Platformland #14

Algos vs democracy, petitions, platform governance, ID*3, a farmers markets api

Platform news

• 🇮🇳 The deletion of voter data from Indian electoral registers (as part of a data cleansing effort) has led to calls for the code used to be released. It’s a nice example of why code auditing could become important in maintaining trust in digital registers/platforms. The code was written by India’s central Electoral Commission, and then used by (independent) regional Electoral Registration Officers. Software can break the central vs local governance dichotomy in interesting ways.

• 🇬🇧 A digital petition to cancel the Brexit process and remain in the EU has become the worlds most supported government digital petition. The petition service is shared by central government departments and the UK parliament (so, arguably, counts as a platform). Asside: one day, could it allow for petitions from local/devolved government too? (via @yahoopete) 

• 🇺🇸 The US General Services Administration is exploring the possibility of handing maintenance of cloud.gov to an external contractor. Questions raised by out-sourcing of platforms like this: Should product management remain central? At what point in the lifecycle is appropriate to talk in terms of ‘maintenance’?; Will any new code also be open?