UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) Feed Items

By Sarosh Nagar and David Eaves

Interest in artificial intelligence (AI) is perhaps one of the few things growing more quickly than the size of new AI models from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. Central to this boom is “compute” — the processing power, memory, and resources needed to perform the computations underlying AI systems. The world’s compute is mostly concentrated within three American giants — Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, while in China, Tencent and Alibaba are formidable players.

By Ruth Puttick

The Public Sector Capabilities Index explores if and how dynamic capabilities can be measured in a city government context. While the concept of dynamic capabilities has some history in private organizations, it is relatively nascent in the public sector, particularly at the urban level. Consequently, few individuals within city governments are familiar with the concept of dynamic capabilities. This unfamiliarity presents a dual challenge: it complicates the identification and measurement of dynamic capabilities in city government and makes it difficult to translate these findings into actionable insights for officials and practitioners.

The Problem

We know that some public sector activities are difficult to measure, or as Mintzberg put it:

By Ruth Puttick and Fernando Monge

The Public Sector Capabilities Index is focused on identifying where city governments are strong and where certain capabilities need to be built up. Although it has a city government focus, we are keen to learn from parallel sectors and historical examples. Following our recent interview with Shaun Hazeldine, Head of the IFRC Solferino Academy, in this blog we explore lessons from its work to enable humanitarians to find creative solutions to complex challenges.

The Solferino Academy is the “Think and Do Tank” that supports the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). Specializing in Innovation, Leadership and Strategic Foresight, the Solferino Academy supports the IFRC’s network of National Societies “to transform and be fit for the challenges and opportunities of the future”.

By David Eaves, Krisstina Rao and Kassim Vera

Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) is an emerging term that describes a number of foundational capabilities that enable individuals to participate in society and markets as a citizen, entrepreneur, and consumer in a digital era. At the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP), we define DPI as including digital payment systems, digital ID, and data exchange system(s) (DES). Each component plays a distinct role: digital payment systems facilitate financial transactions, digital IDs verify personal identity, and data exchange systems manage the secure flow of information across multiple platforms.

By David Eaves

A central dilemma for anyone interested in government is the dual nature of the state. On the one hand, the state can be a powerful force for good — harnessing and collectivising resources to create, or enforcing rules and norms that support, public goods. In this role, states have created miraculous outcomes — sewage systems, public health and education, courts… public goods that have radically improved people’s lives. On the other hand, the same Leviathan-like power that can make the state critical to creating public value also make it terrifying. The world is sadly filled with examples of states power used to displace, punish and terrorize marginalized communities, pursue wars of aggression, or simply eliminate dissent.

By Ruth Puttick

The UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) and Bloomberg Philanthropies are developing a Public Sector Capabilities Index. The aspiration is to measure where city government capabilities are strong and where skills must be built up. It will focus on city governments, but as part of its development, we are keen to learn from parallel sectors and historical attempts at capability building. This blog explores the public sector reforms and restructuring of government carried out by New Labour in the UK.

What happened?

Civil service reform was a core component of “New Labour” during Tony Blair’s leadership from 1997 to 2007. During this time there were various initiatives, including the 1999 Modernising Government white paper, which aspired to create a ‘joined up’ government and ‘learning labs’ to promote public service innovation.

By Nora Clinton, Head of the Mission-Oriented Innovation Network (MOIN), Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP)

At IIPP’s 2024 Rethinking the State Forum in June, many of our external guests from policy and academia commented on the dynamism of the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose and its deep commitment to putting public value, how it is imagined and practiced, at the center of government and democratic discourse.

This dynamism emanates naturally from our highly committed researchers and academics; but increasingly it is IIPP students in our Masters in Public Administration (MPA) in Innovation, Public Policy and Public Value who are outstanding in their work.

Developing a Public Sector Capabilities Index: Lessons from Bogotá, Barcelona, Freetown, Seattle and Seoul

By Rainer Kattel, Ruth Puttick, Mariana Mazzucato, Anna Goulden, Iacopo Gronchi, Fernando Monge, Mia Tarp, Kwame Baafi, Bec Chau, Anjum Dhamija, and Manuel De Feria

By David Eaves and Krisstina Rao

Last month (June of 2024), we launched the DPI Map — the first comprehensive view of the state of digital identity, digital payments and data exchanges across the world.

This work started — in part — because there was little understanding of how many countries had adopted Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) around the world. Given the growing interest by policymakers, multilateral funders, public officials and public interests advocates, we hypothesized that a “map” of DPI could help create a baseline understanding of what is happening, and more importantly, help serve as a foundation for both future research and community on this topic.

And while early successes suggest that that hypothesis has been validated we’ve been so busy with outreach that we’ve not had much chance to share any emerging insights from the initial DPI map we’ve published. This blog post seeks to change that!

Caveats

Before we begin sharing the exciting insights we’ve gleaned so far, there are two important pieces of information to share.

By Krisstina Rao and Michael Chapman

The G20 Digital Economy Working Group and New Delhi declaration have drawn significant attention to the concept of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and made it a critical topic of discussion in international fora. Here at University College London’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP), David Eaves and Jordan Sandman defined DPI as a set of digital capabilities that are essential for participation in modern society. Prominent examples of DPI include the Central Bank of Brazil’s Pix (instant payments), India’s Aadhaar (digital ID), and the Estonia-led X-Road (data exchange layer). Others, such as the UNDP, have adopted similar or even broader definitions, often grounded in Brett Frischmann’s view of infrastructure as a “shared means to many ends.”