Helping Government Keep Up with Moores Law

#WorldGovSummit

Helping Government Catch Up

with Moore’s Law

Tim O’Reilly@timoreilly

World Government SummitFebruary 8, 2016

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“Senator, you have to understand…”

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Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, D-RI

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Moore’s Law has been responsible for a

cascade of miracles.

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Self-driving cars

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How things ought to work

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Rockstar tech talent in government

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Modern Technology Best Practices

• User centered design

• Agile, data-driven development

• Cloud deployment and modern technology stacks

• Open source software

• Open data

• Citizen engagement

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Government as a Platform

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Government as a platform

means an end to the design of

only complete, closed

“applications.” The government

should provide fundamental

applications, and services on

which we, the people, can

build additional applications.

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http://www.statista.com/statistics/263795/number-of-available-apps-in-the-apple-app-store/

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GPS: A 21st century platform launched in 1973

Massive investment for uncertain return

Policy decisions can have enormous impact

Marketplaces take time to develop, and go in

unexpected directions

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“We’ve opened up huge amounts of government data to the American people, and put it on the Internet for free.... And what’s happening is entrepreneurs and business owners are now using that data -- the people’s data --to create jobs and solve problems that government can’t solve by itself or can’t do as efficiently.”

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President Barack Obama

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What’s Still Missing?

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Some of what that entails

Low level “infrastructure as a service”

StorageComputation

Internal “Housekeeping” services

SecurityPerformance monitoring

Connection to other servicesInsurance providersState exchangesrvice

Identity

Location

Employment status

Income verification

User Interface

Web site

Email

Call Center

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Do we do all that just for healthcare.gov,

and then do it all over again for immigration reform?

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I’m not saying changing the way

government contracts for and manages

major technology programs will be easy.

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“A platform beats an application every time.”

Tim O’Reilly and Jeff BezosPhoto: Duncan Davidson

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Jeff’s Memo

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• “All teams will henceforth expose their data and functionality through service

interfaces.

• Teams must communicate with each other through these interfaces.

• There will be no other form of inter-process communication allowed: no direct

linking, no direct reads of another team’s data store, no shared memory model,

no back-doors whatsoever. The only communication allowed is via service

interface calls over the network.

• It doesn’t matter what technology they use.

• All service interfaces, without exception, must be designed from the ground up

to be externalizable. That is to say, the team must plan and design to be able to

expose the interface to developers in the outside world. No exceptions.

• Anyone who doesn’t do this will be fired.”

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Create a modular set of fundamental services

that can be used like building blocks

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You must build on them yourselves.

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And only then open them up to the world.

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You will do this or you will be fired

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Write RFPs to require government sites to be built

on top of internal APIs that can also be used to

support external 3rd party sites.

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Wholesale Retail

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Wholesale Retail

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“The legitimate object of

government is to do for the

people what needs to be done,

but which they cannot, by

individual effort, do at all, or do

so well, for themselves.”

-Abraham Lincoln, July 1, 1854

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Data is the 21st Century Platform

We need standards for:

• Identity

• Payment

• Location

• Credit history

• Health history

• Privacy

• …

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Right now, these standards are being set

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Who sets the gauge rules the world

Sixty per cent of the world's

railways use 4 ft 8 1⁄2 inch

standard gauge, developed

by George Stephenson in

1822.

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http://www.warwickshirerailways.com/lms/lnwrns305.htm

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You standardize railroads by building tracks

“The strategy is delivery!”

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UK GDS Director

Mike Bracken