Webinar: Digital platforms in the public sector

Our ERCIM postdoc Dr. Syed Sajid Hussain will hold a presentation for NAV the coming Thursday at 11.

Title: Governance models for public sector platforms: a literature review using the public value perspective.

What it is about: Government as a Platform (GaaP) is the vision of using digital platforms for an open government at a community, city, regional or national level. This vision is increasingly being materialized by public sector organizations across the world to reduce costs and increase organizational efficiency. At the same time, the public sector organizations use digital platforms to tap into their potential of increased citizen participation and open innovation for the co-creation of products and services.

The platform model defines a platform core consisting of reusable and extensible components and a periphery. A platform has at least three kinds of stakeholders: 1) the platform owner managing the platform, 2) the complementors utilizing and extending the platform core to add products and services to the periphery and 3) the end-users. Together, the platform ad its stakeholders form an ecosystem.

The platform governance model involves the platform owner controlling the interactions among the end-users and complementors by utilizing different instruments at the level of the graphical user interface, algorithm, and policy to maximize value. In a commercial platform, this is the monetary value earned by the platform owner. However, in a public sector platform, a government organization being the platform operator should aim to maximize the public value.

This talk presents a literature study of public sector platforms using the lens of public value to identify research themes and synthesize a theoretical framework. The research questions investigated in this study include: 1) how does the included literature define a public sector platform? 2) how does the included literature define public value for the public sector platforms? and 3) how does the governance model of a public sector platform yield public value according to the included literature?