GovStack focuses a lot on process and people within the implementation journey. Capacity building is a process in which individuals, organizations and societies, develop, strengthen and maintain the skills to implement GovStack’s Building Blocks. Capacity development is not a single intervention but an iterative process of design-application-learning-adjustment.
Capacity building activities include:
Conducting training needs assessment
Engagement of stakeholders on capacity development
Assessment the capacity needs and assets
Formulation and implementation of capacity development response
Evaluation of the capacity development.
Knowledge Management Ecosystem as a part of Capacity Building
Digital government services require a robust and active knowledge management cycle. The knowledge management cycle is a continuous where information is identified, created, shared, stored, utilized. GovStack's knowledge management cycle relies on three critical pieces: people, process and technology.
The key to knowledge management is sharing of information. Sharing knowledge leads to innovation and improvement of the quality of work. Thus, the result is an efficient learning organization where employees' skill sets are constantly improved.
GovStack supports its governments throughout the knowledge management cycle with different resources and tools. Internally, Teams, Jira and Confluence are the communication channels for co-creating knowledge pieces. On the other hand, GitBook and GovStack LMS are the resources used to disseminate to the public, the Technical Specifications and Training materials that aids the GovStack implementation journey.
How GovStack Approach can be supported
In its ongoing efforts to improve how governments can reap the benefits of digitalization, the GovStack team frequently asks key questions to guide the development of its activities. These questions include; how can governments become more open and transparent, while simultaneously dealing with various challenges, such as data sensitivity? Which technologies are available to make governments more open and to use open government data? How can data be turned into smartness?
Reuse and Improve Principle
The GovStack Initiative strongly believes in the principle to "reuse and improve." We do not have to reinvent the wheel - when it comes to reusing building blocks, but also regarding education material. Many organizations in the field of government technologies as well as Open Source communities and Governments have published readings, guidelines and training material to support public sector digitization. We would like to make use of all this material and channel it to our partner countries looking into increasing their skills and knowledge. These are a few ways to support GovStack Capacity Building:
Creating new training resources
There are still training gaps concerning the whole-of-government approach and the development of digital infrastructure
Sharing e-learnings, guidelines, toolkits or training material
Numerous institutions, both from the public and private sectors, have created their own learning materials to increase the skills needed to push the digital transformation of government services forward
Knowledge sharing formats
Participate in Communities of practice and share knowledge and insights into your digitization process. Create forums for exchange within the digital ecosystem in your country or regionally.
Training centers
Establish a training center in your country and link GovStack to the institution(s) responsible for capacity building in your country.
Change management
Foster openness to change and change management. Digitizing Government Services is not only about creating digital tools and infrastructure, it is also about changing processes, simplifying them, creating citizen-centered services. This new approach means a lot of change for government processes, and therefore change management is a big part of the digitization journey.
Specialized Communities of Practice
The starting point of the GovStack approach was the development Communities of Practice in order to share knowledge and experiences between various stakeholders and countries' focal points.
The GovStack approach relies heavily on best practices, experiences and knowledge sharing. The Communities of Practice (CoPs) are topic-related or regional exchange forums to share knowledge and experiences concerning the GovStack approach. The current CoPs are the following:
Aim: Provide an impartial opinion on results provided by the building block working groups.
Opportunities to get involved:
Provide expert guidance to each BB WG
Advise on output formats and mode of work e.g. where to properly document BB specification, suggestion on version control methods/tools, on release and management of end deliverables
Review, validate, approve final deliverables at each milestone
Inform BB WG and Governance Committee of challenges and propose solutions
Aim: Exchange knowledge to strengthen the global GovStack community
Opportunities to get involved:
Participate in CIO Digital Government Leaders Forum events to exchange best practices with other e-government leaders and learn from the experience of other countries.
Share respective country (implementation) experience
Aim: Map and identify opportunities to collaborate and extend existing work related to facilitating the discovery, development, use of, and investment of digital public goods and digital public infrastructure for the GovStack
Identify potential DPGs that are likely to also comply with building blocks specifications.
Identify existing DPGs that can be used to inform specifications of building blocks – where these specifications are not yet in place/still evolving.
Create alignment and coordination for how to accelerate the discovery of these DPG Building Blocks eg. via a digital marketplace.
Participate in bi-monthly discussion rounds to exchange on DPGs as well as definitions for building blocks and Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI).
Share best practices with and learn from other experts.
Contribute to the publication of GovStack relevant definitions (e.g. building blocks, DPI).
In India, the Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances (DARPG) under the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions has set-up an “E-Governance Division” that coordinates and supports the implementation of National eGovernance Plan (NeGP) and Digital India programs owned by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).
The core areas targeted to be addressed as part of training needs in MeTP are as follows
Type-1 : Basic ICT Skills for Office work (office productivity applications, internet, email etc.)
Type-2: eGovernance related knowledge and skills (These include topics such as eGovernance life cycle, Government Process Reengineering, Business Models, Public Private Partnerships, Regulatory Frameworks, Information Technology Act, Contract Management, Detailed Project Report (DPR), Request for Proposal (RFP), and Change Management.)
Type-3: Domain/Sector/Mission Mode Project specific (for example, Agriculture, Banking)
Type-5: Specialized professional skills (Project Management, IT Security, IT Audit etc.)
The primary objectives of the training are as follows
The delivery models included are:
Seminar/workshop, Instructor Led Training (ILT), Virtual Classroom (VC), e-Learning, Blended mode of learning.
Subsequently, the National eGovernance Division (NeGD) under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), has extensively conducted a research with various key stakeholders and has developed “eGovernance Competency Framework (eGCF) for Digital India with Implementation Toolkit” in the year 2014. This is a crucial document for conducting all the eGovernance Capacity Building initiatives for the civil servants of federal/state/union territory ministries/departments in India.
Singapore is committed to becoming a world leader in digitalization. Capitalizing on the huge potential opened up by technology, Singapore is putting forward an overarching Smart Nation vision that is based on three pillars: Digital Government, Digital Economy, and Digital Society. Taken together, these three pillars are responsible for effecting significant shits across all sectors and policy areas.
Capacity Building in Singapore
Singapore observes that there are three ways to address the capacity building needs of citizens, civil servants and leaders and professionals, whose details are listed described below.
The Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI), Government of Singapore has a set of portfolios to drive the digital transformation. One such is “Digital Readiness” with four strategic outcomes (a) Digital access (b) Digital Literacy (c) Digital participation and (d) Digital inclusion by design. In regard to “Digital Literacy”, the “Digital Readiness (MCI n.d.)" blueprint recommends the following.
Identify a set of basic digital skills for everyday activities to spur the take-up of digital technology, especially among the less digitally savvy.
Strengthen focus on information and media literacy, to build resilience in an era of online falsehoods.
Ensure that our children and youth grow up to form meaningful relationships with people around them and use technology to benefit their communities.
B. Civil Servants
The Digital Government Blueprint recommends raising digital capabilities to pursue innovation so that the government is able to “think fast, start small and act fast” to seize new opportunities. The Government has been deepening its technical capabilities through a Centre of Excellence (or CentEx) for ICT and Smart Systems, where specialist engineering expertise will be grown to support the WOG. The CentEx will house capability centers such as Data Science and AI, ICT Infrastructure, Application Development, Sensors and IoT, Cybersecurity, and Geospatial. The CentEx may expand into new technology capability areas as the need arises – for example, in robotics, VR/AR, digital twins or blockchain.
The CentEx will support the development of ICT skills and leadership for WOG through:
Building an in-house reserve of deep technical skills in areas where internal capabilities are needed to deal with highly complex issues on short notice.
Raising capabilities of ICT practitioners and leaders across the WOG; and
Equipping public officers with relevant broad-based ICT skills (e.g. basic awareness of data analytics).
C. Leaders and officials
In Singapore, the Institute of Systems Science at National University of Singapore (NUS-ISS) plays a pivotal role in building the capacities of digital leaders and professionals. NUS-ISS has been appointed as The Digital Academy (TDA) operations partner, established by The Government Technology Agency (GovTech Singapore) for Whole Of Government (WOG). As Operations Partner of The Digital Academy, NUS-ISS is partnering GovTech in developing training roadmaps and managing the enrolment, logistics, publicity and training processes.
The NUS-ISS offers a wide range of programs to build the capacities. They are broadly categorized as follows.
Executive Education: AI, Cyber Security, Data Science, Digital Agility, Digital Innovation & Design, Digital Strategy and Leadership, Digital products and platforms, Smart Health leadership, Software systems, Stackup-Startup Tech Talent Development
Graduate Programs: Systems Analysis, Enterprise Business Analytics, Digital Leadership, Intelligent Systems, Software engineering
eGovernment Leadership Center: Digital Government Transformation, Smart Nation, Public Sector Innovation, Citizen engagement
Communities of practice (Australia Government n.d.) are groups of people working in the same field in government. They bring those people together to share ideas, show their work, solve problems and explore best practice. These include:
Apart from the above CoP's, the Australian Government has established the Digital Profession center (Australian Government n.d.) as part of the Australian Government with the aim to lift the digital capability of the Australian Public Service (APS) to transform government services and build a government fit for the digital age.
The UK as part of their Government Digital Service (gov.uk) has created a set of service manuals and several communities of practice. One of these manuals is a handbook for people developing communities of practice in government - Community Development Handbook (GOV.UK 2017).
TheUK government states thatCommunities of practice are for people who share common job roles, responsibilities or remits. They do well through regular interaction and common goals.
The communities of Practice that the UK government has established CoPs that include:
Excellence center and community driven interaction and knowledge sharing
Excellence center, as an umbrella, is a shared facility or an entity that should provide leadership, best practices, research, support and/or training for a focus area to support GovStack approach.
Apart from the CoPs, the academia has been involved by involving universities such as TalTech and Mexico university on board with different research topics in Masters' and doctoral levels. This research gives valuable feedback not only for ongoing projects, but also helps to set a roadmap for future development.
To complement the practical and theoretical view within knowledge sharing, technical support is also needed. GovStack Tech Community consists of:
Building Block Working Groups (BB WG)
Technical & Operations Group
Technical Committee
This ecosystem also contributes in policy making level by giving valuable insights for the further development of the strategic and policy making standards and documents in terms of digital service design and transformation.
