Barriers of Government as a Platform in Practice Peter Kuhn*, Matthias Buchinger**, Dian Balta*** *fortiss GmbH, Research Institute of the Free State of Bavaria for software-intensive systems, Munich, Germany **fortiss GmbH, Research Institute of the Free State of Bavaria for software-intensive systems, Munich, Germany ***fortiss GmbH, Research Institute of the Free State of Bavaria for software-intensive systems, Munich, Germany Abstract: Government as a Platform (GaaP) is a promising approach to digital transformation in the public sector that aims at creating efficient and user-friendly services by the use of network effects and co-creation. Several countries like the UK and Italy already pursue the GaaP approach. However, introducing GaaP remains challenging, especially in federal states. This poster presents barriers of the introduction of GaaP in the project of a federal agency in Germany. The barriers help understand the applicability of GaaP in practice and motivate future research on potential measures to overcome those barriers. Keywords: Government as a Platform, digital transformation, federal states Acknowledgement: This research is based partly on the project KoGaaP, which was funded by FITKO, AöR, Frankfurt, Germany. 1. Situation and Complication Platforms in the public sector are associated with benefits and public value via integration, efficiency and innovation, but also user-friendly public services [1]. Platforms and platform ecosystems can be described as compromising "a platform owner that implements governance mechanisms to facilitate value creating mechanisms on a digital platform between the platform owner and an ecosystem of autonomous complementors and consumers" [2]. In his seminal work "Government as a Platform" (GaaP) Tim O'Reilly proposes lessons learnt on how to adapt such a platform approach to the public sector [3]. Countries like UK [4] and Italy [5] already pursue the approach and the EU emphasizes its benefits . However, the implementation of GaaP in practice remains challenging. In particular, in federal states where decisions and implementations need consensus and coordination of multiple parties [6]. Often there is no single entity that can "own" the Platform and the introduction of a GaaP approach needs consensus in such states. Copyright ©2021 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). 308 Posters 2. Resolution and Methodology This poster presents preliminary results from a use case from Germany. Based on a systematic literature review and data from the use case we analyze the factors and mechanisms that hindered the success of the project and identify the underlying barriers. The use case is a project by the federal government agency FITKO to introduce a platform approach to the IT infrastructure that is used for forwarding applications from the portal of one state to the business application of another. To this end, the agency aims at a standardized API interface and delivery service that allows an ecosystem of portals to work on the same platform infrastructure. 3. Results Barrier 1: It remains unclear what GaaP means in practice. The working groups of the project revealed that the agency has clear ideas about the technical components and interfaces of the project but struggled to define what exactly the platform is and what it boundaries are. Barrier 2: The GaaP approach is hard to communicate. In the course of the project the term platform was often associated with a web-site or a tangible artefact; a platform for government [7]. The more fundamental approach that considers “government as a platform” is not tangible and, thus, harder to explain. Barrier 3: Unclear where to start and how. Despite the guidelines from O'Reilly, the chicken-egg problem of platforms extended also to the project of the use case. Should the project start with the interface specification or the creation of an ecosystem? Barrier 4: Difficulty to define the platform boundary. In the investigated use case the accessibility of the API from outside of the government network was a much debated issue. This is embedded in the general discussion on openness vs. control of platforms. 4. Implication and Future Work Government as a Platform is a promising approach for the efficiency and user-friendliness of government. However, for the introduction of GaaP in practice it is necessary to understand the barriers that hinder its implementation. Further work should evaluate the barriers in other use cases and develop measures to overcome them. References Al-Ani, A.: Government as a Platform: Services, Participation and Policies. In: Friedrichsen, M. and Kamalipour, Y. (eds.) Digital Transformation in Journalism and News Media: Media Management, Media Convergence and Globalization. pp. 179–196. Springer International Publishing, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27786-8_14. Hein, A., Schreieck, M., Riasanow, T., Setzke, D.S., Wiesche, M., Böhm, M., Krcmar, H.: Digital platform ecosystems. Electron Markets. 30, 87–98 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-019-00377-4. Posters 309 O’Reilly, T.: Government as a Platform. Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization. 6, 13–40 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1162/INOV_a_00056. Brown, A., Fishenden, J., Thompson, M., Venters, W.: Appraising the impact and role of platform models and Government as a Platform (GaaP) in UK Government public service reform: Towards a Platform Assessment Framework (PAF). Government Information Quarterly. 34, 167–182 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2017.03.003. Cordella, A., Paletti, A.: Government as a platform, orchestration, and public value creation: The Italian case. Government Information Quarterly. 36, 101409 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2019.101409. Scholta, H., Niemann, M., Halsbenning, S., Räckers, M., Becker, J.: Fast and Federal - Policies for Next- Generation Federalism in Germany. In: 52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2019, Grand Wailea, Maui, Hawaii, USA, January 8-11, 2019. pp. 1–10 (2019). https://doi.org/10.24251/HICSS.2019.395. Thompson, M.: Government as a platform, or a platform for government? Which are we getting?, https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Government-as-a-platform-or-a-platform-for- government-Which-are-we-getting, last accessed 2021/01/04. About the Authors Peter Kuhn, Matthias Buchinger, Dian Balta Peter Kuhn, Matthias Buchinger and Dian Balta work at fortiss gGmbH, the research institute of the Free State of Bavaria for software-intensive systems. They are part of the research group Open Data & Information Management and focus on the engineering of information systems and processes that support the platformization in the government domain.