| And this figure only covers government IT procurement... When you look at how government has traditionally interacted with citizens, it's indistinguishable from a monopoly service market. In the past, this was the only feasible way to deliver many government services. However, the result is the same as any other market monopoly: inefficient production and above welfare maximising pricing (albeit indirectly paid via taxation). Government Web APIs fundamentally change this, and I'm not just talking about 'open data'. A whole bunch of monopoly markets suddenly become highly competitive markets (especially since digital service production tends to occur at around 0 marginal cost). The value to the economy could be many times the figure discussed in the OPs article. Tim O'Reilly was so far ahead of the times when he published his chapter on 'Government as a Platform' in 2010 (http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000000774/ch02.htm...) More recently, in Australia they've just set up their own (kinda crappier) version of the UK GDS and published an API design guide. I think the excerpt from this article basically sums it up (http://www.themandarin.com.au/48771-dto-make-creating-apis-m...): "However despite all these challenges, the cause [government APIs] is a great one and could do more to transform how government IT operates than many more public steps. If the DTO [Australian GDS] can pull this off, have agencies fall in line and have APIs start rolling off government IT ‘production lines’, it will have single-handedly justified its own existence and transformed how government works, even if it doesn’t achieve anything else in the next few years." |