Does Unified Experiences in Public Service Delivery mean Building Seamless Services or Creating Digital Monopolies?
Above: Aliasgher Janmohammed from Open Cities Lab, Madam Mary Kerema from Kenya's Ministry of ICT, David Lemayian from Tenery Research (Moderator), Sreeram Ananthasayanam from Deloitte India Consulting, and CIPIT researcher Josephine Kaaniru during the "Designing Unified Experiences of Public Service Delivery" panel at eGov Dialogues 2025.
Picture this: A citizen needs to register a new business. In the traditional model, they navigate a bureaucratic maze—visiting the registrar of companies, the tax authority, the local government office, and perhaps half a dozen other agencies. Each has its own forms, its own systems, its own timelines. The citizen becomes a human API, shuttling information between disconnected government silos.
The promise of unified government experiences is to collapse this maze into a single, seamless journey. One portal, one identity, one streamlined process. It's a vision that governments worldwide are racing to realize, from Estonia's pioneering e-governance system to India's ambitious digital public infrastructure.
But hidden within this noble goal lies a paradox that emerged as a central tension during a recent panel at eGov Dialogues 2025 in Nairobi: How do you build truly unified experiences without creating digital monopolies that stifle innovation and lock governments into rigid, expensive systems?
The Seductive Appeal of the Single Solution
When governments start off on digital transformation, the path of least resistance often leads to a single, comprehensive platform—usually built by one major vendor or consortium. The logic is compelling: one vendor means one point of accountability, integrated systems by design, and simplified procurement.
Kenya's ICT Secretary Mary Kerema articulated the vision beautifully during the panel: unified experiences that see "government services through the eyes of citizens, not through the lens of departmental silos." It's hard to argue with this citizen-centric approach.
Yet, as CIPIT researcher Josephine Kaaniru pointedly asked: "Unified for whom?" Her question cuts to the heart of the paradox. When one or two vendors dominate government digital infrastructure, several risks emerge:
- Innovation Stagnation: Monopolistic vendors have little incentive to innovate once they've secured long-term contracts
- Escalating Costs: Without competition, pricing power shifts entirely to the vendor
- Technical Debt: Governments become locked into aging technologies as migration costs soar
- Limited Local Capacity: Local tech ecosystems struggle to participate, stunting domestic digital industry growth
For example, a NetChoice study revealed Microsoft and Oracle received 25-30% of government sales through less than fully competitive procurements, with potential savings of $500-750 million annually through just 5% increased competition. In the same report, it was noted that the US Department of Agriculture paid $112 million more for Microsoft Office than Google Workspace solely to avoid perceived switching costs, and the Department of Veterans Affairs spent $1.6 billion to Microsoft without meaningful competition, described as "capitulation to Microsoft's dominance."
According to research, there are six primary restrictive practices create vendor dependency: license repurchase requirements for cloud deployment, cross-cloud surcharges, excessive migration fees, inflexible support fees, predatory audits, and deliberate lock-in promotion. These combine with proprietary data formats, API dependencies, and integration complexity to create technical barriers to switching.
The Open Architecture Alternative
The alternative—and the path advocated by several panelists—is to build unified experiences on open, modular architectures. Think of it as constructing a digital lego system rather than a monolithic fortress.
Aliasgher Janmohammed from Open Cities Lab emphasized the importance of governments creating platforms that allow "other systems developers to build on top of the services that exist." This approach treats government digital infrastructure as a foundation rather than a finished product.
The benefits of this approach include:
- Competitive Innovation: Multiple vendors can compete to provide specific services
- Flexibility: Governments can swap out components as better solutions emerge
- Cost Control: Competition keeps pricing in check
- Local Participation: Smaller, local firms can contribute specialized solutions
Research consistently demonstrates that open architecture approaches provide superior scalability, flexibility, and innovation capacity essential for modern digital government transformation, despite higher initial complexity.
The Implementation Challenge
However, building truly open, unified systems is far more complex than commissioning a single platform. It requires:
1. Strong Technical Leadership: Governments need skilled architects who can design coherent systems from modular components. This is a rare expertise, especially in public sector contexts.
2. Robust Standards and Protocols: Without clear API standards, data formats, and integration protocols, "open" systems devolve into chaos. Estonia's X-Road system succeeded precisely because of its rigorous standardization.
3. Governance Frameworks: Open systems need clear rules about data ownership, privacy, and interoperability. Who decides when a component needs updating? How are disputes between vendors resolved?
4. Political Will: The open approach often takes longer and appears messier in the short term. Politicians seeking quick wins may prefer the simplicity of a single-vendor solution.
The EU Digital Markets Act establishes ex-ante regulations for gatekeeper platforms, requiring interoperability, data portability, and non-discrimination with fines up to 10% of global turnover. Similarly, the Australian ACCC Digital Platform Services Inquiry proposes service-specific mandatory codes for designated platforms.
Learning from Global Examples
Several countries offer instructive examples of what happens when governments successfully navigate this paradox:
India's IndiaStack represents the world's most comprehensive digital public infrastructure, serving 1.35+ billion people through open APIs that have fundamentally transformed India's digital economy. The architecture operates through four technological layers: presenceless identity (Aadhaar), paperless documentation, cashless payments (UPI), and consent-based data sharing.
The system achieved remarkable financial inclusion, increasing bank account ownership from 35% to 80% in six years - originally projected to take 46 years. UPI transactions grew at 129% CAGR from 92 crores to 13,116 crores annually, while reducing KYC costs from $23 to $0.15 per verification.
IndiaStack catalyzed India's fintech ecosystem with 87% adoption rate (versus 64% global average), creating a $1.3 trillion market opportunity by 2025 (Ibef). The platform enabled $322 billion in G2P transfers with $27 billion in savings through reduced subsidy leakages.
Estonia's X-Road is considered the world's most successful decentralized government data exchange platform, serving as a global benchmark for secure government interoperability. The system processes over 3,000 digital services across 450+ organizations, saving citizens 1,345+ years annually through automation.
The UK's Government Digital Service pioneered the "government as a platform" approach, creating reusable components that multiple departments could leverage while maintaining their autonomy. They created unified experiences while avoiding single-vendor dependency through shared components available to all departments.
Key Principles to Take Away
So what is in the pudding? The panel discussion at eGov Dialogues suggested several principles to keep governments on the right path:
1. Start with Standards, Not Systems: Before building anything, establish clear standards for data exchange, APIs, and user experience. These become the rails on which everything else runs. These don't have to be revolutionary but should be consistent and interoperable.
2. Mandate Openness from Day One: Procurement contracts should require open APIs, data portability, and clear documentation. Vendors should compete on implementation quality, not lock-in potential.
3. Invest in Government Technical Capacity and Infrastructure: Governments need internal expertise to act as intelligent customers and system architects, and robust knowledge management systems and digital infrastructure that supports learning and sovereignty.
4. Create Innovation Sandboxes and Hackathons: Allow controlled spaces where new vendors and solutions can be tested without disrupting core services. This lowers barriers to entry for innovative solutions. Coupled with this, governments should also encourage local tech ecosystems to thrive by providing engagement touchpoints and opportunities for collaboration.
5. Plan for Migration: Build exit strategies into every component from the beginning. The question isn't whether you'll need to migrate, but when.
Top-performing countries (Denmark, Estonia, Singapore) demonstrate success through comprehensive public sector reforms, citizen-centric design approaches, and strong cybersecurity integration. Key success factors include strong leadership with clear digital strategy, user-centered design focus, agile implementation, cross-agency collaboration, and sustained investment in digital skills.
The Ultimate Test: Citizen Experience
Ultimately, the success of any approach must be measured by citizen experience. A perfectly open architecture that delivers a fragmented user experience fails just as surely as a monopolistic system that stifles innovation.
The key insight from the eGov Dialogues discussion is that unified experiences and open architectures aren't opposing goals—they're complementary requirements for sustainable digital governance. The challenge lies not in choosing between them but in achieving both simultaneously.
As governments worldwide grapple with digital transformation, the lessons from this paradox become increasingly critical. The decisions made today about architecture, vendors, and standards will shape public service delivery for decades to come.
The question isn't whether to build unified experiences—citizens clearly deserve better than bureaucratic mazes. The question is how to build them in ways that remain innovative, inclusive, and adaptable to the needs of future generations.
In the end, perhaps the most unified experience is one that citizens don't even notice—where government services work so seamlessly that they fade into the background of daily life. Achieving that invisibility, paradoxically, requires very visible and deliberate choices about openness, standards, and architectural design today.
This piece was inspired by discussions at eGov Dialogues 2025, particularly the session "Designing Unified Experiences of Public Service Delivery" moderated by David Lemayian of Tenery Research. Watch the full panel discussion here.
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