Digital government resources for policymakers interested in digital. Initially created by Paul Maltby, Director of Data Projects, Department for Communities and Local Government, it is now a crowdsourced resource being regularly updated by UK government digital policy thought-leaders on GitHub.
Reading list
- The Agile Manifesto, 2001
- Government as a platform, Tim O’Reilly, 2010
- The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Eric S. Raymond, 1997
- Software is eating the world, Marc Andreessen, 2011
- New Power, Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms, 2014
- Government Digital Service design principles, 2012
- Government as a platform, or a platform for government? Which are we getting? and What is government as a platform and how do we achieve it?, both by Mark Thompson, 2015
- Definition of digital, by Tom Loosemore, 2016
Digital
- What is code? By Paul Ford, 2015.
- An introduction to Wardley value chain mapping, by Simon Wardley,2015.
- Product Land, by Richard Pope, 2015.
- Being Digital, by Nicholas Negroponte, 1996.
- Checklist manifesto, by Atul gawande, 2011.
- The Phoenix Project by Gene Kim, 2013.
- Rework, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, 2010 .
- Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future, by Joi Ito and Jeff Howe.
- How to make sense of any mess by Abby Covert 2015.
- Subject To Change: Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain World by Peter Merholz, 2008.
- Sweat the small stuff, TED talk by Rory Sutherland, 2012.
- Homo Deus, by Yuval Noah Harari
- Race Against The Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy, by Erik Brynjolfsson.
- Play Anything: The Pleasure of Limits, the Uses of Boredom, and the Secret of Games, by Ian Bogost.
Government digital
- Policy Making in a Digital Age, by Jennifer Pahlka.
- Can you recognise the million pound chair? by Tom Steinberg, 2012.
- Digital government: not complicated, just hard, YouTube video by Tom Loosemore.
- How Boston’s tech squad saved the city from its annual moving day nightmare, by Susan Crawford, 2015.
- Boiling Frogs, by GCHQ.
- Tim O’Reilly on the Code Red Time magazine article by Steve Brill.
- Teaching digital at the Kennedy School of Government: a road map, by David Eaves
- The Responsive City: Engaging Communities Through Data-Smart Governance Stephen Goldsmith and Susan Crawford, 2014.
- Delivering on digital by William Eggers, 2016.
- Improving the Management of Digital Government, by Institute for Government, 2016.
- Making a success of Digital Government, by Institute for Government, 2016.
- Digitizing Government: Understanding and Implementing New Digital Business Models, by Alan Brown, Jerry Fishenden and Mark Thompson.
- Top digital policy developments in 2016: A year in review, by DiploFoundation.
- Strategic reading for people changing government, blog by Stefan Czerniawski
- Five for Friday, blog by Dave Briggs
- Rise of the Robots: Technology and the threat of mass unemployment, by Martin Ford
- The Code Book: a secret history of codes and codebreaking by Simon Singh, 2010.
Design
- Designing Delivery, by Jeff Sussna, 2015.
- Leading Public Design, by Christian Bason.
- Most of government is mostly service design most of the time. Discuss, by Matt Edgar.
- The Actual Problem to be Solved, 2017, by Kate Tarlingand Ayesha Moarif.
- The Needs of Government, by Ben Holliday.
- I fought the law and the users won, by Peter Herlihy.
- Simplicity, by Edward de Bono. Via Terence Eden
- Citizen interactive design by Cliff Lampe, 2016.
Leadership
- What a digital organisation looks like, 2017, by Janet Hughes.
- Digital is something you are, by Giles Turnbull.
- What if boldness were an explicit value of the civil service, by Janet Hughes, 2016.
- The mythical man month by Fred Brooks, 1975.
- A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making: the Cynefin framework by David J. Snowden and Mary E. Boone.
Politics and Digital
- National Digital Conference keynote speech, by Matt Hancock MP, 2015.
- There’s a revolution out there – and Labour must be part of it, by Chi Onwurah MP, 2016.
- My vision for a smarter state, by David Cameron, 2015.
- The righteous mind: why good people are divided by politics and religion, by Jonathan Haidt.
- The dictator’s handbook: why bad behaviour is almost always good politics, by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita.
- The New Urban Crisis: How Our Cities Are Increasing Inequality, Deepening Segregation, and Failing the Middle Class – and What We Can Do About It, by Richard Florida, 2017.
- The digital transformation of Parish Councils has begun, by Andy Black, 2017.
Government
- The Whitehall Effect: How Whitehall Became the Enemy of Great Public Services – and What We Can Do About it, by John Seddon.
- The Blunders of our Governments, by Anthony King.
- Whitehall, by Peter Hennessy.
- The Defence of the realm: the authorised history of MI5, by Christopher Andrew.
- The Naked Diplomat, by Tom Fletcher.
- In defence of politics, by Bernard Crick.
Digital government resources for policymakers – Worldwide open data sets
World
- International Monetary Fund Time series data on lending, exchange rates and other economic and financial indicators.
- Open Data Soft Comprehensive List of Data Portals SaaS software firm Open Data Soft published this megaportal with links to more than 2600 data portals from governments around the world.
- Open Knowledge International Data Portals List Megaportal and search for 500+ data portals around the world.
- Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development A wide variety of economic indicators, by country. Searchable, and browsable by topic or country.
- UNdata United Nations open data portal.
- UN-Habitat Urban Data United Nations data about 741 cities and 220 countries around the world.
- World Bank Open Data Global development data from World Bank Group, which consists of five multilateral organizations for development, investment and banking.
Africa
- Africa Data Highway Economic data from African Development Bank Group.
- Open Africa Code for Africa’s independent repository of open data on the African continent, with support from Google, World Bank Group, International Center for Journalists and Open Knowledge.
Antarctica
- Antarctic & Southern Ocean Data Portal Geoscience data from the Antarctic region via Marine Geoscience Data System.
- Antarctic Geospace Data Portal Funded by the National Science Foundation.
- Antarctic National Directory NASA portal to information about Antarctica.
- Australian Antarctic Data Centre Provides long-term management of Australia’s Antarctic data.
- British Antarctic Survey Polar data including environmental, biological, geological and meteorological datasets, to specimens, maps, and photographs.
- Climate Change Initiative European Space Agency climate data, including information about both poles.
- U.S. Antarctic Program Data Center Supports investigators funded by the National Science Foundation in documenting, preserving, and disseminating their research results.
Asia
- Asia-Pacific Sustainable Development A partnership between the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
- Asian Development Bank Statistics and Databases Covers social, economic, and financial indicators relating of developing nations.
- Biodoversity Ecosystem Functioning Data from Chinese-European DFG Research Unit.
- National Bureau of Statistics of China Chinese government agency site. This isn’t the most ambitious of government open data sites, but it does include annual reports on economic issues such as population, finances, employment and wages.
- Open Data Japan English language open data site from the government of Japan.
Australia
- Data.gov.au Australian government data portal.
Europe
- European Union Data Portal Funded by the European Union, this is a portal harvested metadata from public sector portals throughout Europe.
- European Union Open Data Portal Portal for data from European Union institutions.
North America
- Data portals for 85 US cities.
- Datos Abiertos Open data site of the Republic of Mexico.
- Open Data Government of Canada data portal.
South America
- Datos Abiertos Colombia Open data portal of the government of Colombia.
- Datos Argentina Open data portal of the government of Argentina.
- Portal Brasiliero de Dados Abiertos Brazilian government open data.
- Inter-American Development Bank Open Data Portal showcases socio-economic indicators for the Latin American and the Caribbean Region.
- Ocean Biogeographic Information Center South America NASA portal for information about the oceans surrounding South America.
Digital government resources for policymakers