Government as a Platform in Practice: Commonalities and Differences Across Three European Countries

Abstract

Government as a Platform (GaaP) promises better and more efficient public services. More and more countries are applying the approach to eGovernment development. However, there is scant empirical evidence on how to properly implement GaaP in practice. In particular, most of the literature focusses on the adoption in individual countries. We address this gap by investigating and systematically comparing three countries with successful GaaP implementations. By means of expert interviews and analysis of public documents we are able to extract four commonalities and three differences. We discuss our results as lessons learnt. We further contribute to theory and practice by enhancing the knowledge on GaaP approaches, providing a first basis for guidelines toward GaaP.