data and data-driven. While “citizen-centered” and “data-driven” rights in a number of ways – see also module 3 on trustworthy may sound as buzzwords, essentially these ambitions are data governance. For instance, standardized data formats and mutually reinforcing, helping governments to deliver services procedures enable more efficient mechanisms for logging and and policies of the highest quality to citizens and businesses auditing sensitive data access, thereby fostering transparency across different GovTech levels and social, economic, and and accountability on data sharing and use. Enhanced data geographic settings. They are also about providing digital governance also makes it easier to detect security risks and services that do not just look good, but that citizens actually consequently strengthen protection mechanisms for personal use, increasing both uptake and the return on investment.8 data access. Citizen-centered public services incorporate citizens’ needs The benefits of fostering interoperability toward a more citizen- and concerns at every stage of design and delivery of the centered and data-driven public sector are manifold and within service.9 Such needs include finding the right services for reach of countries across all GovTech levels, albeit not at the particular life events, not having to provide the same data to same pace nor scale. It will become clear that interoperability different administrations, and having the possibility to complete produces benefits for both government and citizens and that a service through any desired channel. The 2022 World Bank most of these benefits are interrelated and mutually reinforcing. guidebook, Service Upgrade: The GovTech Approach to Citizen Centered Services, points out that developing citizen- centered services involves identifying redundancies and 2.2 Interoperability for… automating decision-making for more inclusive services.10 Realizing a vision of services that are centered on the needs of citizens and not those of the administration requires 2.2.1 …Efficiency Gains seamlessly functioning collective systems, which can only exist through digital and nondigital interoperability. In line A core benefit of interoperable systems is that data sharing with this thinking, the Inter-American Development Bank across the public sector can happen at a larger scale and developed an interoperability guide to facilitate the provision become both easier and faster, which in turn contributes to of social services in Latin American and Caribbean countries, significant efficiency gains in core government systems and considering that depending on the individual’s stage of life, the the delivery of public services. By adopting interoperable services they require will be different, and that provision must data formats, data become immediately available and usable be coordinated and personalized, ensuring that the citizen is by any other civil servant, public administration, and digital receiving the services they need, regardless of the sector that government system. This may save time for citizens as they they come from.11 can access administrative data more quickly, and also reduce back-office processing and handling time for public servants, Besides enabling the public sector to become more citizen- which in turn results in fewer errors and greater cost efficiency centered, interoperability also plays a key role in making it from an operational point of view.14 For instance, a civil servant more data-driven. A data-driven public sector “transforms the in a local administration in Denmark (Group A, GTMI 2020)15 design, delivery and monitoring of public policies and services can check a citizen’s eligibility for a specific service in real through the management, sharing and use of data.”12 Thanks time by accessing national registers, such as the E-Income to its ability to connect data coming from different sources and Register, without having to send a request to a national from across organizational, sectoral, and country borders, administration and waiting for the answer.16 EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 16 Such efficiency gains are also within reach of less mature Interoperability enables public administrations to implement GovTech countries. For example, Moldova (Group B, the OOP and organize and deliver services around the GTMI 2020) through its Strategic Program for Governance concept of life events: getting married, having a baby, Technological Modernization (E-Transformation),17 designed retirement or opening a new business. For instance, the a shared e-governance platform to facilitate the development citizen portal of Denmark (Group A, GTMI 2020) has enabled of sectorial e-services, which were offered through several interactive checklists around 12 life events, leaving citizens decentralized service portals. The information on administrative with a personalized overview of relevant information and to- services was then aggregated in a single portal with references dos.21 A sound interoperability framework supports having to other resources if needed. More than 20 sectorial e-services a single point of contact consolidating the provision of such were implemented, which led to immediate efficiency gains in services and the exchange of data between all the involved terms of a significant reduction in the number of permissive acts public authorities. It ensures citizens a smoother experience issued for data exchange and sharing between authorities, a in their relationship with the government evolving around their simpler and faster development of new sectorial e-services needs at a particular moment in their lives rather than the and reductions in the processing payment costs on behalf administration’s needs to implement a particular service. of the administration, from an average 22 million MDL to 4 million MDL annually as the new portal allowed for integration 2.2.3 …Automated and Proactive Services of online service payments (e.g. bank cards, online banking, According to a 2021 US survey conducted by Ernst & Young e-money). Additionally, the uptake index for most e-services LLP,22 an increasing number of states are adopting new increased to 75 percent or higher. strategies which aim at reducing manual activities by exploiting data and rolling out digital initiatives. They are supported Nevertheless, when considering the cost reductions for by intelligent automation tools and processes powered by a national governments generated by a sound interoperable sound data architecture and interoperability standards. The system implementation, it is important to keep in mind that benefits are astonishing in terms of speed of processing, in order to produce savings, interoperability requires an initial tighter controls improved audit records, increased visibility, considerable amount of investment.18 This initial investment and enhanced data analytics and insights.23 is what sometimes refrains governments, especially countries with a lower GovTech level, from allocating a considerable Such benefits can also be reaped across borders, as illustrated amount of finances to the development of a sound interoperable by the automated data exchange that has been in place system, which is where rethinking the business model for between the population registers of Estonia (Group A, GTMI data-driven projects becomes extra relevant (see Module 5). 2020) and Finland (Group A, GTMI 2020) since 2020.24 Instead of manually implementing updates shared by the other country 2.2.2 …the Once-Only Principle and a in their respective registers, this is now done automatically. As Focus on Life Events a result, there is a decreased manual workload and reduced The once-only principle (OOP) enables public entities to share room for human error, thereby improving data accuracy user data with each other, so that citizens and businesses and security. The data exchange is enabled by a technical using public services only have to enter their information interoperability layer, the X-Road infrastructure set up in 2018 once. It allows public bodies to reorganize internal processes and a legal one, the collaboration agreement between the and enable cooperation, while maintaining their autonomy.19 countries, dating from 2005. Besides efficiency, quality and Investing in solutions aimed at enabling the OOP pays off, security gains, automation can also enable a more proactive as illustrated by the benefits of the register of non-residents service delivery. (RNI) in the Netherlands. The RNI is a service provided by the Dutch government to non-residents, allowing for fast Interoperability also enhances a proactive service delivery and easy data sharing among the Dutch Ministries and the by allowing different departments and agencies to exchange National Agencies, generating savings resulting from the information about citizens, carefully evaluating them and reduced number of transactions linked to data collection and planning ahead from several perspectives. Providing services management. Non-resident citizens who register in the RNI in a proactive way can dramatically increase the uptake, and need to share their data with the public authorities only once. thus experienced benefits by citizens, as is demonstrated As a result, a 50 percent decrease in potential transactions by the case of the Social Energy Tariff in Portugal (Group A, between users and public authorities was reported. According GTMI 2020). When the Portuguese government decided to to estimation, the RNI generated benefits of €112 million.20 use the Interoperability Platform for the Public Administration EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 17 to automate data exchange between Directorate General certificates for citizens requesting them. In addition, citizens for Energy and Geology, energy companies, the tax system, can benefit from the same service either scheduling an in- and the social security system, detect and award eligible person appointment at one of the registry offices in town or via households, the number of households receiving the tariff the online portal of the municipality.28 increased from 154,648 to 726,795. This meant that 7 percent of the Portuguese population received financial support for 2.2.5 …Transparency, Accountability, the cost of their energy without requiring them to validate and Integrity their eligibility.25 Similarly, in Canada (Group A, GTMI 2020), Siloed information systems constitute a clear obstacle to when a person’s birth is registered, the government allows improve trust in the public sector. The lack of data exchange for this information to be shared with the Canada Child and the maintenance of fragmented social and economic Benefit program and other programs.26 In order to activate public registers determine additional difficulties for the creation the application, the mother must grant permission at the of an open government where cross-cutting transparency civil registration office to allow for the data to be shared by is determinant for improved accountability towards citizens. the corresponding Registry Office in the residence province Otherwise, without the proper data exchange, public sectors with the Canada Revenue Agency. After that eligibility for the present themselves to its constituents as a disintegrated available programs is evaluated and, if applicable, the benefit fabric, difficult to understand, tending incoherence and is automatically activated. unreliability. The absence of data exchange also constitutes a problem for integrity and law enforcement as the multiplication 2.2.4 …Omnichannel Service Delivery of unconnected data sources creates serious difficulties for To meet citizens expectations, governments need to study data checking and traceability. For instance, the integration and evaluate user journeys and experiences across multiple of public procurement with other public sector data – for channels. A citizen may pick up the phone to ask where (s)he example, tax administration, budgeting, public finance can request child benefits, receive a personalized activation management, and auditing – can increase accountability and link by email and then follow the progress of the request through support governments to develop innovative and impactful a mobile app. To ensure the best experience on all levels, procurement strategies.29 Interoperable information systems interoperable systems are needed to integrate information can also be critical for improved anti-corruption policies, and process them, allowing citizens to easily move across allowing law enforcers to enhance data to better safeguard different contact points. Governments are gradually switching the social contract through the use of disruptive technologies to omnichannel public services provision, leveraging seamless such as data analytics or artificial intelligence. experiences with integrated channels and focusing on design and efficient delivery. An omnichannel approach “allows online Several examples can be found worldwide on the benefits and mobile services to co-exist with face-to-face or over-the- of interoperability for improved transparency, accountability, phone service delivery, ensuring that underlying processes and integrity. In Brazil (Group A, GTMI 2020), the World are digitally coherent and integrated”.27 This means that public Bank provided technical assistance to the government of service delivery should be equally valuable and effective Brazil for building a governance risk assessment system via any channels preferred by citizens, regardless of which with a concrete whole of government approach. The system channels they use most. The added value is offering citizens a integrated datasets such as public sector payroll, data of seamless user-experience and personalized actions. government transfers and social benefits, procurement contracts, e-invoices or the list of banned companies, Switching to a citizen-centered approach, including an generating indicators that can raise red flags on potential omnichannel service delivery has made governments fraud or misuse of public funds.30 In Romania (Group B, GTMI understand the importance of investing in interoperability 2020), a World Bank supported project is using procurement frameworks. For example, the municipality of Milan’s and justice data to assess the public procurement system. Connected Newsstand project, launched in 2020 during In Senegal (Group C, GTMI 2020), an ongoing project of the the roughest period of the COVID-19 pandemic, enables World Bank is building a beneficial ownership database and newsstands around the city to issue general registry office connecting it to financial statements. This will allow to identify certificates for citizens and their families. Connecting totems fraud risks by looking at the irregularities and incongruences cleared by the municipality via ad hoc designed APIs to the between beneficial ownership and financial statements.31 General Registry Office and after successfully completing a training program, newsvendors are authorized to print EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 18 2.2.6 …Service Composability government, enabling a smooth payment experience for Italian citizens irrespective of the public entity that they are dealing Interoperable service modules, powered by open standards with. Businesses may also benefit from enhanced government (see Module 11) allow for composability of services: adding interoperability when plugging nationally recognized service different components and modules to a service. For instance, components into services for their customers. For example, interoperability standards allow local authorities to use in Denmark citizens may use the public-privately developed payments or identification solutions as part of their online national electronic identification system (eID) to fill out their services: the local authority can maintain the full end-to-end tax forms, for online banking and many more public and user experience so that citizens only seem to interact with private services.33 The encompassing benefits of service the local authority website, but some part of the services composability, such as time saved, error reduction, process (e.g. payments) are delivered using components developed simplification and increased user satisfaction are thus not by the central government or private actors. In simple only bestowed on public authorities, but on private service terms, interoperability standards allow for a much wider providers as well. choice between different service modules, and facilitate the integration of these components (plug-in). 2.2.7 …System Resilience Moreover, open standards increase the opportunity to involve System resilience is the ability of systems to withstand disruptive external actors, including private service providers, enhancing conditions, to promptly respond to them and to recover from the flexibility of decoupled elements while remaining the damage they may cause. Resilient digital systems are connected and integrated to a main element. They help to refer capable of isolating and manage potential malfunctions that to file formats and interfaces that can be easily shared and are crucial for ensuring the continuity of core government implemented by everyone, because of their features. They are operations and the security of remote access for government of particular importance as enablers for government agencies, officials, supporting vulnerable people and businesses, and allowing them to interact in a beneficial way to ensure the deploying less expensive and more reliable ICT infrastructure maintenance of common references. In Italy (Group A, GTMI solutions, such as a government cloud and mobile or portable 2020),32 is an initiative that allows citizens and businesses to data centers, for rapid modernization of existing systems and realize electronic payments to the public administration on services.34 This is particularly relevant in light of the worldwide the basis of rules, standards and tools defined by the Agency increase in cyberattacks and data breaches.35 With sound for Digital Italy (AgID) and accepted by public administration interoperable systems in place, governments are affected less bodies, banks, post offices and other payment institutions. The profoundly by such disruptions as government operations can privately developed national ePay system is adhered to by be organized in a decentralized and remote way. Italian public institutions at both the national and local levels of EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 19 The introduction of data embassies (also called e-embassies) understanding the risks linked to potential natural disasters.38 demonstrates how important technical and legal interoperability Powered by analytical tools and monitoring dashboards, are for the resilience of government operations. Being an interoperable data facilitate evidence-based public extension of a country’s cloud including its most sensitive policymaking and first response in real time.39 and confidential data, a data embassy constitutes server resources outside its territorial boundaries, but legally under Interoperability also contributes to the adoption and provision its jurisdiction. Launched in 2015, the Estonian data embassy of open data by governments, for instance regarding in Luxembourg was the first of its kind, providing the necessary government budgets, greenhouse gas emissions or mobility. technical and legal interoperability with the systems at home By opening up public data trapped in organizational siloes, that a public/private cloud computing deal couldn’t.36 In collaboration can be increased and the duplication of work case of a cyberattack or crisis situation affecting its home can be avoided both within the public sector and in relation servers, the data embassy ensures continuity of operations to the private sector and civil society. To make sure that data through data backups and the functioning of critical services. can be easily shared, accessed and reused, interoperability In July 2021 the Principality of Monaco followed in Estonia’s standards need to be adhered to. Data need to be published footsteps by establishing the world’s second data embassy in in human-editable and machine-usable and readable formats, the Grand Duchy.37 and obtain open licensing.40 2.2.8 …Multiactor Data-Driven A key driver of the open data movement is the potential of Value Creation public sector data published in open format to stimulate private sector innovation and provide opportunities for the A final and cross-cutting benefit is that interoperability will economy at large. Companies transform open data into allow to scale up data-driven value creation by increasing the economic and social value through direct monetized benefits accessibility and linkability of previously isolated data assets, in the form of market transactions and indirect ones.41 In 13 both retrospectively and in real time. This will enable more years’ time the European open data market value had almost actors than ever before, including those from the private quadrupled from EUR 48 billion in 2006 to EUR 184 billion in sector to participate in value creation involving public data, 2019.42 According to the GTMI a little over half (106) of the 198 also repurposing data originally collected in another context. countries reviewed have a dedicated portal providing access For example, in Norway (Group A, GTMI 2020), the case of to data.43 While this is a good starting point, actions aimed the Norwegian Knowledge Bank showcases how loss data at supporting the reusers of open data are crucial to have collected by insurance companies made interoperable with real impact.44 municipal geo-information systems are highly valuable in EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 20 3. >>> Setting the Right Policy and Organizational Conditions KEY MESSAGES • Whole of government approaches are required to secure the implementation of interoperability policies in the different sectors and levels of government. Although there are not unique models to develop these approaches, different cross-cutting policy dimensions should be considered. • Assuring an appropriated policy and institutional setting is critical to achieve interoperability governance in the public sector, namely attributing the appropriate relevance to the topic through the national GovTech strategy as well as the institutional leadership and coordination mechanisms in place. • Updated and agile legal and regulatory frameworks are necessary to navigate the fast-paced digital transformation underway, enabling the fundamental legal interoperability required for governments to enhance the benefits and tackle the challenges of public sector digitalization. • Trust, ethics, and data rights should not be an afterthought, but should receive consideration from the start of an interoperability project. • Promoting a data culture through a value-based and cocreation approach supports cultural interoperability. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 21 • Interoperability requires policy levers – coordinated public procurement, preevaluation of ICT investments, standard business cases, monitoring mechanisms – capable of overcoming the siloed data management scenario that public administrations frequently face, and securing coherent and sustainable implementation across the administration. • Specialized data skills to promote interoperability in the public sector are at the core of coherent and sustainable digital transformation in administrations. Although the digital transformation of the public sector has adoption of interoperability architecture and standards across been progressing at an accelerated pace all over the world in the public sector. the last few decades, horizontal integration is one of the key challenges governments continue facing nowadays. Whole- The current chapter will present and suggest six modules of-government approaches are required to secure coherent based on the framework of building blocks.. It starts by and sustainable approaches able to generate the full benefit focusing on the policy and institutional setting, highlighting of the digital revolution. Specifically on data integration and important elements such as the national GovTech strategy, exchange domains, how do project teams ensure that the the important role of the public sector institution responsible same standards and architectures are applied across different for the national GovTech policy, and the existing coordination sectors and levels of governments? What building blocks do mechanisms across the public sector for data governance. governments need to have in place to properly implement a The chapter will then discuss the required legal and regulatory sound interoperability policy across the public sector? framework capable of supporting interoperability across the public sector. The chapter will be followed by setting up Countries’ progress in building data-driven public sectors trustworthy data governance, cultural interoperability, policy has revealed several issues that they should address to take levers for coherent implementation, and digital skills. full advantage of the potential of data to drive policy making, service delivery and organizational management across the 3.1 Module 1: Creating the Basis public sector. These issues touch upon cultural, organizational and legal interoperability. It is necessary to build an appropriate for Operations: Policy and data culture, reflect on new business models, foster open Institutional Setting collaboration with the private sector, and consider issues of trust, ethics, and digital rights. 3.1.1 Embed Interoperability in the Overall There is not a one-size-fits-all approach to support a cross- GovTech Strategy cutting interoperability policy. Different contexts determine varied whole-of-government approaches. Very diverse A national GovTech or Digital Government strategy is a variables such as the administrative organization of the country, fundamental policy instrument to define the vision and goals, the legal and regulatory culture, or the level of digitalization of frame the purposes and objectives, identify the priorities the administration determine specific and customized policy and the necessary actions or initiatives the government will approaches. Nevertheless, there are some important building embrace during a certain period of time. The strategy has blocks that should be considered to support an effective a fundamental role to support a system-wide coherence and sustainable interoperability policy. As underlined by the across the public sector.46 It helps to overcome siloed ECLAC interoperability guide, any country that wants to take a approaches by the machinery of government that lead to holistic approach to interoperability should take its governance isolated, compartmented, and non-interoperable solutions of digital government as a starting point, since this defines incapable of sustaining efficient operations and user-centered the relevant policy, strategy, resources and institutional services in the public sector. The strategy should in this sense support.45 The institutional setting of the country, the policy recognize the role of interoperability as the backbone of a levers available, the legal and regulatory frameworks being digital government capable of sharing and reusing data in an applied and the digital skills and talent policy are critical policy efficient and sustainable way. In order to be truly embedded instruments that should be framed and aligned to support the by a whole-of-government approach, the strategy and its EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 22 interoperability component should also be properly linked and Considering the experiences observed in different countries make the necessary bridges with other government agendas around the world, digital government or GovTech strategies underway – for example, education, health sustainable should prioritize interoperability across sectors and levels development, climate change – enabling the creation of the of government as a fundamental building block for public proper policy ties and foundations for transversely articulated sector transformation. Different approaches can be followed implementation in the government. considering contextual factors such as the administrative culture in place, the existing IT legacy, or the level of The GTMI indicates that almost all countries in the world digitalization of the public sector. Governments should also have a GovTech or Digital Government Strategy – 174 of the leverage the policy strategy to guide the different drivers for 198 economies analyzed – without significant differences prioritizing interoperability in order to mobilize the different identified between different regions.47 Given the relevance of stakeholders towards a common goal, such as the basic and interoperability and data exchange as fundamentals for the efficient reuse of information across different ministries or more digital transformation of the public sector, these topics typically advanced objectives such as enabling data and evidence- have a significant relevance in GovTech or digital government based policy making, decision making and evaluation. strategies. Whether more focused on technical, organizational, cultural, legal, or semantic interoperability, governments use 3.1.2 Establish the Institutional these mobilizing policy instruments to prioritize the adoption of Structure with Leadership to common data exchange standards, for example, and the use Support Interoperability of an interoperability hub or platform. Defining the right institutional structures that can support a Estonia (Group A, GTMI 2020) explicitly states that all national whole-of-government approach for digital government is one digital initiatives, including interoperability, stem from the of the critical tasks countries face, independent of their level national digital agenda and must be in alignment with it.48 In of digital development. Since there is not a unique solution the updated Digital Government Strategy, the Government of to secure institutional alignment and coordination, different Brazil (Group A, GTMI 2020) reinforces the data exchange options can be followed depending on contextual factors such objectives of its systems, setting ambitions of interconnecting as the institutional culture of the administration or the relative federal IT platforms to secure the automated prefilling of strength of vertical and horizontal structures. Nevertheless, forms using the Citizen’s Base Register or the Postal Address the existence of a public sector organization responsible Register.49 In the Republic of Korea (Group A, GTMI 2020), for leading the digital government or GovTech policy is the Digital Government Master Plan 2021–2025 places clearly an institutional asset for coherent and sustainable data at the center of government transformation. In order to policy implementation.53 The promotion of a cross-cutting provide personalized service delivery channels asking citizens interoperability policy in the public sector is favored by this information only once, the mission of the master plan is to organizational leadership. facilitate a data-based government namely through initiatives such as opening both public data and service APIs to The institutional consensus about the need for a lead public collaborate with the private sector or using data from Internet sector body for digital government development is empirically of Things (IoT) sensors for disaster prevention and response.50 demonstrated in different international monitoring instruments. According to the GTMI, 80 of the 198 economies analyzed Timor-Leste (Group C, GTMI 2020), even though it does have a public sector organization responsible for leading the not have an interoperability platform in place, is undertaking digital government or GovTech policy.54 The 2020 edition of efforts through its National Connectivity Project to improve the the OECD Digital Government Index indicates that all the connectivity between the central government and the local 34 countries that participated in the survey have a public administration offices, and set up a root information system.51 sector organization responsible for leading and coordinating Similarly, in Lesotho (Group C, GTMI 2020), interoperability decisions on digital government at the central/federal level of efforts are linked to a specific problem and broader digital government.55 This institution is normally located in the center initiative, the reduction of paperwork and fraud in the context of of government (for example, in Chile, Portugal, UK) in a setting up a national identification system.52 As such, pursuing coordination ministry such as finance and public administration interoperability is not an isolated technical endeavor, but part (for example, in Denmark, Korea), or in a line ministry of a broader agenda. specifically dedicated to telecommunications, information and EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 23 communication technologies, or digital transition (for example, trying to implement the interoperability standard based on in Austria, Colombia, Greece). The institution can also have coordination mechanisms. Cross-governmental coordination different models such as a public sector agency (for example, mechanisms support the creation of a digital culture among the in Australia, Panama, USA) or a direction within a specific different stakeholders, and fosters joint ownership and shared ministry (for example, in Colombia, Slovenia). responsibility for the GovTech policy agenda, enabling a shift from agency-centric models to systems thinking approaches. In Colombia (Group A, GTMI 2020), the Directorate of Sound coordination dialogue with a whole-of-government Digital Government (Dirección de Gobierno Digital) in the approach can contribute to addressing difficulties caused Ministry of Information and Communication Technologies by different maturity levels of government organizations. (MinTIC) is responsible for the national digital government Countries tend to establish inter-ministerial committees or policy. The management of different cross-cutting initiatives, councils for the digital transformation of the public sector such as the unique portal of the Colombia State GOV.CO, in order to accomplish this required cross-governmental requires MinTIC to place interoperability in the public sector cooperation. With a more high-level or operational profile and at the center of its mandate. The Interoperability Framework mandate, these mechanisms contribute decisively to assure (Marco de Interoperabilidad) and the Guide to Quality and that the GovTech and Digital Government policy, particularly Interoperability Standards (Guía de Estándares de Calidad e its interoperability components, is not only the responsibility Interoperabilidad) reflect the commitment of the Government of one agency or ministry, but a whole-of-government priority. of Colombia to widespread interoperability across the different sectors and levels of government. In Japan (Group A, GTMI The GTMI found that 49 of 198 economies in the world 2020), the Digital Agency is the new public sector organization have a government entity in charge of data governance leading the digital government policy. Launched in September or data management in place.58 On the other hand, 70 2021, the agency has significant coordination competences percent of the countries that responded to the OECD Digital and demonstrates the Japanese government’s intent to Government Index 2019 confirmed having a coordination reform the culture of administration in a user-driven manner body / mechanism responsible for government IT projects (for through digitalization. One of the top priorities embraced is example, a Council of Chief Information Officers).59 Different the implementation of the national data strategy, considered a examples can be found around the world that prioritize digital cornerstone of the digitalization of the public sector.56 government cross-governmental cooperation. In Australia (Group A, GTMI 2020), the Digital Transformation and Public The existence of a leading public sector organization that Sector Modernization Committee is composed of ministerial embraces interoperability as a priority is a fundamental representatives from each state and territory responsible for requisite for cohesive digital government development. The the digital and data policy.60 In Spain (Group A, GTMI 2020), institutional location and shape can be different from country the Central Administration Coordination Commission for ICT to country, but its mandate, policy levers (see Module 5) Strategy brings together representatives of all ministries, and recourses are crucial for securing the adhesion of the being responsible for the design and development of the public sector to the national/federal interoperability policy. digital government policy. Additionally, Ministerial Committees Governments should therefore continue strengthening for Digital Government are responsible for promoting the institutional and organizational policy leadership capable digital government and implementing the action plan for digital of strongly promoting cross-departmental adoption of transformation in their own Ministry.61 interoperability standards and architectures, in line with the national/federal digital government or GovTech policy. Having in mind the cross-cutting nature of interoperability Furthermore, to address limited resources, governments need policies in the public sector, solid coordination mechanisms are to consider developing adequate funding models to implement a requisite for coherent and sustainable policy implementation. interoperability initiatives.57 Whether with a high level or technical profile, the existence of coordination councils, committees, or networks that prioritize 3.1.3 Ensure Solid Coordination interoperability and bring together representatives from the Mechanisms to Prioritize Interoperability different sectors and levels of government is fundamental to promote systems thinking approaches capable of elevating Institutional coordination across government ministries and data exchange and reuse as critical foundation of a transformed agencies, as well as involving different levels of the public public sector. Also, ensuring Business Process is useful to sector, is critical to avoid siloed policy design, development, identify needs of interoperability in public institutions and delivery, and monitoring. Also, governments can meditate simplify the way of public services through interoperability.62 competing situations that arise when multiple agencies are EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 24 3.2 Module 2: Ensuring Proper Legal is avoided though a seamless enhancement of its benefits across the economy, society, and public sectors. and Regulatory Frameworks To promote this digital transformation of the public sector, updated legal and regulatory frameworks are commonly The current context of permanent digital change requiring used by governments to support complex cross-government constant cross-governmental coordination invites architecture involving common ICT standards, interoperability governments to maintain the necessary legal and regulatory frameworks and common data management systems. In frameworks properly updated, ensuring legal interoperability. fact, data management and exchange are at the core of GovTech policy efforts need to be in place to secure that the the legislative and regulatory work required by the digital digital transformation is properly regulated, providing legal revolution underway. Digital rights in the areas of personal validity to digital objects, transactions, and approaches, and data protection, cybersecurity, access to information, or also fundamentally guaranteeing that citizens’ interests and the value of communicating digitally with the administration rights are legally covered. The digital benefits brought by are also important drivers of these ongoing efforts to legal the transformation underway need to be seized, but its risks and regulatory frameworks to respond in an agile way to should also be tackled. Governments should seek to create an evolving needs. environment where bureaucratic resistance to digital change > > > F I G U R E 4 - Data Legal and Regulatory Frameworks Privacy and Data Protection Data Ownership Base Registers and Consent Once-Only Data Exchange Principle Data Legal and Regulatory Frameworks Interoperability Data Standards Hub/Platform Right to Cyber Security Information Open Data Source: Author. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 25 Figure 4 presents a list of legal and regulatory pieces that It accords substantial importance to data governance and countries use, in the form of laws, decrees, acts or regulations, exchange between public sector organizations, provided to frame and influence their interoperability policy. Although that the privacy rights of the citizens are respected. The not exhaustive, the list demonstrates how cross-cutting eGovernment Act contains provisions on the application of interoperability issues can be, touching on very diverse domains the once-only principle, where the application of the Austria such as privacy and data-protection, data standards, right to Interoperability framework assumes particular relevance.65 information, the use of interoperability hubs, the application of In Finland (Group A, GTMI 2020), the Public Administration the once-only principle in the administration, or increasingly Act empowers the Ministry of Finance to coordinate the important issues such as data ownership and consent. There interoperability of public sector datasets, indicating also that is not a one-size-fits-all approach about how countries legislate public sector organizations should reuse datasets within the in this area; it will depend on different contextual factors that administration whenever possible.66 In Ireland (Group B, GTMI are country-specific, making legal interoperability especially 2020), the Data Sharing and Governance Act approved in 2019 challenging in cross-border contexts. The institutional and provides legal basis for the sharing of personal data across administrative culture in the country can determine different certain circumstances across public sector organizations, approaches to regulating or legislating interoperability issues. provided that their privacy is secured. The goal of the act is to For instance, countries with a more legalistic administrative substantially reduce the burden to citizens associated with the culture based on a Napoleonic Code, such as in the South of provision of their personal data to numerous public bodies.67 Europe or Latin America, tend to legislate or regulate more In Portugal (Group A, GTMI 2020), a resolution adopted by the extensively and in a more detailed way to secure effective Council of Ministers in 2015 foresees the preferential adoption implementation and compliance across the administration, of the Interoperability Platform for the Public Administration economy, and society. Other countries typically follow a (iAP) as the primary means of exchanging information among more consensus-based approach based on a Common Law departments and entities of Public Administration.68 Croatia tradition, building on an institutional culture that regulates less (Group A, GTMI 2020) has defined technical standards for and uses more instruments such as guidelines and standards. interoperability through the 2017 Decree on Organizational Anglo-Saxon or North of Europe countries traditionally tend and Technical Standards for Connecting to the National to use a more consensus-based approach. Whether following Information Infrastructure.69 a more legalistic or consensus-based approach, the agility and responsiveness of the legal and regulatory building of the A particular challenge in countries with a highly decentralized countries responding to the fast-paced digital transformation government structure is to provide a seamless experience is critical. to citizens by ensuring interoperability between the different levels of government. Spain (Group A, GTMI 2020) Countries have been progressing significantly during the last addressed this challenge by jointly addressing legal and few decades updating their legal and regulatory frameworks technical interoperability. Through Law 39/2015 on Common to properly respond to the digitalization underway. In the area Administrative Procedure of Public Administrations and the of data management, according to the GTMI, 130 of a total Law 40/2015 on the Legal Regime of the Public Sector, the of 198 countries have national laws, statutes, or regulations country made it mandatory for central, regional and local public to make data available digitally to the public. The GTMI also administrations to ensure compatibility and interoperability of indicates that 132 countries have data protection/privacy laws their systems and enablers, and cooperate to ensure clear in place, corresponding to 67 percent.63 The OECD survey information provision. These legal provisions are accompanied on Digital Government provides equally some interesting by a series of shared solutions, infrastructures and services.70 insights. Eighty percent of the countries that answered the survey confirmed having in place legislation on sharing of As shown below in Box 3, the role of the European Union government data across the administration. And almost 60 in promoting the update of its member-states legal and percent confirmed the existence of laws at the federal/central regulatory frameworks in the area of interoperability is very government level covering the topic of interoperability.64 significant. At the European level, an “Interoperable Europe Act” is under development to support a smooth, interoperable Confirming this trend, several country examples demonstrate implementation and delivery of digital services enabled by a the substantial relevance of interoperability in their GovTech more structured and pragmatic cooperation between member legal and regulatory framework. In Austria (Group A, GTMI states at a horizontal level, and between different European 2020), the eGovernment Act approved in 2004 underlines its services and policies at a vertical level.71 The new act will purpose to promote legally relevant electronic communication. complement existing European regulations and initiatives. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 26 > > > B O X 3 - Regulating Data: The European Union Example The European Union provides an inspiring example of multilateral coordination envisaging cross-border data exchange among its member states. European legislation and regulations in different domains are critical policy instruments to secure cohesion across borders and synergies among governments. The following examples can be highlighted considering their influence in shaping the European Union Interoperability policy: • European Interoperability Framework – Implementation Strategy - COM(2017) 134 final, Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions • European strategy for data – COM/2020/66 final, Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions • Directive on open data and reuse of public sector information (European Parliament and Council, 2019). • General Data Protection Regulation (European Parliament and Council, 2016). • eIDAS Regulation – Electronic Identification, Authentication and Trust Services (European Parliament and Council, 2014). As well as influencing the legal and regulatory frameworks of to develop a proper assessment of the existing situation in its member states, these and other directives and regulations order to determine the updates required for the legal and also have a substantial role beyond European borders, regulatory framework. considering the role of the European economy worldwide, as well as the legacy, influence, and inspiration provided by Additionally, three other recommendations can be considered. institutions of member states in different geographies. Promoting a digital-by-design culture among policy makers that can properly consider the value of interoperability Several countries specifically pay attention to cross-sector would be an asset. This mindset can enable the law-making and cross-border interoperability in their national frameworks. processes to integrate from start the benefits of digital and Cyprus (Group B, GTMI 2020) has taken concrete action interoperability in new or updated legal and regulatory pieces, to facilitate the cross-border exchange of health data and with clear advantages in terms of policy efficiency and provide interoperable eHealth services. In 2019, the country cohesion. Additionally, adopting a digital rights approach to launched the Electronic Health Act to align the Cypriot health updating the current legal and regulatory framework should infrastructure with European standards.72 also be prioritized. Legislators should consider from start this citizen-centered approach where data rights such as privacy, In the digital age, there is the need for continuous adoption once-only, consent, and ownership in new legislative pieces and update of legal and regulatory frameworks to respond are at the core of the GovTech legal and regulatory framework. to the fast pace of technological innovations and increasing Finally, sound interoperability reforms need to go beyond expectations from citizens and companies. Governments are isolated or non-articulated mechanisms to achieve useful required to create the foundations for a digital environment whole-of-government approaches. A clear coordination of the and culture through updated legal and regulatory frameworks. different dimensions of nondigital interoperability – leadership, As shown in Figure 5, different pieces of legislation can be coordination, and policy levers – is required. Otherwise, developed or updated to meet the needs countries face, the formality of the legal and regulatory frameworks will not depending on contextual factors such as the existing legal effectively contribute to the necessary transformation towards and regulatory legacy, the administrative culture, and the a data-driven public sector. GovTech policy priorities in place. Policy makers are required EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 27 3.3 Module 3: Setting up are lost on the majority of low- and middle-income countries as “data systems that facilitate the safe flow of data in formats Trustworthy Data Governance that make the data valuable to many users [..] typically do not function well.”74 At the same time, many of these countries do not have the burden of legacy IT systems, allowing them to 3.3.1 Focus On Guiding Data-Driven implement interoperability by design. Value Creation Interoperability and data governance are closely intertwined. To provide a strong foundation for interoperability efforts, Without a clear strategy, leadership, and coordination data governance needs to be in place. Key issues to address regarding the generation, processing, sharing, and reuse of through regulation, data governance bodies, policies, and data throughout the public sector, it is virtually impossible to initiatives include data ethics, data privacy and anonymization, realize interoperability at a scale where it truly benefits citizens. data-sharing and data interoperability, data protection and At the same time, having a clear interoperability framework security, and responsible innovation.75 Supporting these with proper standards and understandable guidelines can efforts are data governance principles, design guides, and provide a good starting point for scaling up data governance metamodels. An emerging model for data governance is efforts. For instance, an OECD report on digital government in the concept of a data trust, an entity that is responsible for the Middle East and North Africa region demonstrates that the managing and protecting the data of an individual or group lack of data governance in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, of individuals.76 Involving citizens in data governance efforts and Tunisia has translated into a lack of interoperability, can help policy makers to understand attitudes towards use of digital fragmentation of the public sector, a lack of efficiency, government-managed data.77 Data literacy within government the duplication of efforts, and a significant number of is also an important consideration.78 untapped opportunities.73 The OECD government data value cycle displayed in Figure 5 When looking at the state of data governance across World helps to understand the process through which raw data can Bank economies and regions, it becomes clear that the lead to public value.79 It is composed of four phases: (1) the efforts in this domain need to be ramped up in order to reap collection and generation of data; (2) the storing, securing and the benefits from interoperability initiatives. Only 16 countries processing of data; (3) the sharing, curating and publishing have a whole-of-government approach for it, 68 are planning of data; and (4) the use and reuse of data, which can lead to on it or have it in progress, and a whopping 114 countries public value creation and to the generation of new government have not taken any action in this area. Many of the discussed data ready for further processing. benefits of interoperability in government (see Section 2.2), EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 28 > > > F I G U R E 5 - OECD Government Data Value Cycle Public value Using and re-using Collecting Storing, securing, Sharing, curating, and generating and processing and publishing Statistical analysis Machine learning Visualisation Published data (e.g. open data) Storage Handle requests and agreement Policy and service decisions Sensory data (e.g. CCTV) Quality management Data sharing platforms Life decisions Requested data (e.g. forms) Catalogue Open Data websites Performance insights Admin data (e.g. contracts) Cleansing Impacts the public sector and Impacts the public sector and Impacts the public sector Impacts the public sector public stakeholders public stakeholders Goverment sources Non-goverment sources Source: Van Ooijen et al., 2019. Besides the data management process, data governance is help governments to structure decisions and shape their crucial to ensure that the proper conditions are put in place objectives to create data value. Together, well-structured for the government data value cycle to function properly. As data management standards and a robust data governance such, the World Development Report 2021: Data for Better framework eventually help users to better harness the value Lives, highlights that data governance and data management from data in a safe and equitable manner.80 It is important to are both crucial to create value and support social trust, prioritize key data sets for interoperability, considering what as shown in Figure 6. They are necessary insofar as they will bring the most value with cross-government perspective.81 EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 29 > > > F I G U R E 6 - World Bank Data Governance and Data Management Structure Create ence Stra evid teg ic d an pla Archive Process ing nn i Learn ng Value Data Trust Data Governance Management Quality ta t a n d ion Co Analyze Store en ing mp an ma k ce Rul e lem li I mp Transfer Source: World Bank, 2021b. One of the main steps a government should take in the The current state-of-the-art in data and metadata modelling promotion of a more digitally advanced ecosystem is to by governmental organizations shows that civil servants make good use of data.82 Governments rely more and more generally tend to use la case-by-case basis, without a specific on a variety of data types in order to level up the digital offer and detailed plan laying out guidelines on data sharing.84 provided to citizens, while innovating the administration from Moreover, data are sometimes handled across departments the within. However, not all results and approaches yield within a single organization prioritizing internal needs over timely, significant, and useful results. Often, a combination generally agreed and suggested recommendations. In this of policy modelling and data governance components is respect, many countries are increasingly employing adhoc assembled and enforced to form a bigger digital strategy dashboards and data visualization platforms, adopting the by governments, disregarding the fragmentation that these most suitable tools with respect to different departments and elements entail and the loss for public institutions in terms activities carried out. This new approach helps governments of integration and cohesion. For this reason, a holistic data to develop target dossiers and directly address citizens’ governance approach, such as undertaken by Thailand (Box needs, upon careful evaluation of the data collected. Because 4), is needed to help governments to achieve a truly integrated of this misalignment, data leadership is still misunderstood in data-based policy making approach.83 some countries, wrongly placing data management in the IT departments and not pursuing it as a factor in the achievement of top-level policy goals.85 EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 30 > > > B O X 4 - Thailand’s Government Digital Journey (Group A, GTMI 2020) In order to provide formal ministerial support and enforce sound governance structures, the Digital Government Development Agency (DGA) has developed an ad hoc document in 2018, emphasizing the importance of data in key policy lines for the country, namely, digital economy and society, while addressing the most relevant challenges this process entails. The Data Governance Framework86 defines data governance as “a mechanism for determining the direction, control and verification of the management of data, such that the data are secure, of quality, cost-effective, and economically and socially valuable, and the acquisition and use of government information are accurate, complete, current, safe and private.” The document aims to provide standards in supporting government agencies to build the foundations of the digitalization process of data collection, data sharing, data distribution, and data exchange. Source: OECD, 2022a. 3.3.2 Enhance Trust, Ethics and Data building institutions would help unleash the potential of digital transformation for growth.87 Any measures to define and assert Rights in the Digital Age citizens digital rights thus need to be accompanied by efforts Creating a trustworthy and safe digital environment for citizens to build, restore, and/or solidify trustworthy public institutions. is important from both a moral and practical point of view. It is The World Bank’s World Development Report 2011 (WDR11) the right thing to do and it is a necessary condition for citizens underlines the need of a social contract around data, being to participate in the GovTech system. Citizens will simply be able to connect three dimensions: value, trust, and equity less keen to engage with public authorities via digital means (Figure 7). This social contract is based on an agreement if they do not have clear digital rights and if they believe that among all participants that, in the process of creating, reusing, the government is unwilling or unable to safeguard these and sharing data that fosters trust, they will not be harmed from rights. Citizens’ willingness to take up public digital services exchanging data and that part of the value created by data will is strongly related to the overall interpersonal trust level accrue equitably. Although recognizing that persuading all the in a country, and especially the general trust toward public parties on this agreement requires permanent efforts, WDR11 institutions and officials. underlines the importance of securing that the benefits from using data are shared in an equitable way. This World Bank Research from the Inter-American Development Bank shows flagship report on data also stresses that, considering the that the uptake of digital services is hindered by the low level cross-border nature of data, these social contracts are needed of interpersonal trust in Latin America and the Caribbean and both at national and international level.88 underlines that strengthening both digital-specific and trust- EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 31 > > > F I G U R E 7 - A Social Contract Founded on Value, Trust, and Equity Value The full value of data materializes when systems enable the use and reuse of data for different purposes. THE SOCIAL TRUST CONTRACT EQUITY A trust environment All share equitability is created when the in the benefits of data rights and interests that all when investments and stakeholders have in data regulations create a are safeguarded. level playing field. Source: World Bank, 2021c. Additionally, the 2017 OECD report, Trust and Public Policy, What then are the rights that are important to safeguard for identifies two critical policy levers impacting citizens’ trust citizens to reap the benefits of a data-driven public sector? in public institutions.89 The first is policy competence, which While protecting privacy through data protection regulation concerns operational efficiency, capacity, and good judgement clearly is a key aspect of data rights, practices in the more to actually deliver on a given mandate. As previously argued, advanced data-driven public sector countries show that data policy competence can receive a significant boost in the data- rights entail more than that. Asserting data rights is about driven public sector through its ability to advance evidence- applying a number of key GovTech principles to public data based policymaking, forecasting and monitoring, and pro-active governance and services involving data exchange with service delivery. Embedding the values of good governance citizens, and backing them up by solid legal foundations into policy making is the second policy lever for public trust. and governance mechanisms. For instance, Eurostat, the This means that the underlying intentions and principles that EU statistical office, has placed trust at the center of its guide actions and behaviors of public institutions should be in activities, from managing data collection to assessing data line with citizens’ expectations. Notably, integrity, openness, quality to delivering robust indicators.91 The strategic aim is and fairness are important in this respect. These insights are to deliver trusted smart statistics from the widest possible mirrored in a more recent study of the European Commission’s range of data sources and in full compliance with personal Joint Research Centre on public sector innovation in a data- data requirements. Data quality assessment services are one driven society.90 of the ways in which Eurostat manages data sharing from national statistical offices. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 32 Trust-enhancing principles include, but are not limited to complementing and potentially influencing new regulation to openness, transparency, responsiveness, and citizen control protect citizens’ digital rights is at the core of the new draft and are implicitly or explicitly present in international digital Declaration on European digital rights and principles.93 The government frameworks, such as the European Interoperability draft declaration contains several principles that are directly Framework, the World Bank GovTech approach and the OECD relevant to data rights. Digital Government Policy Framework.92 The idea of principles > > > B O X 5 - European Digital Rights and Principles 1. Putting people and their rights at the center of the digital transformation: Digital technologies should protect people’s rights, support democracy, and ensure that all digital players act responsibly and safely. The EU promotes these values across the world 2. Supporting solidarity and inclusion: Technology should unite, not divide, people. Everyone should have access to the internet, to digital skills, to digital public services, and to fair working conditions. 3. Ensuring freedom of choice online: People should benefit from a fair online environment, be safe from illegal and harmful content, and be empowered when they interact with new and evolving technologies like artificial intelligence. 4. Fostering participation in the digital public space: Citizens should be able to engage in the democratic process at all levels, and have control over their own data. 5. Increasing safety, security and empowerment of individuals: The digital environment should be safe and secure. All users, from childhood to old age, should be empowered and protected. 6. Promoting the sustainability of the digital future: Digital devices should support sustainability and the green transition. People need to know about the environmental impact and energy consumption of their devices. Source: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/digital-principles. How are such rights and principles put into practice? Key information law, as shown in Figure 9, the majority of countries indicators in the GTMI are whether countries have a data across all GovTech levels have such a law in place. But, this protection law and a data protection agency. More than half does not mean that there are supporting mechanisms for of economies (109) have both (Figure 8). Regarding a right to citizens to know and exercise their rights. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 33 > > > F I G U R E 8 - Presence of Both Data Protection Law and Agency by GTMI Group Do countries have both a data protection law and data protection agency? 45 39 40 35 35 27 28 30 24 25 20 20 16 13 15 10 5 0 A B C D Yes No Source: WBG GovTech Dataset, December 2020. > > > F I G U R E 9 - Right to Information Law by GTMI Group Do countries have both a data protection law and data protection agency? 45 42 40 40 35 30 25 25 25 21 20 15 14 15 10 10 5 3 5 0 0 0 Yes Drafted or consultation in progress No A B C D Source: WBG GovTech Dataset, December 2020. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 34 An increasing number of countries are aware that ethical data 3.4 Module 4: Promoting management includes granting data subjects a certain level of insight and control over what is happening with their data. a Data Culture and Single access points or portals for digital public services, such Cultural Interoperability as the citizen folder in Spain, the mygovernment portal of the Netherlands, and the citizen portal of Denmark usually bring together citizen data from different government sources.94 Cultural aspects influencing interoperability developments are These initiatives are not only a manifestation of the “once- perhaps the most difficult to capture, as they are usually not only principle,” but also increase transparency and citizen documented or explained. Yet, the often implicit organizational control over data that governments collect about their citizens. and personal values embodied in traditions, habits, and beliefs Colombia’s (Group A, GTMI 2020) citizen folder, “carpeta are highly influential for the success of any interoperability ciudadana,” prominently indicates on the homepage the project, especially in consensus-based systems. Key actors, possibility for citizens to consult and protect their data as such as decision makers and public servants, need to be well as the option to see the status of service transactions convinced that interoperability endeavors, data sharing, and with the government.95 In Portugal (Group A, GTMI 2020), digital government more broadly can be of positive value the interoperability platform equally offers the possibility to rather than threatening to their core activities. If they don’t citizens to monitor their ongoing affairs and see what data see the added value, it is not likely that they will dedicate the government holds about them.96 In Moldova (Group B, time and other resources to making it a success, or even GTMI 2020), through MCabinet, citizens can see what data worse, they may oppose the initiative out of fear of loss of is collected about them, also who accessed their data in the power. The importance of cultural change is underlined state registers when, and for what reason (transparency of in the 2014 OECD Recommendation of the Council on data use).97 In the Republic of Korea (Group A, GTMI 2020), Digital Government Strategies. Recommendation 3 calls on the MyData service allows accredited organizations to governments to “Create a data-driven culture in the public manage personal information scattered across public sectors sector” and emphasizes openness, transparency, a focus on and to provide tailor-made service recommendation to the public engagement, timeliness, ethics, and trustworthiness.103 client. Through the introduction of MyData, more personalized innovative services are being provided to users in various As highlighted as part of Module 1, clear leadership and fields such as finance, medical care, and education.98 institutional coordination are key to promoting the required systems thinking approaches for a data-driven public sector. Transparency and control are also about the ability to monitor Change is generally uncomfortable and resource-consuming how authorities process and use citizen-generated data. This at first, so proper change management leveraging concrete is especially relevant for data-driven co-creation with citizens. incentives and a shared understanding of expected benefits is This is not only relevant from a privacy perspective, but also needed to get all relevant actors to embark on the journey and from a democratic perspective. In order for citizens to keep participate in shaping it. The leadership needs to be capable engaged and see the value of their input and effort they of listening to the involved stakeholders and adapting the require feedback from the government on how their input is interoperability journey in light of emerging insights. being taken on board.99 How can managers drive cultural change? The COVID-19 Finally, it is essential for citizens to be able to trust that personal crisis has given a clear push to GovTech developments across data processed by public institutions are well secured and do the globe. In demonstrating an immediate need for user- not fall into the wrong hands. A broad body of evidence shows centered digital public services backed by data seamlessly that people’s experiences and perceptions of cybersecurity flowing between public organizations, the crisis worked as and data protection shape their trust in, and uptake of, an accelerator of cultural change and accompanying political digital services.100 Among other objectives, cybersecurity mandate. This is especially the case if other drivers of change seeks to prevent theft of user information, which is typically present themselves at the same time. For instance, in the used for financial gain via sale or extortion.101 The OECD United Kingdom (Group A, GTMI 2020), the interoperability underlines that digital security needs to be a fundamental part project launched in 2019 by the Government Digital Service of government’s digital, data, and technology strategies. It experienced a rather slow start, but is now taking a leap with needs to be addressed by government-wide strategies and the development of a new government data hub. The required approached in ways that enable the proactive use of data for political mandate and budget became available as a result designing and delivering better quality government.102 of a clearly demonstrated need to implement the once-only EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 35 principle through insights from previous policies and the with businesses and citizens can help to respond to the needs urgency of the health crisis.104 Demonstrating a real need for of a specific country context, region and community, also in data governance and interoperability, coupled with tangible terms of local expectations, cultures and behaviors.107 benefits is thus very helpful to foster the necessary cultural change, as is also highlighted in the interoperability checklist It is also fundamental to recognize the role of organizational in Annex I. But a crisis is not required to turn this into a and individual incentives in reforms that can lead to more strategy. The renowned open data policy of France (Group A, interoperable and data-driven public sectors. Clarifying and GTMI 2020) owes its success in large part to the government’s disseminating the benefits of interoperability in governments efforts in focusing on where the need for open data lies--with is fundamental to overcoming some of the main barriers of the the end users. This vision has translated into an observatory required reforms. As mentioned previously in this note (Box 1), of data reuse cases, engagement activities towards (potential) challenges such as trust and security on data exchange, the reusers, and a sophisticated system of measuring impact and limited financial resources available, and the existing legacy reuse through qualitative and quantitative approaches.105 technology represent substantial obstacles for the development of sound interoperability approaches. Leadership across the Attention to creating the proper culture favorable to using data public sector and within public sector organizations is required as a strategic asset for the whole public sector rather than to reveal and signal the organizational and individual benefits a one-off ingredient to deliver a specific service is equally in terms of efficiency gains, improved service delivery, relevant in highly mature GovTech countries and in more reinforced resilience, and sound accountability. novice environments. A cocreation approach is important in this respect. For instance, in Denmark (Group A, GTMI 2020), the The World Bank report, Tech Savvy: Advancing GovTech flagship Basic Data Program is not only successful due to its Reforms in Public Administration, argues that impactful Gov solid legal basis and technical infrastructure, but also because Tech adoption requires an effective personnel ecosystem in the government united stakeholders around a shared value organizations, zeroing in on good quality management and an proposition of efficiency and public sector modernization.106 organizational culture conducive to innovation.108 The report This helped to create a common agenda around the ideas provides six policy recommendations aimed at improving of data governance (quality, use and exchange) as central to management and encouraging an innovation culture, using public sector reforms (employment, taxes, the environment). a combination of capacity building and incentives (Box Also, in a development context “successful digital initiatives 6). These recommendations can help overcome cultural are rooted in an understanding of user characteristics, needs barriers, such as organizational resistance to data sharing or and challenges,” as espoused by the community of bilateral centralizing data storage, which is a prevalent problem across and multilateral organizations that endorsed the Principles for GovTech levels.109 Digital Development. Consequently, cocreating digital tools > > > B O X 6 - Fostering a Data Savvy Organizational Culture Leadership training: Concrete and feasible planning and investment is needed for capacity building and skill development, as done in the performance management training at the Canada School of Public Service.110 Incentivizing better management: An effective and responsive HRM system is a key enabler to support attraction, recruitment, development, and retention of staff with digital skills. Greater citizen-orientation: To motivate and improve public service delivery, public servants’ work can be linked to the impacts on the lives of citizens through incorporating citizen feedback into an organization’s work practices via digital technologies. Improving within-organization communication: To make staff feel safe and welcome to share their views on issues by inviting them to tackle organizational challenges together by creating technology-assisted open communication forums - An example is using smartphones in low-income countries to obtain employee feedback. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 36 Training for civil servants: To foster civil servant-led innovation by developing mechanisms and curricula which cover a variety of skills from digital, cognitive, and socioemotional, which help drive cultural transformation within an organization. The Mission Karmayogi program for civil servants in India111 is a good example. Innovation awards: To incentivize staff to innovate, while serving as a learning forum for all involved, complementing organizational efforts in leadership and culture – for example the United Nations Public Service Awards.112 Source: Andrews et al., 2022. 3.5 Module 5: Using Policy Levers for Coherent Implementation As shown in Module 1, the policy and institutional setting is Structured and coordinated ICT procurement is also a critical to secure a coordinated and sustainable development mechanism frequently used to secure that public investments of interoperability policies. Nevertheless, different policy from different sectors and levels of government are aligned tools are required to guarantee effective and efficient with the standards required by the digital government policy, implementation across the administration. These policy namely in terms of interoperability. Since the proliferation levers are able to instruct, calibrate, and enforce the different of different and non-interoperable platforms is one of the efforts underway in order to achieve a system-wide change challenges governments face, intervening in the achievement creating solid bridges between policy and institutional or further development phase is an important policy approach setting and concrete implementation, thereby achieving to secure coherent GovTech implementation across the organizational interoperability. Different policy levers are administration. Governments need to regulate and adapt ICT used by countries from various geographies to push for the procurement approaches applicable to different sectors and adoption of fundamental key enablers of public sector digital levels of the administration to ensure that the acquisition of transformation. services and products reinforces internal coherency and avoids the sometimes typically siloed public landscape where 3.5.1 Adopt Preevaluation of ICT digital platforms are not properly connected or even integrated. Investments and Public Procurement In Australia (Group A, GTMI 2020), the recently launched The procedures in place to allocate financial resources for portal, Buy ICT, supports public agencies through the Digital digital government development can have a central role in Sourcing process by providing detailed guidance, helpful supporting the coordination of efforts and promoting a whole-of- tools, and a collection of policies. The information, guidance, government approach towards interoperability. The existence and procedures provided by the portal are aligned with the of a mechanism for preevaluation of ICT investments applicable country’s interoperability policy.113 In the UK (Group A, GTMI to different sectors of the administration can determine 2020), the Digital Marketplace is an online service managed improved alignment on achieving or developing platforms that by the Government Digital Service that allows public sector are in accordance with the interoperability standards defined organizations to find people and technology for digital projects. by the national digital government policy. Some countries have Besides supporting the agility of procurement place, the procedures in place guaranteeing that investments above a service provided guarantees that the listed suppliers provide certain threshold need to be preevaluated to be certain that service in line with the service standard in place.114 key enablers such as interoperability are properly addressed. In Portugal (Group A, GTMI 2020), the entity responsible for According to the OECD Digital Government Index, the digital government policy – Agency for Administrative governments have different policy approaches towards the Modernization (AMA) – preevaluates all ICT investments in use of ICT procurement and commissioning. Although just central government above 10,000 euros in order to make sure 12 percent of the countries surveyed have a central strategy that specific requisites such as interoperability standards or covering ICT procurement, a vast majority, 67 percent, uses digital identity are properly addressed. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 37 formal guidelines on ICT procurement as a mechanism to good practices and steps for the project management of ICT promote cohesive, sustainable, and supportable approaches projects in public sector organizations.116 In Slovenia (Group A, for ICT investments.115 Together with budget thresholds for GTMI 2020), the use of a standardized project management the preevaluation of ICT investments, this demonstrates model is required for ICT projects above the threshold of how coordinated ICT procurement can act as a determinant 20,000 euros. The Ministry of Public Administration developed policy lever for widespread interoperability standards across a specific methodology for ICT projects with clear benefits in the administration. Depending on the institutional culture in terms of monitoring and evaluation of policy implementation.117 place and ensuring the involvement of the digital government ecosystem of stakeholders, governments should strongly Governments around the world prioritizing the digital consider developing or reinforcing financial management transformation of their public sectors progressively use mechanisms to promote and even enforce the adoption of key policy levers such as standard business cases and project enablers such as interoperability frameworks and standards. management for improved coherence and cohesion. According to the OECD, 57 percent of the countries that 3.5.2 Implement Standard Business Cases responded to the Digital Government Index survey declared and Agile Project Management having a standardized model/method to develop and present business cases within the central/federal level. And two-thirds Standard business cases and agile project management of countries (66.7 percent) declared having a standardized approaches are some other important policy levers used by model for ICT project management.118 In order to further governments to secure improved coherence and sustainability develop a systems thinking approach for public sector on the implementation of GovTech or digital government digitalization, governments should increasingly consider using policies. The use of business cases when designing ICT business case and project management methodologies to investments supports GovTech senior officials in improving enforce coherence in ICT investments and avoid the typical the planning, managing, and monitoring of their projects, and traps of siloed platforms that don’t communicate with each also plays an important role in the rationalization of public other and become a substantial obstacle in the promotion of investments. A standardized model of ICT business cases user-centricity. to be used across different sectors and levels of government can also have an important role promoting improved value Projects aimed at advancing the data-driven public sector, proposition of ICT investments and streamlining compliance such as the creation of a data analytics unit, the development with the GovTech objectives foreseen in the policy agenda, of an open data portal, and data literacy training for public namely in the areas of interoperability. In Denmark (Group A, servants, should be designed and implemented in line with GTMI 2020), business case models are mandatory to be used the overall digital government or digital transformation for ICT projects above the threshold or 1.35 million euros. strategy, thereby ensuring policy coherence and opening up The business case is used to demonstrate the value of the the possibilities of synergies between the different projects. investment to be made based on its financial and non-financial Business case models provide a concrete way to realize consequences. The interoperability of possible platforms to be this as part of a whole-of-government approach. Thus, it can achieved is one of the considered criteria. contribute to organizational interoperability. With a similar rationale of business cases, the existence of Notably, in developing countries, digital transformation standard project management tools for ICT projects can have projects may appear to have too high a price and resources an important role securing the consistency of initiatives across are prioritized elsewhere. Especially in those cases it is crucial different sectors and levels of government. The availability of to demonstrate the financial benefits and timeline for a return these tools and support for its effective adoption across the on investment. To estimate a project’s potential value, it is administration drives improved accuracy on the definition of imperative to understand the pathways through which this value objectives, activities, and tasks. Standard project management is achieved. Financial value for the public sector is important, tools can also reinforce coherence and cohesion on ICT since this is needed for the proper functioning of government projects, including better defining the responsibilities between organizations, and it enables investments in new projects the different stakeholders contributing for project development aimed at creating value for society. Contrary to the private and highlighting the ICT key enablers to be considered such sector, it is the public sector’s core mission to look beyond as interoperability. In Brazil (Group A, GTMI 2020), public financial value. Business case models for digital projects sector organizations are encouraged to use SISP Project can and should support just that. As such, they encourage Management Methodology (Metodologia de Gerenciamento a different way of thinking about the return on investment. de Projetos do SISP, MGPSISP). The methodology provides EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 38 Business models are also about ensuring that digital projects Different examples can be found on the role of monitoring get a chance to affect citizens’ lives in a sustainable way. This tools to enhance interoperability policies. In the EU, the enables project leaders to keep an eye on the cohesiveness National Interoperability Framework Observatory (NIFO) with other projects and the long-term impact instead of short- is one of the mechanisms put in place by the European term quick wins that may look good, but do not benefit citizens Commission to monitor interoperability implementation across in the long haul. If done right, both the content and process European member states and associated countries. NIFO of business cases contribute to such sustainability. Engaging regularly gathers information on the state of play of digital stakeholders in the process of designing business cases is public administration and interoperability activities, becoming essential to promote joint ownership, distribution of benefits. a fundamental online community of practice on interoperability A better understanding of users’ needs and the involvement matters within Europe.120 of stakeholders outside government will become increasingly relevant as more actors demand a say in the value proposition The existence of monitoring mechanisms and tools is also embedded in the business case methodology.119 fundamental step for coherent GovTech implementation across the different levels of government. In line with the 3.5.3 Improve Capacity for Monitoring efforts underway, governments should strengthen monitoring and Evaluation capacities to continue using them for coordination and accountability. Raising the awareness of the public, private, The existence of monitoring mechanisms for GovTech and civil society ecosystem of GovTech stakeholders about policy implementation is crucial to achieve structured policy implementation and key enablers such as interoperability digital government development. Building on and properly standards, is an asset for generating common ownership and aligned with the previously mentioned pre-evaluation of joint responsibility on the construction of a digitally-enabled ICT investments and ICT procurement, as well as business public sector. cases and project management models, a government’s capacity to properly monitor the different initiatives and Despite its benefits, monitoring is an untapped area that projects in place determines its ability to coherently drive the even some of the most digitally-savvy governments are transformation underway. Interoperability policies capable of struggling with. According to the DIGIT Study on public reaching the different sectors and levels of government can sector data, except for one case, monitoring is marginally benefit clearly from the existence of standard monitoring treated in the data strategies of the cases studied (Barcelona, approaches. And although it seems an obvious policy Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, and The Netherlands) and requisite to have monitoring mechanisms able to access and there are no systematic monitoring strategies presented.121 evaluate the digitalization underway in the public sector, the Key Performance Indicators should be considered across frequently siloed approaches block this kind of integrated departments, and they should not only concern outputs, but policy instrument. also the inputs and the process, such as the percentage of datasets in line with the required standards, the access to The capacity to monitor policy implementation carries clear base registries, and the number of departments taking part in advantages in terms of evidence-based policy development, the different activities.122 allowing policy makers and practitioners to have decision making processes supported by accurate and reliable data. Dynamic monitoring systems can be implemented to create options for constant project improvement, generating benefits 3.6 Module 6: Fostering Digital in terms of agility through recurrent experimentation and Skills and Talent recalibration of the approaches being developed. Improved transparency and accountability are also strong benefits of having developed policy mechanisms in place, promoting Skills and talent are the backbone of digital transformation in further internal policy engagement by different sectors and the public sector. The lack and gaps in digital competences levels of government, and also enabling improved reporting is a significant handicap for a coherent and sustainable of the initiatives underway to the public. For instance, making transformation in administrations, able to respond to the available online updated information about policy information demand for quality digital public services. While governments’ through open data can become an important policy lever efforts increasingly prioritize the development of digital skills promoting key enablers for the digital transformation such of civil servants, the public sector faces a significant challenge as interoperability. to attract, retain, and develop the necessary competences EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 39 to navigate the digital age. And the highly specialized data developing countries, the challenge is particularly preoccupant skills to promote interoperability in the public sector are at in the later, increasing their dependencies to properly digitalize the core of this challenge. Specific barriers in digital skills and the public sector. Data from the OECD Digital Government talent identified by countries in the Interoperability Working Index also emphasizes the existing big talent gaps in the Group include the shortage of technicians specialized in different countries observed, creating significant obstacles for data governance, inefficient authorizations and bureaucratic administrations to drive the digital transformation underway in processes, misunderstanding of the interoperability concept, an effective, efficient, and sustainable way.125 Different reasons and lack of capacity for data management and analysis.123 are consensually identified to justify the existing challenge. The lack of existing skills in the market, uncompetitive The GTMI highlights that 47 percent of the 198 countries compensation in the public sector when compared with the surveyed do not have a strategy to improve digital skills, conditions offered by the private sector, or the underdeveloped underlining the importance of further efforts and investments HRM systems in governments are some of the most common by public sectors worldwide to tackle this skills challenge.124 explanations to the existing digital skills gap. Although being transversal to digitally developed and > > > T A B L E 2 - Top 10 Jobs in Increasing Demand 1 Data Analysts and Scientists 2 AI and Machine Learning Specialists 3 Big Data Specialists 4 Digital Marketing and Strategy Specialists 5 Process Automation Specialists 6 Business Development Professionals 7 Digital Transformation Specialists 8 Information Security Analysts 9 Software and Applications Developers 10 Internet of Things Specialists Source: World Economic Forum. The Future of Jobs Report, October 2020; cited by Andrews, 2022. Data skills are at the heart of the existing problem. Almost all of the top 10 job roles in increasing demand across industries (public and private sectors), are technology-related, and several are closely related to data management and exchange (Table 2). Therefore, workforce planning for a digitally competent civil service is critical.126 Prioritizing planning would allow public sectors to identify the existing gaps, considering the GovTech initiative(s) underway. Different approaches can be followed to overcome the data skills gap. Defining the right option is particularly challenging for policy makers and manager practitioners working in the current digital age context. The World Bank report, Tech Savvy: Advancing GovTech Reforms in Public Administration, provides three paths to reduce skills gaps in the public sector that are naturally applicable to interoperability domains--building, buying, or borrowing (Figure 10). EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 40 > > > F I G U R E 1 0 - Core Approaches to Reduce Digital Skills Gaps in the Public Sector • Upskilling (improving existing skills) Build • Reskilling (developing new skills) Buy • Recruit new staff with desired skills • Temporary or contract staff Borrow • Redeployment, secondment, fellowships Source: Andrews, 2022, based on Ulrich, 1998. A building approach is focused on upskilling and reskilling the Elevating the importance of skills in the digital investments to existing public sector workforce. This investment in internal be made, tagging them as strategic, and securing budget for skills might increase the short- and medium-term costs and the necessary training and capacity building, will determine also requires time to realize the benefits of the investment to the sustainability of the projects and initiatives being be made. Nevertheless, the gains in terms of sustainability undertaken. Governments also have to modernize HRM are significant since it allows the administration to respond to policies and practices in attraction, retention, recruitment, job the increasing GovTech demand based on internal resources. design, training, promotion, and compensation, to ensure that This reduces external dependencies and can also contribute the necessary interoperability and skills are available across to the internal satisfaction of the public workforce that benefits the administration. Organizing the communities of practice at from the training and potential career development. The the practitioners’ level is also useful to share best practices, same benefits can also be achieved when adopting a buying standard technical approaches, and guidance to improve approach for the recruitment of staff with the necessary capacity in the public sector.127 digital skills. Although it requires substantial long-term investment, the typical gap and consequent high demand of Strengthening quality and sustainable learning, training, and ICT professionals enforces public decision makers to prioritize development is also an important tool to improve the retention fulfilling this need of their public sectors. Borrowing is also of qualified ICT staff and simultaneously prepare public sector an approach increasingly followed, temporarily contracting organizations to better respond to digital transformation. staff or external know-how, as well as using mechanisms Talent strategies should combine different training models such as secondments and fellowships. The agility of this third such as on-the-job, online, and face-to-face to foster a culture approach is its biggest value, but it creates problems in terms of continuous improvement in digital skills in the public sector. of non-retained talent and external dependency. Governments also need to support continued research and data on the digital labor market and skills for public Different policy priorities can be embraced in order to develop administration. Better quality data will enable public sector digital talent in the public sector regarding interoperability. For organizations to better understand the profile and dimensions the sustainability of interoperability investments, digital skills of the workforce, including existing digital talent in the area of should be a specific component of the projects to be developed. interoperability.128 EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 41 4. >>> Implementing Digital Interoperability • Based on the right policy and organizational foundations, governments • • need to reflect some essential considerations – data readiness, technology trends, data architecture, APIs, open source - for establishing technical and semantic interoperability. KEY MESSAGES Data management for ensuring data readiness – how to collect, store, and exchange with each other – is one of essential step for digital interoperability. Governments may have different starting points with respect to digital interoperability, which may require them to assess their current state baseline from a people (skills and capability), process, technology and ecosystem perspective. • A modern data infrastructure is recommended, and various types of reference architecture give examples of designs enterprises are leveraging for their data infrastructure. • APIs play a key role in ensuring that data is accessible across government systems in an efficient and controlled manner. Security-by-design is a key enabler of APIs. • Open standards and open source provides can increase potential of interoperability by providing more space for stakeholders and low/medium GovTech level countries can benefit from open standards shared by mature GovTech countries. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 42 As highlighted in the previous section, governments may The development of this data strategy may require a need to focus on setting the right policy and organizational current state baseline assessment (internal data availability conditions. Based on these foundations, governments are assessment), where data assets are identified across the trying to design and implement digital interoperability platforms. layers of government data stores, data archival and retention This section discusses interoperability considerations from the are understood, and key data assets are prioritized, forming the perspective of data architecture, infrastructures, and emerging basis for a discussion on where interoperability is needed most. and existing technologies. A modern data architecture is intended to provide enhanced analytical capabilities, as well Data governance is the next important step to ensuring as support the three primary goals associated with achieving data quality, integrity, availability, harmonization, legal, and interoperability in any system (computer or otherwise): data regulatory frameworks described in previous sections, and the exchange, meaning exchange, and process agreement. The overall management of --people, processes, and technologies. key guiding principles to consider when considering digital For example, the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) interoperability include data source abstraction, non-invasive provides a checklist for three issues government agencies can systems interconnection, system portability, software defined consider with respect to the data they hold. The principle of data exchange, event-based data exchange, and scalability. data minimization can help guard against over-capture of data that is not considered an asset. This means to: This chapter will discuss and suggest five modules that practitioners in interoperability should consider when they • Collect only personal data needed for specified purposes. design and implement technical and semantic interoperability. • Retain sufficient personal data to properly fulfil those It will start by focusing on data readiness, and follow with key purposes. technology trends, a modern data architecture, APIs, and • Periodically review the data we hold and delete data that Open Standards and Open Source. is no longer needed. In addition, governments have the responsibility of maintaining 4.1 Module 7: Ensuring data integrity, including in a scenario where new datasets are introduced to the government ecosystem. Data Readiness Toolkits and guides: Please refer to the UN Statistics Data Interoperability Guide, a practitioner’s guide that explores With the advancement of emerging technologies such as AI opportunities and identifies good practices for enhancing data and big data analysis, the quality of datasets, especially in interoperability in sustainable development. Statistics Canada the public domain, plays an important role in the accuracy also provides a Data Quality Toolkit to raise awareness about and quality of algorithmic decision making. To date, some data quality issues. of the challenges with open data and government datasets used for service delivery include systemic, computational, and human bias;129 cybersecurity vulnerabilities;130 environmental conditions such as corrosion, humidity, and biofouling131 4.2 Module 8: Anticipating Key that can confound external sensor data; and data drift,132 a Technology Trends phenomenon wherein data changes overtime, requiring consuming systems to adapt. With the arrival of the fourth industrial revolution technologies When considering semantic (data) interoperability, the maturity such as AI, Machine Learning (ML), Internet of Things (IoT), level of data captured and stored in government organizations quantum computing, and others, governments need to prepare can vary significantly and is a determining factor regarding the for a new set of interoperability challenges, many of which level of interoperability that could take place. It is important to revolve around how these new capabilities will be integrated understand what data is needed, what is available, what we into their existing technology ecosystem. These challenges want to so with this data, and why and who can and needs to can best be understood through the following lenses.134 access this data. This should be described in a data strategy that will be the foundation that can highlight opportunities that 1. Technology: Emerging technologies will need to be aligned can be converted into projects and demonstrate value.133 to existing and legacy architecture. New technologies EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 43 may introduce new cybersecurity risks and challenges,135 on emerging technologies such as Web 3.0, Cloud and Edge and customized and homegrown applications may need computing, IoT, Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology to be retrofitted to adapt to changing ecosystems and (DLT), AI, Central Bank Digital Currencies, and Metaverse. capabilities. The modernization of legacy systems and technologies is a 2. People: The ability to upskill employees may become critical issue for government’s IT departments; it is a complex a competitive advantage for organizations seeking to task which requires careful consideration and advanced implement digital transformation. Culture change may be planning. Modernization can be considered at the User required, and an assessment of digital skills – for example, interface layer. The most visible part of a system, data layer is to implement DevSecOps, MLOps – may be needed changing the way data is accessed and exchanged, and this to develop roadmaps for the government workforce. can be done with different approaches such as data wrapping. Additionally, data literacy may need to be evaluated to At the functional layer, the focus is on modernization of the enhance data analysis and use skills.136 business logic as well as the legacy data. Other areas of modernization that can take place will be at the integration 3. Process: Emerging technologies that blur the lines layer. The first step to consider when reviewing legacy between organizations may require new operating models technology is to carry out an assessment of the current and governance structures–for example, in the case of technologies – for example, data, function, user interface (UI), federated learning for cross-organizational AI.137 Existing use of the system, strengths and weakness – . Based on this business models will need to be evaluated for gaps, to assessment, teams determine what needs to be modernized develop a transition roadmap. and then select the right approach. 4. Ecosystem: The shift away from a siloed, independent enterprise architecture to one that is closely linked to cloud- 4.3 Module 9: Designing a Modern enabled capabilities requires an ecosystem approach. Government organizations will need to look at new data Data Architecture 140 value chains in considering interoperability requirements, especially with a mesh architecture.138 Open source may become a more viable option to reshape strategy and Currently, “most business value is derived from the analysis explore and trial new capabilities prior to adoption with of data and products powered by data, rather than the technology partners. software itself.”141 Data Architecture is the design blueprint of the overall setup of a system, or a group of systems put To further interoperability efforts, digital government together to manage data throughout the data lifecycle. This departments may need to focus especially on the “people also involves how data interoperability can be executed and and skills” dimension. For example, one of the key lessons maintained across a digital ecosystem of people, enterprises, from combating COVID-19 is the need to make data available and systems142 to fulfil government and business needs. in machine-readable format, to facilitate government Data Infrastructure focuses on the physical implementation communications on disease surveillance, and the need to of the specified design blueprint components. For example, create compelling, accurate, and clear data visualizations.139 for Amazon Web Services (AWS) – the networking, virtual This may require both a skills and culture shift for government machines, and the database would describe its infrastructure, teams who have not been required or resourced to make data how the components communicate together, share data via available in this way, or who may not understand the potential APIs, etc. This section will discusses the Data Architecture benefit of doing so. For more information on how governments design needed to achieve interoperability in any system with can encourage cultural transformation and collaborative the primary goals of data exchange, meaning exchange, and environments, refer to the World Bank report, “Tech Savvy: process agreements. According to Ahmed and Twinomurinzi Advancing GovTech Reforms in Public Administration.” (2019), “one of the fundamental principles of digital government is to maintain a common interpretation of information across Governments need to pay attention to specific emerging all its entities and its citizens. However, ICT systems are often technologies, and how they might change the need to rethink created in each government entity without consideration of interoperability efforts and catalyze the acquisition of new whether this common interpretation will be maintained. When skills in a data-driven and potentially decentralized digital meaning between ICT systems is not maintained, it results in environment. Please refer to Annex II for further information semantic conflicts.”143 EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 44 Kumar Illa (2020)144 describes the key components of a This modern unified data architecture provides one potential modern unified data architecture that permits enterprises to common view of how different roles within the IT organization derive value from data. The architecture includes two core can leverage data and technology capabilities for advanced areas of focus: analytics across a cloud or collocated environment, reducing duplicative efforts. Figure 11 below provides a schematic • Data engineering, which creates the foundation for data to representation of the stages of a data architecture. be organized and maintained. • Data science, which permits enterprises to leverage data to create insights. > > > F I G U R E 1 1 - Conceptual Flow of Data through Different Stages for a Data Architecture Data Engineering Data Science & Analytics Variety Velocity Volume Value Data Producers Data Ingestion Data Processing Data Storage ML Modeling Data Consumers Applications Batch processing Data Wrangling Data Lake / Delta Lake Experimentations Data Analysis OLTP / OLAP Mini batch processing Transformations Data Warehouse / marks Data preparation & Data exploration / mining EDSS Real-time streaming ETL / ELT Lakehouse labelling Data Visualizations Events / Webhooks Near realtime ingestion Stream processing Model development & Reports / Dashboards Transaction Logs Change Data Capture Microbatching Sql / NoSql databases exploration APIs / Microservices Clickstreams Extract (ETL) Data acceleration Object stores Feature engineering Sharing / Collaboration IoT / Edge devices Enrichment Graph DB Model Evaluation: Self-service BI Time series Pub-sub Distributed Storage Training, cross Query Engines Enterprise service bus Compaction validation & testing Search Sql / NoSql Queues / Topics Regression, Row / Columnar Stores Data formats / types Sync / Async Classification, Workflow Static / dynamic schemas Serialization data Clustering Compression Structure types Model Tuning & Processing Engine Cache Schema / schema-less Tracking (un-/semi- /-) structure Model Refinement cloud / on-premise SaaS MLOps Metadata Management Data Registry Data Relationships Version Management Data Cataloguing Tagging Data & Model Management Visibility Data Lineage Access Controls Data Quality & Integrity Data Accuracy, Completeness Data Lifecycle Management Unit & Integration Testing Data Freshness Master Data Management Test Automation Veracity Deduplication Packaging and Release Data Security Authentication Data protection Observability Authorization Policies & Compliance Auditing & Monitoring Vulnerability Encryption (data at rest / data in transit Regulations Alerting Source: Prasanna Kumar Illa, 2020. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 45 Most governments today have some form of digitalization that architectural states both risky and inefficient.”145 Some of the has led to either an organically evolved data architecture or key obstacles that organizations face include the increased a planned data architecture. Whichever the case, this has complexity of managing new data-related capabilities including to be considered when planning a target state. If the data data lakes, cloud services – for example, predictive analytics – architecture is new, then all components in the Figure 10 and AI models. To address these challenges, they observe six will have to be designed or upgraded accordingly. McKinsey foundational shifts that enterprises will have to apply to their Digital’s recent report, addressed this issue, stating that data architecture to make it more agile, simple, and future- “data technologies are evolving quickly, making traditional ready (Figure 12). efforts that define and build toward three-to-five-year target > > > F I G U R E 1 2 - Six Foundational Shifts for Data Architectures (McKinsey) Exhibit Upgrade data architecture by making six foundational shifts Mobile Web CRM Physical channels Systems of engagement Application databases 4 APIs and management platform 6 Data lake Unified data, analytics core 5 Curated data vault (by domain) Analytics Raw data vault 2 Real-time streaming 3 Systems of Core processing systems record 1 Cloud-enabled data platforms and services (serverless, noOps) 1 2 3 4 5 6 From From From From From From on-premise to batch to pre-integrated point-to-point an enterprise rigid data cloud-based real-time data commercial to decoupled warehouse to models to data platforms processing solution to data access domain-based flexible, modular, architecture extensible data best-of-breed schemas platforms Source: Castro, A., et al., 2020. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 46 To get started, Castro et al. (2020) recommend instituting Finally, when considering options for a unified data several crucial practices that enable rapid evaluation and architecture, governments can review the architecture deployment of new technologies to support quicker adoption: proposed by Bornstein, Casado and Li of a16z, which distinguishes between analytic systems that support data- 1. An experimentation and testing mindset to architecture driven decisions and operational systems that build data- development, including the use of open source to trial powered products.147 Their proposed unified reference data new capabilities. architecture can be customized to design patterns that support different use cases. 2. Establishment of cross-functional teams for development of curated datasets and best practices regarding modeling Toolkits and guides: of data and collaborating across data teams to establish common classification and vocabularies. • Please refer to Annex III to view recommended reference for unified data architecture that can be customized and 3. Creating data (semantic) interoperability between some examples of three common unified architectures classifications and related governance considerations. designed for business intelligence: cloud warehouses; multimodal data processing, such as data analytics 4. Use of DataOps for data architecture development. This and operations using data lakes; and operations that data management method emphasizes communication, leverage AI and ML components. Figure 13 below collaboration, integration, automation, and measurement shows recommended manageable steps for starting the of cooperation between data engineers, data scientists, processes of creating or upgrading data architecture.148 and other data professionals.146 • UK Government Data Architecture. “Established by the 5. Development of a data culture that connects enterprise- Office for National Statistics in 2017, the government data level strategy to the organization’s daily work, architecture community share ideas, experiences and focusing on improving knowledge capture and sharing methods in an effort to standardize the way we work and (enterprise intelligence). ease communication between government departments.” EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 47 > > > F I G U R E 1 3 - Steps to Design or Upgrade a Modern Data Architecture Data Architecture Integration Sources & Translation Warehouse Analytics Presentation AMS Data Lakes & Data Marts Reports Warehouses LMS Data Cubes Dashboards Movement and Communities transformation Flat Files Other Apps of data Business Intelligence Events Tools Excel & Other Documents Step 5 • Select a Data Visualization Tool Step 4 • Ensure Consistency in Data Collection Step 3 • Define Business Goals and Questions Step 2 • Develop an Overall Plan for Data Structure Step 1 • Assess Tools and Systems and How They Work Key research questions: 1. Sources – Where all the data enters the organization. 2. Integration and Translation – Where integration, transformation, and aggregation occur. 3. Data Warehouse – Where data rests in long-term storage. 4. Analytics – Where data is used for a purpose. 5. Presentation – Where data is presented in a knowledge form. Source: Authors. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 48 Table 3 below details steps to consider when designing or upgrading a data architecture. > > > T A B L E 3 - Steps to Design or Upgrade a Modern Data Architecture Steps to consider when designing or Upgrading a Data Architecture149 (Adapted from Corcoran, 2017) Detailed Activities Step 1: Current State Assessment of Tools and Systems • Conduct a current state assessment all the tools and systems that your organization currently uses and how they relate to each other. • Interview stakeholders associated with each system to identify benefits and pain points. Understand and inventory integration-related pain points. Step 2: Current State Assessment of Data • Develop a data dictionary that includes: • where your data resides (i.e. data storage tools used in your organization i.e. database, data warehouse). • where the data comes from (data sources, format of data), and who is accessing the data (consumers of data, providers of data, etc.). • Understand what data is being captured in these data storage tools. • Establish what data sources are included and what data sources are not included, and why. Step 3: Define Business Objectives and Evaluate • Establish what important questions and insights does the Data-Related Policies, Rules & Standards organization need to answer. Gain insights into how they can leverage their data to help answer these questions more effectively. • Establish policies, rules, standards, and models that govern data collection and how data is stored, managed, processed, and used within the organization. • Establish data architectural principles. Three key best practices principles recommended are: • Consider Data a shared resource • Ensure security and access control • Reduce or eliminate data movement and replication. Determine applicable KPIs for each government unit with respect to business objectives. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 49 Table 3 continued Steps to consider when designing or Upgrading a Data Architecture149 (Adapted from Corcoran, 2017) Detailed Activities Step 4: Ensure Consistency in Data Collection • Refer to Section 4.1 on data quality for more in- depth discussion on ensuring quality and consistency. Evaluate and implement data quality practices to ensure trusted analytics. • Evaluate changes, establish change governance for key data, and ensure documentation and communication of changes to key stakeholders. • Implement processes to reduce and manage incomplete and duplicate data to reduce downstream issues that impact the quality of analytics. Step 5: Select a Data Visualization Tool or Evaluate • Review current data visualization tools - are they right for Current Data Visualization Capabilities your needs? • What would you like to visualize? • Is integration with data stores easy and automated? • Are key business questions being answered using this tool or suite of capabilities? • Some question to consider before selecting a data visualization tool include: • Ease of integration requirements. • Distribution capability. • Degree of interactivity with analysis. • Support for near real-time analysis. • Restrictions on branding and color scheme. • Accessibility. • Access control and security. Step 6: Reporting and Analysis • Evaluate and automate business reporting requirements as needed. • Develop capability to add context to business reporting through advanced analytics. Continually re-evaluate reporting and analysis. requirements against stakeholder concerns, to deliver new insights. Source: Adapted from Corcoran, 2017. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 50 4.4 Module 10: Harnessing Application Programming Interfaces and Enterprise Service Buses Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) form part of APIs.158 France made available 90 APIs to administrations the modern government technology stack, specifically in and private companies through api.gouv.fr and entreprise. the area of Middleware. According to Gartner, “Application api.gouv.159 Nevertheless, this internationally renowned open programming interfaces (APIs) make digital society and data leader160 has many challenges ahead when it comes to digitaliness work. They connect people, businesses, and realizing interoperable systems and implementing the once- things. They enable new digital products and business models only principle. While the country has had an interoperability for services and create new business channels. APIs make governance model and repository in place since 2005,161 its digital business work.”151 APIs are a fundamental part of every implementation has suffered under the siloed organization effort to modernize application architectures and integration. and culture of the public administration, which is a key element for whole-of-government interoperability. A legal mandate for APIs provide essential access to applications and data a unified interoperability approach is still lacking and highly services that support: dependent on the political will of individual ministries.162 • Packaged business capabilities that enable a Extensive use of APIs also presents its own challenges. composable enterprise. These include cybersecurity challenges, increased network • The creation of digital business technology platforms. traffic, maintenance requirements and complexity, increased • Multipipeline and cloud-native applications. overhead to customize, and challenges using APIs with legacy • Participation in an API economy. applications.163 These challenges can lead to a portfolio • Pervasive integration.152 of applications and services that are plagued by security issues and lower ecosystem interactions, resulting in a lack APIs make data accessible to other systems in an efficient of interoperability. and controlled manner, when accompanied by adequate security controls.153 An important aspect of leveraging APIs 4.4.1 Adopt an API Mediation and in a government context is to standardize interface designs Service Mesh and make supporting documentation available to all national One way to address some of the challenges with increased and subnational agencies.154 Standardization and reuse of use of APIs is to adopt a “mediation” approach, in which API commonly governed APIs can also support government efforts consumers and providers are not tightly coupled. Figure 14 to strengthen security for a digital government ecosystem.155 below presents a recommended API mediated architecture, which supports multiexperience–the various permutations of As the case of Estonia shows, cybersecurity and data modalities such as touch, voice and gesture, devices, and governance are critical to ensure that APIs are being used apps that users interact with on their digital journey and cloud- for their intended purposes, and not creating opportunities native applications.164 Within the mediation layer, monitoring, for unintended data loss or unauthorized access.156 The security, and automated traffic management assist with UK’s Integrated Data Programme highlights how emerging ensuring a more robust and secure implementation. An API technology capabilities such as graph databases can leverage mediation layer can also assist with resolving integration with APIs to capture complex relationships within data and support legacy applications, which may have proprietary methods that machine-readable data to run AI and ML models.157 need to be managed as part of an organization’s overall move to a modern architecture and suite of applications. It should be A concrete way in which countries enable the reusability noted that complex orchestration and business logic should and sharing of information and solutions when implementing generally be avoided in the mediation layer. public services is through APIs. For instance, both Canada and the Netherlands have developed one-stop shops for EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 51 > > > F I G U R E 1 4 - Mesh App and Service Architecture Multiexperience Multiexperience • Distinct apps for different personas and modalities Mediation Mediation Layer Outer APIs • Monitoring API Mediation Layer • Security • Traffic Management Inner APIs • Transformations Multigrained Services Multigrained Services Service DB Service DB Service DB • Macro/Mini/Micro Service DB • New/Old • On-Premises/Cloud Service DB Service Service • Internal/External Source: Gartner, 2018a. For more advanced organizations, a service mesh approach applications with minimal effort. These developers will also may be desirable. A service mesh “takes the logic governing need to be continuously educated on the types of risks service-to-service communication out of individual services that occur with APIs and that they pose to the enterprise. and abstracts it to a layer of infrastructure.”165 An example of a Similarly, cybersecurity professionals monitoring these APIs more complex ecosystem can be found in Annex III. should be equipped with visibility into expected behavior and inbuilt controls, especially access controls, to ensure 4.4.2 Understand Cybersecurity robust implementation. Automated monitoring is especially Considerations for Harnessing APIs important given the ease of API deployment in modern architectures. Also, organizations can limit their risk within an Governments will want to consider a range of enabling factors API implementation by keeping an updated API inventory.166 to successfully adopt APIs. A key enabler is to ensure that Additional cybersecurity trends, such as security by design API developers within the enterprise understand and are and Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA), are described in Annex II. able to contribute to secure, productive interactions between EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 52 4.4.3 Enterprise Service Bus and government document management and service process management IT infrastructure to blockchain.169 Government Service Blockchains Enterprise service buses (ESBs) are more mature technologies 4.4.4 Cyber Security Interoperability used for achieving enterprise application integration (EAI) tasks. They offer an abstraction layer and allow for orchestration of According to Rantos et al. (2020), information has become various application-to-application transfers, enabling different one of the most valuable assets in governments, and defense applications to be able to communicate. They offer somewhat of it is a has become a constant concern, as the frequency of a precursor to API gateways and focused on exposing of cyberattacks continue to rise posing a great threat to services for reuse. Yet as enterprise needs shift and APIs have organizations and government’s digital environments.170 become increasingly important, API gateways have proven a In this constant battle, governments must retain visibility of more useful tool to achieve orchestration of digital services. emerging and evolving threats and defend themselves against a wide range of adversaries with various levels of motivations, ESB technologies are already being used in governments capabilities, and access to resources. around world. One example is the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic, which leverages ESB technology for This necessitates the need for governments and organizations a public administration communication infrastructure. The to be able to share cyber threat information (CTI) in a timely eGovernment service bus is the central service point for and reliable manner to enhance their ability to identify any the exchange of data between basic base registries and malicious activities or sources with the intention to swiftly other authoritative government data sources.167 Nepal’s mitigate attacks as a preventative measure against damage eGovernment portal for public e-service delivery was built to the information assets. CTI is defined as “any information on ESBs and it has developed a design guideline to ensure that can help an organization identify, assess, monitor, and standardization of future services added to the ESB platform.168 respond to cyber threats.” This type of information includes security appliances log entries and alerts; measurable and The idea behind the evolution of the government service bus observable actions; security bulletins and advisories; identified approach is based on the need to reduce cost and time of inter vulnerabilities; news, reports, and intelligent data. This can be government agency processes, both from the point of view of established in two ways: implementation and from the operational point of view. Thus, driving the concept of the Government Service Blockchain • Leveraging security technologies such as Unified Threat (GSB) and exploring the use of blockchain technologies to Management (UTM), Intrusion Detection/Prevention enhance efficiency, security, transparency and engagement, Systems (IDS/IPS) and Security Information and Event can allow each of their entities to run their own processes Management (SIEM) that can be incorporated as part of with their own technology stacks, regardless of the processes the security solutions. and technologies of any other entity. This can be achieved through the decentralization of the service and the usage of • Participating in Cybersecurity Information Exchange Smart Contracts with blockchains as a kind of “asynchronous (CIE), CTI communities, or intelligence groups designed communication bus.” Transforming current service bus to exchange CTI knowledge, enhance their security architecture into a distributed, smart, secure service approach posture, and protect themselves from cyber threats. involves applying the Smart Contract concept within a private/ permissioned blockchain protocol. The main motive is to create new knowledge or services about cyber threats, as well as to make cyber-defense systems Some current examples of government activity in the more effective and efficient. This requires an organization to space follow. In Japan, the Ministry of Internal Affairs go beyond the confinement of its environment to use multiple and Communications, which oversees the Japanese sources instead, thus encouraging Cyber Threat Information administrative system and manages local governments, is Intelligence (CTII) sharing between multiple actors, such testing a blockchain-based system for processing government as government agencies and organizations, private sector tenders. In Italy, the Ministry of Economy and Finance, which organizations and industry-focused groups. coordinates the European H2020 research project SUNFISH, is leading a national initiative to provide the Italian public sector One of the most challenging issues in this process is with a blockchain-based infrastructure to foster integration achieving consensus regarding how this information should among government departments and underpin national be shared among interested parties and the threat intelligence digital services. Dubai’s ambition to transform the whole of community. This requires having a common understanding EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 53 on what information is shared, how it is shared, and whether • Standalone reusable platform, allowing for fast, simple its sharing is legal. Some of these communities already exist, and multiple implementations. such as the Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT), also known as the Computer Emergency Response • Limitless and freely supporting material for open standard Team (CERT) network established in the European Union creation and implementation (with some restrictions). (EU), which counts more than 400 members willing to share incidents and risk-related information. The network includes • Community-enforced and supported, approved through a commercial organizations, EU Institutions, law enforcement co-creation and consensus. agencies, private and public sector organizations, and national and military agencies. Similar initiatives in the US that promote Informed by interviews with key stakeholders across four the exchange of information include the US Department of continents, from government decision makers, technical Homeland Security (DHS) Cyber Information Sharing and experts, funders and people delivering digital services to Collaboration Program (CISCP). citizens, the report, Open source in government: creating the conditions for success, demonstrates how open-source Governments must ensure that CTII sharing is interoperable, software can be a powerful lever for change, giving teams safeguarding their personal and classified information within greater flexibility on how they solve problems and develop the organization has well established procedures. When services based on users’ needs.172 It allows governments CTII is about to be shared with external entities, several to share and reuse solutions across borders, to quickly interoperability and security issues need to be considered. experiment and pilot services without complex and expensive The CTII suggest a strategic approach that involves a four procurement, and then scale at a lower marginal cost. As such, layered model—legal, policy and procedures, semantic and open source is of high relevance for GovTech. The report syntactic, and technical layer. recommends that governments advance their open-source capabilities by: (1) building a favorable policy environment, (2) working on in-house skills and capabilities, (3) foster an 4.5 Module 11: Working with Open open-source vendor ecosystem, and (4) paying attention to the sustainability of the open-source activities from the start. Standards and Open Source As part of Barcelona’s 2017 Open Plan for a more open, transparent and collaborative government, the city has made As previously explained, standards are an essential part of available its Ethical Digital Standards173 as an open-source delivering interoperability. Standards allow different hardware, policy toolkit for other cities and interested stakeholders to software, and data solutions to work together. Open standards use.174 Promoted by the Cities Coalition for Digital Rights, are particularly important, because they are not proprietary, Barcelona has manifested itself as a pioneer the use of and therefore can be adopted by different solution providers. open-source software, open standards, data sovereignty, They ensure that interoperability is open to new software agile development of digital services and guaranteed privacy, modules and new providers, and avoid lock-in. The Canadian ethics ,and security by design. The city council has committed and French guidelines on open standards are a practical to investing more than 70 percent of the new software example. As reported in the “Open First Whitepaper: Open development budget into free and open-source software Standards,” published on the Canadian government website,171 and services based on open standards, open formats, open the Quebecoise government’s common interoperability interfaces, and interoperability. framework (CCIGQ) is strongly linked and in line with the French Government’s General Guidelines for Interoperability, As highlighted in the interoperability checklist in Annex I, building on the EIF and the British Cabinet Office’s Open highly mature GovTech countries are encouraged to share Standards Principles. The four documents present common their code as open source and publish their standards as criteria which define open standards that could be followed by open standards, while low- and medium-level countries developing countries and government agencies which would can especially benefit from already published open-source like to strengthen or implement frameworks from scratch: material and open standards to develop their interoperability initiatives. For example, the GovStack model supports the • Openness and transparency of the process to define development of an open platform that focuses on an initial standard’s development, which entails no control by a set of use cases where a set of technical building blocks single person or entity. are designed together, to support generic workflows across EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 54 multiple sectors.175 Similarly, the Digital Convergence Initiative government systems supporting foundational identity, social highlights a number of different initiatives to develop software registries, civil registries, payment platforms, data analytics that reduces the burden of data exchange and reuse among platforms, and GIS platforms.176 > > > B O X 7 - E-Government Standard Framework in the Republic of Korea (Group A, GTMI 2020) The e-Government Standard Framework (eGovFrame) is a platform-specific standardized development framework for public sector IT projects in Korea. It provides increased interoperability as government agencies build applications based on its standards and improves interagency collaboration and connectivity. Through regular monitoring, the Korean government is able to have updated information on the public sector organizations that are adopting the framework, contributing in this sense to a cohesive digital transformation of the Korean administration. One of main features of eGovFrame is its open innovation approach. 48 open sources were selected and its source code, including outputs, are provided at no cost through its website (https://www.egovframe.go.kr/eng/main.do). Since its launch in 2009, eGovFrame has been downloaded over 900,000times and applied in over 5,000 projects. Also, the eGovFrame Center provides technical support, training, compatibility verification and conduct major upgrades for open ecosystem. Source: e-Government Standard Framework in Korea, Ministry of the Interior and Safety and National Information Society Agency. > > > B O X 8 - Additional Interoperability Reference Examples Standards & Frameworks • Brazil (Group B, GTMI 2020) has progressed on interoperability through the technical specifications in its architecture for the interoperability standards (EPING), while also defining premises and policies and making its use mandatory for bodies and entities that are part of the Information Technology Resource Management System. As such, the country has ensured technical, legal, and organizational interoperability. • The Czech Republic’s (Group B, GTMI 2020) 2019 National Architectural Framework has been introduced for the community of eGovernment architects and suppliers of public services, and aims to ensure better interoperability across sectors and potentially cross-border. Platforms & Infrastructure • Georgia (Group B, GTMI 2020) lists many impressive accomplishments, such as a multichannel service delivery approach based on a wide network of physical one-stop shops and a government portal with over 700 fully transactional services. The country has had the Georgian Government Gateway data exchange infrastructure in place since 2010. Use of the system is mandatory for all government institutions and additionally connects several private sector organizations. This approach has facilitated an end-to-end customer journey for key services such as online tax filing and business registration. Interoperability of digital platforms (technical and organizational interoperability) remains an area for improvement. • In Moldova (Group B - GTMI 2020), the Mconnect interoperability platform aims to facilitate and streamline data exchange within the public sector and between the public and private sectors. Its main purposes are to improve the quality of public services provided, support the development of new electronic public services, and ensure EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 55 information security. The platform is based on open source and is managed by the Electronic Government Agency, the public entity responsible for leading the national GovTech policy. Currently more than 60 entities are connected to the platform. • Even though in the 2020 GTMI data collection it reported not having an interoperability platform in place, Cabo Verde (Group B, GTMI 2020) has managed to make significant strides regarding interoperability contributing to the creation of an online one-stop shop (Porton di nos Ilha in Cabo Verde). By 2018, Cabo Verde had put in place several central resources for public sector entities to use, allowing the country to advance digital government solutions in a decentralized yet integrated manner. The resources include common standards allowing information and data exchange, a state-owned technology network including email services and management applications, and a platform for the creation and management of electronic government solutions allowing public sector entities to use its services without having to deal with necessary ICT infrastructure. Plans • Both Angola (Group C, GTMI 2020) and Mozambique (Group C, GTMI 2020), according to a 2018 OECD report, have an interoperability plan on the way, which in the case of Mozambique is manifesting itself in concrete progress regarding an interoperability platform. In Angola, efforts have been made to improve cross-government communication through a standard system of email addresses, video-conferencing and data and service sharing between government departments. The government’s private network (Rede Privativa do Estado) thus provides a common infrastructure for shared digital services across the public sector and is intended to be used in the future as a platform for citizens to access publicly available information via the Internet. • In Mozambique, the Interoperability Project (Projeto de Interoperabilidade) has endeavored since 2013 to connect different IT platforms with the central government. But information and data exchange are still limited, as are the adoption of interoperability standards and the development of a systems thinking culture across the different sectors and levels of government. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 56 5. >>> Conclusion: Interoperability for a Connected and Data-Driven Public Sector No public organization is the same, nor should it be, as the specialized knowledge on policy domains and country context embedded in the fibers of a specific organization is essential to deliver policies and services that correspond to the needs of the citizens in its constituency. However, certain needs, such as providing data only once to the administration and automatically receiving eligible benefits transcend the borders of public organizations, policy sectors and countries. Interoperability is needed to build bridges between different government activities and streamline those activities that do not need to be different. This guidebook has explained what interoperability in the public sector is, why it is needed and how it can be implemented. WHAT – Interoperability can be understood as the ability to connect ministries, departments, agencies, sectors, government levels, and countries through data, information systems, legal agreements, organizational processes, and shared values and customs. As such, it is considered as a multilayered concept consisting of nondigital and digital elements, namely legal, organizational, cultural, technical, and semantic layers as well as their overall governance. WHY – Interoperability strengthens governments’ ability to design and deliver public services according to the needs of citizens (citizen-centered). It also contributes to a more strategic use of data across the whole public sector to improve policy making, service delivery, and organizational management (data-driven). As such, it opens up benefits for governments and citizens in terms of efficiency gains, data-driven value creation, the implementation of the once-only principle, as well as more automated, proactive, omnichannel, composable, and resilient services focused on life events. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 57 HOW – To reap the benefits of an interoperable public sector, Since every country has a different maturity level, context, and governments should consider interoperability from both a capacity, there is no one-size-fits-all path to interoperability in nondigital and digital perspective based on eleven modules the public sector. That is why this note provides 11 modules that this note explained. to help task teams and client countries to identify all related issues to establish interoperability and highlight a whole-of- Key considerations to note for practitioners who are involved government approach. Many countries may have difficulties in designing and implementing interoperability in the public to achieve all modules at the same time and have to prioritize sector are: some actions, considering their limited resources and time. Annex I provides a checklist for sound interoperability with • Critical questions for successful interoperability projects suggestions of priority actions for each module based on are goal-orientation (focus on the desired outcome and maturity level. Countries in Group C (low) and D (very low) value for stakeholders), co-creation (co-designing and need to focus on establishing a strategy that recognizes -constructing with stakeholders), context sensitivity interoperability as a foundation for sound public sector (adapting to local priorities and limitations), and iteration digitalization, having updated legal and regulatory frameworks, (considering the different elements of interoperability in a establishing an up-to-date data protection law, ensuring data non-linear way). quality, and developing national-level semantic interoperability frameworks. Countries in high maturity level (Group A and B) • Interoperability is one of the key enablers of a whole- can advance their interoperability level through identifying of-government approach, but at the same time a whole- and investing in areas to prioritize based on the comparison of-government approach that covers from setting policy between current status and information presented in the and organizational conditions to implementing digital 11 modules. interoperability is essential for sound interoperability. Several notable reference projects and models described • In order to establish data-driven public sectors, in this note can assist with prioritization of government practitioners need to consider: (1) policy and institutional interoperability requirements. These resources emphasize setting, such as strategy, institutional structure with the challenges of improving data architectures to support leadership, and coordination mechanisms; (2) updated the speed and agility required from today’s analytical and agile legal and regulatory frameworks; (3) trustworthy and operational systems, which rely on increased data governance focusing on data-driven value creation automation, loosely coupled integration architectures, a and enhancing trust based on ethics and data rights; combination of cloud and on-premise capability, and strong (4) data interoperability; (5) policy levers that include cybersecurity controls. preevaluation of ICT investment, standard business case, agile project management, and monitoring; and (6) data As the latest technologies are developing fast, the importance skills in public sector. of interoperability and the data-driven public sector is also increasing. Governments need to strengthen efforts to connect • For technical and semantic interoperability, this note their systems within the public sector and with the private presents five modules: (1) ensuring data readiness, sector and other countries while addressing interoperability (2) anticipating key technology trends, (3) designing a challenges. This how-to note therefore aims to assist them modern data architecture, (4) harnessing APIs, and (5) to transition to a better-connected public sector by providing working with open standards and open source. practical guidance on how to design and implement sound interoperability policies and platforms through eleven modules and a checklist. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 58 >>> Annex 1. Checklist for a Sound Interoperability Approach Priorities according to GovTech maturity level Interoperability modules A and B – Very High and High C and D – Very Low and Low GOVERNANCE/GENERAL Key principles • Be goal-oriented: Define a clear goal and scale in terms of the outcomes of the interoperability project. Ensure that project activities contribute to this goal while keeping an open mind to future developments that may lead to adaptation of the goal. • Follow a cocreation approach in the problem definition, project design, prioritization, and implementation to ensure that the needs, knowledge, and support of relevant actors are continuously considered in the interoperability project. • Remain sensitive to the GovTech maturity level and country context at every step of the interoperability journey to achieve an ambition and implementation that is fitting to the context. • Iterate between the different modules, interoperability layers, and the actors involved. SETTING THE RIGHT POLICY AND ORGANIZATIONAL CONDITIONS Module 1: Policy and Institutional Setting Strategy • Underline in the GovTech or Digital • Highly prioritize having a GovTech or Digital Government strategy the foundation role Government strategy at national/federal of interoperability for the development of level that recognizes interoperability an efficient and sustainable data-driven as a foundation for sound public public sector. sector digitalization. • Highlight the role of interoperability for • Highly prioritize recognizing data and its data and evidence-based policy making, value in the strategy for improved service decision, and evaluation. delivery and processes. • Collaborate with the ecosystem of Engage • different public sector public, private, and civil society GovTech organizations in the design, development, stakeholders in the implementation of the implementation, and monitoring of strategy, reinforcing the relevance of the the strategy to secure joint ownership interoperability policy goals and responsibility, in the areas of interoperability. Strengthen • the governance and coordination mechanisms between the • Align the GovTech or Digital Government GovTech or Digital Government strategy strategy and its interoperability goals with and other national public strategies in other national public strategies, reinforcing different policy streams. policy complementarity. • Define one or more initial goals and scale of the interoperability project in terms of user EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 60 Priorities according to GovTech maturity level Interoperability modules A and B – Very High and High C and D – Very Low and Low needs and strategic objectives: “Enable [users and scope concerned, for example, residents of region X; SMEs in country Y] to [service need, for example, be notified proactively about eligible welfare services; provide company data only once for local and national tax services combined] by [interoperability challenge, for example, automatic exchange of xyz data between organizations pqr]. Leadership • Assure the required human and financial • Highly prioritize Securing that promoting resources of the public sector organization interoperability across the administration is leading the national GovTech policy one of the key policy priorities of the public dedicated to promoting interoperability sector institution leading the national across the public sector. GovTech or digital government policy. • Strengthen the capacity of leading public • Guarantee high level political support for sector organization(s), using policy levers creating interoperability policy foundations such as public procurement, preevaluation – for example, updated legal and regulatory of ICT expenses, or standard business frameworks, standards, data hubs – in cases to promote interoperability across different sectors and levels of government. the administration. Coordination for improved • Consider having different levels of • Prioritize the creation of coordination data governance coordination across the administration and governance mechanisms across the for improved data governance: high different sectors and levels of government level/ministerial level and technical level, for interoperability policy implementation. for instance. • Invest permanently in shared ownership and joint responsibility of the interoperability policy across the administration. Module 2: Ensuring Proper Legal and Regulatory Frameworks Legal and Regulatory • Prioritize agility and simplicity, avoiding • Highly prioritize having updated legal and Frameworks the trap of an excessively detailed regulatory frameworks in critical digital regulatory framework. areas such as privacy and data-protection, base registers, data exchange, and • Progressively invest in having legal or data standards. regulatory frameworks in advanced areas EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 61 Priorities according to GovTech maturity level Interoperability modules A and B – Very High and High C and D – Very Low and Low such as the once-only principle, data • Build on the experience of other ownership, and consent. countries of the region or from different geographies in order to leapfrog stages in the development of a sound legal and regulatory framework. Module 3: Setting Up Trustworthy Data Governance Trust, ethics and Give priority to: Give priority to: data rights • Moving from the right to information to • Highly prioritize ensuring that there is an open data laws and initiatives, promoting up-to-date data protection law covering and fostering data re-use from the start. public services, an authority responsible for upholding the law, and appropriate • Ensuring that citizens can consult and communication and channels to inform manage personal data handled by public citizens about their rights. authorities within legal boundaries. • Promoting openness and transparency • Ensuring digital security, especially in government. regarding sensitive data. • Considering digital security from the start of a new project involving sensitive data. • Developing new digital projects through cocreation with citizens, ensuring that their concerns and needs are taken on board. Module 4: Promoting a Data Culture and Cultural Interoperability Data culture • Invest in the permanent involvement of the • Avoid an excessively legalistic culture different stakeholders in order to create through the investment in more support to legal and regulatory frameworks consensus-based approaches for enabled in the area of interoperability. interoperability in the public sector. • Cocreate data value propositions for • Find inspiration in data-driven projects new projects. undertaken by other countries across different GovTech levels. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 62 Priorities according to GovTech maturity level Interoperability modules A and B – Very High and High C and D – Very Low and Low • Demonstrate and promote data-driven • Unite relevant stakeholders around value creation in existing and past projects. a shared problem definition, possibly building on Section 2 of this note. • Provide concrete incentives for an innovative organizational culture. • Improve data literacy in public institutions. Module 5: Using Policy Levers for Coherent Implementation Public procurement Continue investing in coordinated • • Raise awareness across the public sector and preevaluation of procurement for the acquisition of on the importance of public procurement ICT investments GovTech services and solutions, coordination mechanisms in order to prioritizing interoperability across the promote interoperability. different investments. • Prioritize an initial number of relevant ICT • Consider implementing preevaluation of services and products that need to be ICT investments above a certain threshold interoperable and secure procurement across the administration, allowing coordination across the public sector. better alignment between the different sectors and levels of government in the • Emphasize the benefits in terms of interoperability workstream. savings and efficiency for the public sector, including overcoming the typical • Progressively reinforce the link between siloed culture that exists when managing public procurement and preevaluation ICT investments. of ICT investments with critical key enablers of public sector transformation such as interoperability standards and interoperability platforms. Standard business cases • Adopt standard business cases and • Create the foundations for coordination in and project management project management tools across the business cases and project management administration and consider making their in the public sector where interoperability use mandatory. objectives should have a central role. • Prioritize the agility of these instruments, • Invest in training and capacity building of and avoid creating unnecessary layers of GovTech officials for the use of business bureaucracy for GovTech practitioners. cases and project management in their projects. • Consider having business cases and project management central dashboards • Obtain the necessary financial resources able to feed the interoperability policy by linking digital and data project goals to monitoring across the public sector. development aid goals. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 63 Priorities according to GovTech maturity level Interoperability modules A and B – Very High and High C and D – Very Low and Low • Use the data value cycle for the definition of business cases. Monitoring and evaluation Prioritize • monitoring the outputs, • Highly prioritize ensuring governance outcomes, and impacts of interoperability across the different sectors and across the public sector. levels of government for sustaining interoperability monitoring. • Consider publishing monitoring data of the interoperability policy underway as • Allocate human and financial resources an accountability mechanism for the for monitoring of interoperability policy ecosystem of GovTech stakeholders. and initiatives. • Co-evaluate the interoperability project • Conduct a joint evaluation of the process and results, using the KPIs, define interoperability project involving all follow-up actions and formulate lessons the relevant stakeholders, focused on learnt for future projects. providing input for follow-up projects. Module 6: Fostering Digital Skills and Talent Digital Skills and Talent • Modernize human resources management • Prioritize reducing digital skills gaps (HRM) policies and practices for the across the public sector in the area of attraction, retention, recruitment, interoperability, considering it an important job design, training, promotion, and political priority for navigating the digital compensation in order to assure the transformation underway. necessary interoperability skills are available across the administration. • Jointly develop with other public sector organizations and adopt guidelines for Develop and implement a talent • building, buying, or borrowing digital management strategy that combines skills approaches. different models such as on-the-job training, as well as online and face-to-face • Make digital skills development and training in order to foster a continuous reinforcement a specific component of the improvement digital skills culture in the GovTech projects to be developed in the public sector in the area of interoperability. area of interoperability. • Invest on research and data on the digital labor market and skills for public administration, enabling public sector organizations to better understand the workforce, including existing digital talent in the area of interoperability. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 64 Priorities according to GovTech maturity level Interoperability modules A and B – Very High and High C and D – Very Low and Low IMPLEMENTING DIGITAL INTEROPERABILITY Focus on: • Highly prioritize ensuring data quality – identifying data stewards and data gaps to • Data quality – identifying data stewards be remediated within priority datasets. and data gaps to be remediated within priority datasets. • Data governance, including understanding data needs within the organization. • Data governance, including understanding data needs within the organization. Module 7: Ensuring Data Quality Semantic Focus on: Focus on: • Developing national- and federal-level • Highly prioritize developing national-level semantic interoperability frameworks. semantic interoperability frameworks. • Improving common data models • Enabling efficient and effective data and schemas. sharing between communicating government systems. Supporting capability for semantic • description, mediation, and discovery. Supporting capability for semantic • description, mediation, and discovery • Reusing best practice metadata standards. • Reusing best practice metadata standards. Module 8: Anticipating Key Technology Trends • Understand challenges through the • Understand challenges through the lenses of technology, people, process, lenses of technology, people, process, and ecosystem and ecosystem • Encourage cultural transformation and Encourage • cultural transformation collaborative environments – refer to the and collaborative environments – World Bank report, Tech Savvy: Advancing refer to the World Bank report, “Tech GovTech Reforms in Public Administration. Savvy: Advancing GovTech Reforms in Public Administration.” EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 65 Priorities according to GovTech maturity level Interoperability modules A and B – Very High and High C and D – Very Low and Low Module 9: Setting up a Data Architecture Focus on: Focus on: • Ecosystem approach, moving from closed • Ecosystem approach, moving from closed architectures to more flexible ones that architectures to more flexible ones that may cross organizational boundaries. may cross organizational boundaries. • Creating a unified data infrastructure • Creating a unified data infrastructure to prepare for data-driven emerging to prepare for data-driven emerging technologies such as AI/ML, and open up to technologies such as AI/ML and open up to other government architectures – enabling other government architectures – enabling intergovernmental interoperability. intergovernmental interoperability). • Understanding the 6 foundational shifts for • Understanding the 6 foundational shifts for data infrastructure. data infrastructure. Module 10: Harnessing Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and Enterprise Service Buses (ESB) Focus on: Prioritize: • Mediation layers. • Mediation layers. • Security-by-design. • Security-by-design. • API inventories. • API inventories. • Automated monitoring and analytics • Automated monitoring and analytics. • Enabling multiexperience engagement with different personas through a mesh application and service architecture (MASA). EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 66 Priorities according to GovTech maturity level Interoperability modules A and B – Very High and High C and D – Very Low and Low Module 11: Working in Open Source Make available open source content, trialing • Use open source code made available new capabilities, whether provided through by other countries to advance domestic cloud-service and technology partners or data projects. open-source toolsets. Trialing new capabilities, for example, through open source toolsets. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 67 >>> Annex 2. Emerging Technologies Trends Following is an overview of some emerging technologies, and and increasingly powerful “edge” devices has enabled a how they might change the need for governments to rethink technological shift that decentralizes some of the functions of interoperability efforts and acquire new skills in a data-driven the internet. Edge computing can be defined as a spectrum and potentially decentralized digital environment. of “physical infrastructure that comprises the internet, from centralized data centers to devices.” This “Edge”177 comprises a user edge, which may include smart devices, as well as Web 3.0, Cloud and Edge Computing a service provider edge, and forms part of the computing continuum, together with centralized data centers located on- premises or accessible through hyperscalers. The architecture of the internet has been evolving since its inception. Recently, the trend of decentralization of computing > > > F I G U R E A 2 . 1 - Edge Continuum User Edge Service Provider Edge Last Mile Networks Centralized Internet Edge Data Centers Constrained Smart On-Prem Data Device Edge Device Edge Center Edge Access Edge Regional Edge Server-based Compute in Microcontroller-based, Includes IoT Server-based Server-based Server-based Traditional Cloud Highly Distributed in (headless) and Compute in Compute at Telco Compute at Regional Data Centers the Physical World End User Client Secure Locations Network and Edge Telco and Direct Compute in Accessible Exchange Sites Peering Sites Locations Increasing HW + SW customization, resource constraints and deployment scale Typically owned and operated by users/enterprises but also SPs via CPE Shared resources (XaaS), typically owned and operated by Service Providers (SPs) Distributed in accessible to semi-secure locations Inside secure data centers/Modular Data Centers (MDCs) Latency critical applications Latency sensitive applications Embedded software Increasing cloud-native development practices Source: Linux Foundation, 2021. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 69 > > > F I G U R E A 2 . 2 - Evolution of the Web Web 3.0 ESG Friendly eCommerce AR & Metaverse Local experiences as the new OS & commerce Decentralized web Creator Economy Web 2.0 Rise of Privacy Mobile Anonymity OS (App Economy) Rise of subscription Rise of the Scaled Platform Streaming Sharing Media Economy Web 1.0 Desktop Browser Banner ads eComm checkout Consumer adoption Source: Eric Sheridan et al., Goldman Sachs, 2021. At the same time, decentralized applications have started Internet of Things to grow in number and adoption, in an ecosystem that is described as “Web 3.0.” This phenomenon, which takes advantage of more powerful edge devices, may result in a The availability of lower cost sensors, as well as the reversion to a more “localized” experience of the internet, recognition of the value of automation in urban public service which potentially includes new privacy features. Whereas Web delivery has led to many projects supporting the integration 2.0 was characterized by the rise of the scaled platform, Web of Internet of Things (IoT) in today’s cities. For example, IoT 3.0 may be dominated by local experiences and commerce,178 sensors can be used to gather data for a variety of objectives, with applications such as Decentralized Finance (DeFi).179 including monitoring indoor air quality180 and improving traffic management and flood sensing.181 IoT devices may play From an interoperability standpoint, this poses new challenges a substantial role in gathering bottom-up data required to for governments, especially those facing a heterogeneous understand greenhouse gas emissions sources (GHG), with environment where data may be generated from multiple a challenge being synthesis of this data to provide intelligible types of devices, with processing performed at the Edge. insights for policy makers across a variety of sectors, including The volume of data processed may also exceed traditional energy, buildings, mobility and transport. analytical capabilities, and require new capabilities – for example, AI and ML – to deliver insights. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 70 Currently, the interoperability landscape in IoT is nascent, with is entered it is difficult to be modified) and enables a lack of an overarching ontology.182 Sensor systems may disintermediation (as trust is assured, no third party is required employ “different standards, formats and protocols,”183 which to verify transactions). These advantages can produce impedes their integration into analytical models, a barrier for disruptive changes when properly exploited, inspiring a large such use cases as smart cities and climate change mitigation number of applications. and adaptation. Technically, blockchain interoperability seeks to achieve Ensuring that IoT platforms “export information with semantic one fundamental goal, namely ensuring the integrity of both annotations”184 can be a way to ensure that the data collected information exchanges (data exchange among business by these sensors can be used to support other applications, systems) and value transfers (digital assets exchange, for including AI and ML) models that are used for prediction in example, crypto-assets, tokens).185 The World Economic a smart city context. Interoperability may also assist with Forum report, “Bridging the Governance Gap: Interoperability machine-to-machine communication. for Blockchain and Legacy Systems,”186 highlights the important question on how the DLT innovation will affect the legacy digital systems, operated by enterprises, governments, Blockchain and Distributed and institutions. The report provides details about the key pillars and efforts being made for legacy systems – DLT Ledger Technology interoperability. Smart contracts have logic embedded in the code and are triggered based on the defined inputs. These again need to interact with non-blockchain systems, thereby Blockchain is a decentralized technology that facilitates facilitating interoperability between smart contracts and collaboration and exchange of transactional data and legacy systems could unleash strong capabilities. Specific use information among and across different players, industries, cases and examples can be found through the UN Innovation sectors, and countries in a secure and transparent way. Network, the International Association for Trusted Blockchain Blockchain has entered the mainstream of computer Applications (INATBA), the World Economic Forum, and the applications, fundamentally changing the way transactions EU Blockchain Observatory & Forum. can be implemented by ascertaining trust between unknown parties. In addition, it ensures immutability (once information EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 71 > > > F I G U R E A 2 . 3 - Blockchain Interoperability Challenges Connecting smart contracts with external legacy systems through interoperability standards and legal frameworks Decentralized apps using smart contracts Middleware built on Legacy systems Interoperability standards Legal framework Source: World Economic Forum, 2020a. Artificial Intelligence Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) The OECD defines Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a “machine- based system that is capable of influencing the environment Central Banks have been exploring wholesale digital currency by producing an output (predictions, recommendations, or with a number of different motivations, including financial decisions) for a given set of objectives.”187 As AI and its related stability, monetary policy implementation, and payments capabilities are considered to be a data-driven technology, safety and robustness. According to a recent survey by the interoperability of datasets for AI applications will be of Bank of International Settlements, one of the key drivers is to particular concern. In the healthcare field, for example, there improve the efficiency of cross-border payments,190 which will is a need to “develop mechanisms to enable the efficient require governments to carefully think through interoperability exchange and interoperability of health data, including by issues to ensure the expected benefits are achieved. setting standards for data exchange and terminology.”188 In the telecom sector where AI will play a fundamental role in harnessing new technologies, such as 5G, interoperability may focus more on the availability of open and shared standards for more efficient deployment in the enterprise.189 EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 72 Metaverse A Metaverse is “a collective virtual open space, created by development underway in many forms – may be implemented the convergence of virtually enhanced physical and digital in both centralized and decentralized forms. Key issues for reality.”191 Even though the adoption of Metaverse technology interoperability in a decentralized Metaverse will include is still at an early stage, it is envisioned that various activities identity and aspects of the shared digital economy.193 Users taking place in real life such as commerce, education, digital may want to be able to port digital assets (for example, non- events, smart manufacturing, and telemedicine will eventually fungible tokens, or NFTs) across Metaverses, which may take place in a Metaverse environment.192 A Metaverse – require open standards to facilitate. while currently a notional concept with proto-Metaverse > > > F I G U R E A 2 . 4 - Open Metaverse Concept Platform (Tokenization via blockchain networks, Governance via DAOs) End User Software User (Asset management via self-custody) Persona End User Hardware (Asset management via self-custody) In-World Assets Physical (Virtual) Space Objects Avatars Currency Financial Instruments Marketplaces Tokenization via Decentralized Finance – Economics blockchains, DeFi via protocols, (e.g., NFT marketplaces like OpenSea, Rarible, SuperRare) stablecoin projects aggregators, etc. Media Data Assets (e.g., via blockchains and (e.g.via data marketplaces Content minting platforms like like Ocean Protocol) Filecoin, Mintable) Bridges to Bridges to World Primitives & Rules the digital world the digital world (e.g., via decentralized query & APIs (e.g, via NFTs with physical redemption like the Graph) like Boson Protocol, Kred NFTs) User Identity, Ownership, Agents Mechanics/ Autonomous and Reputation Programmability Economic Agents Self-Sovereign Identity and Physics (e.g. Fetch.ai) Verifiable Credentials Decentralized Databases Storage Software Back-end (BigChainDB, GUN, OrbitDB, etc.) Decentralized Compute Decentralized Storage Hardware Infrastructure (e.g., Filecoin, Siacoin, Storj, Arweave) (e.g., Golem, CUDOS, Difinity) Source: Shamash, David, and Robin Andre Nordnes, Outlier Ventures, 2022. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 73 Security by Design and Zero Trust Architecture With the adoption of emerging technologies and the increasing where a lack of layered defenses could lead to unintended amount of commercial and public activity occurring in the digital access to system data or functionality.196 space, cybersecurity concerns are of paramount importance. For example, IoT devices that support public service delivery Separately, many enterprises are moving towards a Zero Trust may introduce cybersecurity vulnerabilities due to lack of Architecture (ZTA), which increases the need for “interoperable firmware updates, insecure development practices, and a visibility and analytics capabilities.”197 The increasing use of “fragmentation of good practices and standards.”194 According cloud services and a hybrid workforce makes ZTA a priority, to the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA), with application interactions as a key focus area. According to security by design means that “physical/cyber infrastructure Palo Alto Networks, “A fundamental concept of Zero Trust is should incorporate security requirements upstream during the that applications cannot be trusted and continuous monitoring engineering process to minimize the potential and impact of at runtime is necessary to validate their behavior.”198 breaches.”195 This is especially important in API development, EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 74 >>> Annex 3. Modern Reference Architecture > > > F I G U R E A 3 . 1 - Modern Reference Architecture for Unified Data Infrastructure Ingestion Quey and Analysis Sources and Transport Storage Processing Transformation and Output Data Replication Dashboards OLTP Databases Data Warehouse (Looker, Superset, (Fivetran, Stitch, via CDC (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift) Tableau, Sigma, Matillion, Airbyte) Thoughtspot) Metrics Layer Embedded ERP (LookML, Analytics (Oracle, Salesforce, Transform, (Sisense, Looker, NetSuite, ...) Lakehouse Supergrain, dbt) cube.js) Data Lake Augmented Operational Apps Spark Platform Data Modeling Analytics (Salesforce, (Databricks, (dbt, LookML) (Thoughtspot, Hubspot, Zendesk) Workflow Amazon EMR) Outlier, Anodot, Sisu) Manager Delta, Tubular/ (Airflow/Astronomer, Iceberg, Hudi Prefect, Elemntl/ Dagster) SQL Query Engine Workflow Manager Event Collectors (Starburst/Presto/ Data Workspace (Airflow/Astronomer, (Segment, Trino, Hive, Dremio, (Mode, Hex, Prefect, Elementl/ Snowplow) Parquet, Databricks Photon) Deepnote) Dagster) ORC, Avro DS/ML Platforms DS/ML Tooling S3, GCS, (Pandas, Dask, (Databricks, Logs ABS, HDFS Anyscale/Ray, Sagemaker, PyTorch, ...) DataRobot, ...) Event Streaming 3rd Party APIs App Frameworks (Confluent/Kalfka, (e.g., Stripe) (Streamlit, AWS Kinesis, Plotly Dash) Pulsar, Upsolver) File and Object Real-Time Analytics Database Custom Storage (Imply/Druid, ClickHouse, Pinot, Rockset) Applications Stream Processing Reverse ETL (Databricks, Confluent, (Census, Flink, Upsolver, Hightouch) Materialize) Data Observability Entitlements Data Discovery Data Governance (Monte Carlo, Bigeye, (Amundsen, DataHub, (Collibra) and Security Superconductive/Great Atlan, Alation) (Privacera, Immuta) Expectations, AccelData Source: Bornstein, Matt, Li, Jennifer and Casado, Martin, 2020. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 76 > > > F I G U R E A 3 . 2 - Blueprint 1: Modern (Cloud-Native) Business Intelligence Query and Processing Ingestion and Sources Transformation Storage Historical Predictive Output OLTP Databases Connectors Dashboards Data Warehouse via CDC (Fivetran, Stitch, (Looker, Superset, (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift) Matillion) Mode, Tableau) Embedded Applications/ERP Data Modeling Analytics (Oracle, Salesforce, (dbt, LookML) (Sisense, Looker, Netsuite, ...) cube.js) Workflow Augmented Event Collectors Data Science Platform Manager Analytics (Segment, (Databricks, Domino, Sagemaker, Dataiku, (Airflow, Dagster, (Thoughtspot, Snowplow) DataRobot, Anaconda, ...) Prefect) Outlier, Anodot, Sisu) Data Science and ML Libraries App Frameworks Data Lake (Pandas, Numpy, R, Dask, Ray, Spark, ... Logs (Plotly Dash, Spark Platform Scikit-learn, Pytorch, TensorFlow, Spark ML, Streamlit) (Databricks, EMR) XGBoost, ...) Databricks/Delta Lake, Iceberg, Hudi, Ad Hoc Query 3rd Party APIs Hive Acid Engine Custom Apps (e.g., Stripe) Phyton Libs (Presto, Dremio/ (Pandas, Boto, Drill, Impala) Dask, Ray, ...) Parquet, Real-Time File and Object ORC, Avro Analytics ... Storage Batch Query (Imply/Druid, Engine Altinity/Clickhouse, (Hive) Rockset) S3, GCS, ABS, HDFS ... Event Streaming (Confluent/Kafka, Pulsar, AWS Kinesis) Stream Processing (Databricks/Spark, Confluent/Kafka, Flink) Metadata Management Entitlements Observability Quality and Testing (Collibra, Alation, Hive, and Security (Unravel, Accel Data, (Great Expectations) Metastore, DataHub, ...) (Privacera, Immuta) Fiddler) Source: Bornstein, Matt, Li, Jennifer and Casado, Martin, 2020. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 77 > > > F I G U R E A 3 . 3 - Blueprint 2: Multimodal Data Processing Query and Processing Ingestion and Sources Transformation Storage Historical Predictive Output OLTP Databases Connectors Dashboards Data Warehouse via CDC (Fivetran, Stitch, (Looker, Superset, (Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift) Matillion) Mode, Tableau) Embedded Applications/ERP Data Modeling Analytics (Oracle, Salesforce, (dbt, LookML) (Sisense, Looker, Netsuite, ...) cube.js) Workflow Augmented Event Collectors Data Science Platform Manager Analytics (Segment, (Databricks, Domino, Sagemaker, Dataiku, (Airflow, Dagster, (Thoughtspot, Snowplow) DataRobot, Anaconda, ...) Prefect) Outlier, Anodot, Sisu) Data Science and ML Libraries App Frameworks Data Lake (Pandas, Numpy, R, Dask, Ray, Spark, ... Logs (Plotly Dash, Spark Platform Scikit-learn, Pytorch, TensorFlow, Spark ML, Streamlit) (Databricks, EMR) XGBoost, ...) Databricks/Delta Lake, Iceberg, Hudi, Ad Hoc Query 3rd Party APIs Hive Acid Engine Custom Apps (e.g., Stripe) Phyton Libs (Presto, Dremio/ (Pandas, Boto, Drill, Impala) Dask, Ray, ...) Parquet, Real-Time File and Object ORC, Avro Analytics ... Storage Batch Query (Imply/Druid, Engine Altinity/Clickhouse, (Hive) Rockset) S3, GCS, ABS, HDFS ... Event Streaming (Confluent/Kafka, Pulsar, AWS Kinesis) Stream Processing (Databricks/Spark, Confluent/Kafka, Flink) Metadata Management Entitlements Observability Quality and Testing (Collibra, Alation, Hive, and Security (Unravel, Accel Data, (Great Expectations) Metastore, DataHub, ...) (Privacera, Immuta) Fiddler) Source: Bornstein, Matt, Li, Jennifer and Casado, Martin, 2020. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 78 > > > F I G U R E A 3 . 4 - Blueprint 3: Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Data Model Transformation Model Training and Development Inference Data Labeling (Labelbox, Snorkel, Scale, Sagemaker) Data Sources (Data lake + Dataflow Automation data warehouse + (Airflow, Pachyderm, Elementl, Prefect, Tecton, Kubeflow) streaming engine) Query Engines Feature Store Feature Server (Presto, Hive) (Tecton) (Tecton, Cassandra) Data Science Libraries (Spark, Pandas, NumPy, Dask) Model Registry Batch Predictor Data Science Platform (Algorithmia, (Spark) (Jupyter, Databricks, Domino, Sagemaker, DataRobot, H2O, Colab, MLflow, Deepnote, Noteable) Sagemaker) Clients Online Model Server (TF Serving, Ray Experiment Compiler Serve, Seldon) ML Framework (TVM) Tracking (Scikit-learn, (Weights and XGBoost, MLlib) Biases, Comet, MLflow) Model Monitoring DL Framework (Fiddler, Arthur, (TensorFlow, Arize) Visualization Keras, PyTorch, (Tensorboard, Ingestion and H2O, Sources Transformation Storage Historical Predictive Output Fiddler) Hugging Face) Model Tuning RL Libraries (Sigopt, hyperopt, (Gym, Dopamine, Ray Tune) RLlib, Coach) Distributed Processing (Spark, Ray, Dask, Distributed TF, Kubeflow, Horovod) Source: Bornstein, Matt, Li, Jennifer and Casado, Martin, 2020. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 79 > > > F I G U R E A 3 . 5 - API: Multiple Complementary Mediators Web Mobile Speech Services Partners IoT API Consumers Outer API North/South Mediation Enterprise Gateway (Consumer- to-API, Maps Traffic Outer APIs to Monitoring Security Monetization Integration Management Inner APIs) Outer API Outer API Outer API Outer API Lightweight Lightweight Lightweight Ingress Controller Gateway Gateway Gateway Monitoring Security Traffic Management Monitoring Monitoring Monitoring Security Security Security Traffic Mgmt Traffic Mgmt Traffic Mgmt Service Mesh Configuration Routing Instrumentation AuthN/AuthZ Inner API Inner API Inner API Discovery Load Balancing Resiliency Encryption Miniservice Macroservice Macroservice Adapter Proxy Proxy Proxy Proxy Inner API Inner API Inner API Inner API Monolithic Legacy Application Application Microservice Microservice Miniservice Miniservice Application Application Legacy Server Server Platform Managed Container System East/West Mediation (Service-to-Service) Source: Gartner, 2018b. Note: API = application programming interface; IoT = Internet of Things; Mgmt = management. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 80 >>> Annex 4. Members of the Interoperability Working Group Country Name Position Institution Indonesia Bobby Nazief Senior ICT/Advisor to the Ministry of Finance (Co-Chair) Minister of Finance (MOF) Gerry Firmansyah Executive Director WANTIKANS (National ICT Council) Prasetya Dwicahya Head of Tribe GovTech Edu Erwin Ariadharma Senior Public Sector Specialist World Bank Portugal Carla Marques Pereira Digital Transformation Director Agency for Administrative (Co-Chair) Modernization (AMA) Paulo Vale Project Manager Agency for Administrative Modernization (AMA) Cláudia Gonçalves Barroso Head of Unit, Agency for Administrative International Relations Modernization (AMA) Catarina Almeida International Relations Officer Agency for Administrative Modernization (AMA) Argentina Silvana Rica National Director of Secretariat of Public Digital State Integration Innovation team and Processing Cabo Verde João Cruz Nacional Director of State Ministry of State Modernization and Administration Mário Cardoso Special Advisor Ministry of State and Administration Edemilson Alves Director of Budget, Planning NOSI - Operational Unit and International Affairs for the Information Society (under Ministry of Finance) Canada Michael Mohammed Manager, Policy Office of the Chief and Legislation Information Officer, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat Citibeats Marcos Cuevas Chief Product Officer Citibeats Denmark Carsten Ingerslev Head of Division - Office of Danish Business Authority Digital Innovation EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 82 Country Name Position Institution Magnus Antonio Area 1 - Social economy, Ministry of Industry, Salcedo Jakobsen jobs of the future and Business and green transformation Financial Affairs EU-DIGIT Miguel Alvarez Head of Interoperability Team DIGIT Peter Burian DIGIT Georges Lobo DIGIT Republic of Korea Sungjoo Son Director Ministry of the Interior and Safety Lisbon Council Nathan Da Silva Carvalho Project Manager and Lisbon Council Research Associate David Osimo Director of Research Lisbon Council Charlotte van Ooijen Associate Director, Digital Lisbon Council Government and Data Mozambique Erminio Jasse Director INAGE (National Institute of Electronic Government) Carlos Manique INAGE (National Institute of Electronic Government) Laisse Mucavele INTIC (National Institute of Information and Communication Technology) Bicael Francisco INTIC (National Institute of Information and Communication Technology) New Zealand Andy Warden Principal Advisor Department of Internal Affairs Open Group Pallab Saha Open Group Public Digital Joanne Esmyot Director Public Digital James Steward Partner Public Digital Saudi Arabia Khalid AlGhamdi Director Digital Government Authority EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 83 Country Name Position Institution Noura Al-Sanie Director of Digital platforms’ Digital Government studies and business analysis Authority Majed A. Alhaidar Director of Operations, Digital Government Digital Transformation Authority Mohammed Alessa Digital Integration Director Digital Government Authority Timor-Leste Andre Marquez Director of Council of Ministers, Infrastructure Division Information and Communication Technology Agency, lP - TIC TIMOR Elizabeth Baptista National ICT Policy & Council of Ministers, e-Governance Adviser Information and Communication Technology Agency, lP - TIC TIMOR United Kingdom Liz Lutgendorff International Lead Insight Government Digital Service and Analysis Advisor UNU-EGOV Delfina Soares Head UNU-EGOV Zoran Jordanoski Senior Academic Fellow UNU-EGOV António Tavares Adjunct Associate Professor UNU-EGOV EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 84 >>> Notes 1. Andrews et al., 2022: p.23. 2. The World Bank GovTech Maturity Index (GTMI) provides insight about the extent to which countries have adopted a whole-of-government approach to the digital transformation of the public sector. This note will demonstrate that a country’s GovTech maturity level is a crucial starting point for any interoperability project. For further reading on the GTMI, see Dener et al., 2021. 3. According to the GovTech Glossary (World Bank 2022a), a Government Service Bus (GSB) is a standards-based integration platform for automating secure data exchange among different government databases and applications to support government opera- tions and the delivery of services. It entails cross-boundary platforms for connectivity and interoperability of systems across ministries and agencies. 4. Naser, 2021. 5. Gazis and Katsiri (2022) define middleware from the perspective of computer science and reflect on its necessity, and address controversies about when and where it applies. 6. Obviously, the nondigital interoperability layers that consider governance, legal, organiza- tional, and cultural aspects can be supported by the use of digital technologies, but do not have digital characteristics as a main focus. 7. This layer has only been defined within the context of the EIF4SCC. It is not part of the EIF at the member state level. 8. Mitta et al., 2021. 9. Dener et al., 2021: p7. 10. World Bank, 2022b. 11. Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, 2019. 12. Van Ooijen et al., 2019. 13. These and other critical issues should be addressed as part of a whole-of-government data strategy, falling beyond the scope of this note. For an analysis of the potential benefits and dangers of the use of data in development countries, see World Bank, 2021c. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 85 14. OECD, 2019. 15. All country cases are shown with their GovTech Maturity Level in 2022 to provide readers how each maturity group design and implement interoperability clearly. Each group’s level means; Group A – GovTech leaders, Group B – Significant focus on GovTech, Group c – Some focus on GovTech, Group D – Minimal focus on GovTech. 16. Skat.dk, 2022. 17. Țurcanu, 2019. 18. Buyle, 2017. 19. Wimmer, 2021. 20. Wimmer, 2021. 21. Danish Digitization Agency, n.d. 22. Duncan et al., 2021. 23. Duncan et al., 2021. 24. Tuulas, n.d. 25. OECD, 2019. 26. Roseth et al., 2019. 27. Ubaldi, 2020. 28. https://www.yesmilano.it/system/files/allegati/paragrafi/16381/MilanDigitalWeek_Fact- sheets_01_032921_v6.pdf. 29. World Bank. 2022. Using Data Analytics in Public Procurement: Operational Options and a Guiding Framework. Washington, DC: World Bank. https://openknowledge. worldbank.org/handle/10986/37467. 30. Cocciolo, Serena. 2022. “Investigating of Illicit Financial Flows: Leveraging Technol- ogy for Better Results.” Presentation made to the anti-corruption agency in Saudi Arabia on June 14, 2022. 31. Cocciolo, Serena. 2022. 32. https://www.pagopa.gov.it/it/dashboard/. 33. Denmark is transitioning from the former national eID system NemID to the new MitID, which intends to further strengthen the position of businesses, both as service users and providers. For more details, see https://www.mitid.dk/en-gb/about-mitid. 34. Dener et al, 2021. 35. Brooks, 2022. EQUITABLE GROWTH, FINANCE & INSTITUTIONS INSIGHT <<< 86 36. E-Estonia, n.d.; 2017. 37. See https://luxembourg.public.lu/en/invest/innovation/e-embassies-in-luxembourg.html. 38. Van Ooijen et al., 2021a. 39. See for instance the DECIDO project at https://www.decido-project.eu/what-is-decido. 40. United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), 2021. 41. Berends et al., 2020; Carrara et al., 2015. 42. Huyer et al., 2020. 43. WBG GovTech Dataset, 2020. 44. Ubaldi, 2013; Van Ooijen et al., 2022. 45. Translated by the authors from Naser, 2021: p 10: “cualquier Estado que quiera abordar la interoperabilidad desde una perspectiva holística debe tomar como punto de partida la gobernanza digital, ya que esta generará la política, la estrategia, los recursos y el apoyo institucional.” 46. WBG, 2022. 47. Dener et al., 2021. 48. European Commission. n.d. NIFO – National Interoperability Framework Observatory. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/nifo-national-interoperability-framework- observatory/national-interoperability-initiatives. 49. Diário Official da União, 2022. 50. Republic of Korea Ministry of Interior and Safety, 2022. 51. OECD, 2018a. 52. https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/65175e7d6401c2f8f8b3e582dea933 fe-0350062022/lesotho-the-national-identification-system. 53. Andrews et al., 2022. 54. Dener et al. 55. OECD, 2020a. 56. Digital Agency, 2022. 57. 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