Office of Science and Technology Policy Blog

U.S.-U.K. Digital Government Partnership

Today, we are building on a long history of innovation and collaboration on digital technologies with the United Kingdom.  The President and Prime Minister Cameron just announced a commitment to strengthen and expand the ongoing digital partnership between our two countries.  Both countries have made real progress in working to improve how our governments use digital services to better serve citizens and businesses, and to build a stronger digital economy.  We will expand our already existing collaborations in these areas as well as continue to support open data and open government initiatives for our own countries as well as for all countries.

U.S.-U.K. innovation and collaboration on digital technology dates back to WWII, when both countries were in need of extraordinary amounts of mathematical computation capacity.  Teams from both countries did the seminal work that created modern digital computing.  Breakthrough work included the United Kingdom’s Bletchley Park code breakers, the ENIAC ballistics calculation advances in the United States, and many other groundbreaking programs in both countries. 

The U.S. and U.K. have also been ongoing innovators of open government and open data; from very early releases and collaborations on weather and mapping data to full data portals now hosted at the United Kingdom’s data.gov.uk, and data.gov in the United States, which host hundreds of thousands of government data sets released to the public.  And for decades, United States and United Kingdom innovators have been at the forefront of including children in learning computer coding – from early work at Dartmouth to MIT Media Lab’s Seymour Papert’s seminal work on Logo in the 1970s and 80s, to the UK’s BBC Micro from Acorn, a computer designed with an emphasis on education created during those same early years.

Each of us, personally, has our own digital history with the United Kingdom:

“This shared digital history is personally powerful to me because of my own connection to it: as a young student in England during the 1950's, my father fell in love with these new digital gizmos, learning to "program" them by changing out transistors and watching what would happen next.  He followed this passion to MIT and a graduate degree in electrical engineering ("computer science" hadn't been invented yet). The magic of those machines never left him - he went to work for IBM and then started a technology company headquartered in New York and London that he still runs today.” – Office of Management and Budget Director, Shaun Donovan

“I learned about the deep U.S.-U.K. digital history through many years of joining the Silicon Valley Comes to the U.K. events held in London each November.  This is an annual program to bring together the two country’s tech /entrepreneurship communities --- it was during a session at 10 Downing where I first learned of the U.K.’s Lady Ada Lovelace, who is often referred to as the world’s first programmer.  This started my personal work to uncover the lost history of technical women and minorities.  At another session, Dr. Sue Black first told me about Bletchley Park– the subject of the new film ‘The Imitation Game’ celebrating the work of WWII code breaking heroes including Alan Turing, Joan Clarke, and others.  Our chance meeting kicked off collaboration to help secure that museum’s future and further teamwork with Code.org and others on coding skills for youth and adults in both countries.” – U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith

The next stage of the U.S.-U.K. partnership will focus on three core efforts:

• First, transforming how government delivers digital services to better meet the needs of citizens.
• Second, continuing to lead on global open government efforts through the Open Government Partnership, which enhances government transparency and public access to government data.
• And finally, increasing our nation’s technological capabilities by training the next generation of digital experts and expanding the reach of high quality Internet access.

Both countries have already stepped up their efforts in this area, learning from each other’s best practices. In 2011, the United Kingdom created the Government Digital Service (GDS), a centralized group of digital experts who have vastly improved citizen experiences when using government digital services.  This team has worked to make public services digital by default, simpler, less costly, and faster to use. 

In the United States, we recently launched the U.S. Digital Service, a small group of highly skilled tech experts who are working with agencies to improve their citizen-facing digital services and hire their own embedded team of highly skilled digital service leaders.  In addition, GSA, the home of USA.gov, Data.gov and many other Federal websites, has built its own digital service team named 18F which is working with more than a dozen agencies to help them deliver on their missions digitally in a design-centric, agile, open, and data-driven way.

Together, our two countries can continue to be leaders in all of these arenas.  We look forward to further collaboration, which now also includes sharing code through the best-practice of open source.  Next up, Mikey Dickerson, and members of his U.S. Digital Service team, alongside other innovators across the U.S. government, will head to the United Kingdom in coming months to continue the teamwork with the U.K. GDS.  Meanwhile, it has been a pleasure to host the United Kingdom leadership and some of the digital team here in the United States this week.

Shaun Donovan is the Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Megan Smith is the U.S. Chief Technology Officer in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND

U.S.-U.K. DIGITAL GOVERNMENT PARTNERSHIP:

Advancing our Nations’ Digital Services and Building Strong Digital Economies

Today, President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron committed to continuing the decades-long collaboration between our two nations on advancing digital technologies.  This collaboration has already allowed our countries to make significant strides in upgrading government’s technology infrastructure and capacity to deliver services in order to build stronger digital economies.

As digital technologies reshape the global economy, countries will increasingly depend on the free flow of information and data, a high-quality digital infrastructure, and public servants with the skills to drive innovation and deliver critical services and benefits to citizens.  The United Kingdom and the United States have made a commitment over the last few years to increase the effectiveness of government digital service delivery, open up government data for public use, and increase public access to technology.  Today’s announcement builds on that partnership by:

• Transforming Government Digital Service Delivery:  Our governments interact every day with citizens and businesses, delivering services aimed at improving lives and strengthening our economies.  Both governments have developed digital service teams who seek to transform the way the government interacts with citizens and businesses.  Through the partnership we are forging, these teams will continue to work together to share best practices and tackle shared challenges.
• Advancing the Global Effort on Open Government: The United States and United Kingdom jointly founded the global Open Government Partnership, a group of 65 nations who are working to champion the values of open government and spread its benefits around the world.  We will jointly commit to build on the landmark agreement of G8 leaders to an Open Data Charter, promulgated under the UK G8 Presidency in 2013, and further promote these principles in other international forums.
• Increasing our Nations’ Tech Capability and Promoting the 21^st Century Citizen: The United States and United Kingdom are committed to expanding access to high quality internet for all of their citizens. We are also investing in training children and adults to code, a key skill which will allow them to understand the basics of programing which can help address real world problems.

The rich partnership between our nations on digital technologies dates back to World War II, when both countries were in need of extraordinary amounts of computation capacity.  Together, teams from both countries did the ground-breaking work that created modern digital computing.  In the coming months, we will agree to a Memorandum of Understanding to solidify this exciting opportunity and strengthen and enhance our longstanding partnership to transform the way governments deliver for our citizens.

BUILDING ON PAST PROGRESS

Digital Service Delivery

• The United Kingdom created the Government Digital Service (GDS), a centralized group of digital experts who have vastly improved citizen experiences when using government digital services. This team has worked to make public services digital by default, simpler, less costly, and faster to use.
• Last year, the United States launched the U.S. Digital Service, in many ways modeled on the GDS. This group is comprised of some of the country’s best and brightest tech talent and has worked with agencies like the Veterans Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services to improve the digital experience that American citizens and businesses have with their government. In addition 18F, a new delivery unit within General Services Administration (GSA), is working with more than a dozen agencies to help them deliver on their missions in a design-centric, agile, open, and data-driven way.
• The United Kingdom developed a comprehensive Digital Strategy which consists of 14 actions to fundamentally redesign digital services. These actions include building common technology platforms and making digital services the default for transactions with the government. This strategy, once fully implemented, will save taxpayers in the United Kingdom £2.7 billion per year. 
• The United States launched a comprehensive data-driven review of agency Information Technology (IT) portfolios to identify and eliminate duplicative systems and rein in wasteful IT spending. This effort, PortfolioStat, has led to over $2.2 billion in savings over the past three years. In addition to the adoption of new technologies and approaches such as cloud computing and agile development, PortfolioStat has helped agencies save taxpayer dollars and deliver greater value in IT.

Open Government/Open Data

• The United States has shown its commitment to open government by implementing an Open Data Policy, ensuring that data released by the government is accessible and useful to all. The Administration has released 138,470 data sets to date, and more are released every day. The United States is continuing to support this effort and identify data sets that will benefit the health care, energy, education, employment, public safety, tourism and agriculture sectors.
• The United Kingdom has created GOV.UK, a single location on the Internet for citizens to access all government information and services. This single site has replaced over 1,500 websites.
• Together, the United States and United Kingdom launched the Open Government Partnership in 2011. This global effort has grown to include 65 countries committed to making their governments more open, accountable, and responsive to citizens.  The United States and United Kingdom are world leaders on opening government data and will continue to expand this work.

Next Generation: Coding at School, Connectivity and Tech Entrepreneurship

• Last month, millions of U.S. and British students participated in Computer Science Education Week events that included a coding hour hosted by each leader where President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron tried coding to set examples and to encourage youth to join “Hour of Code” efforts.  To date, more than 40 million people from both countries have participated in this program. 
• These Computer Science Education Week events are held each year during the second week of December specifically timed to coincide with the birthdays of our two elite computer science pioneers: U.S Rear Admiral Grace Hopper on December 9 and the United Kingdom’s Lady Ada Lovelace on December 10.

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Success in Commercial Space Continues

On Saturday, we kicked off the New Year in a spectacular way. SpaceX launched its latest cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS), the first American commercial flight to the ISS in 2015. This morning, the Dragon capsule arrived at the orbiting laboratory with more than two tons of supplies and science investigations for the crew in orbit. Our investment in commercial space is bringing tangible benefits to the American people and enables NASA to focus on future missions to deep space – to asteroids and Mars.

The Dragon capsule from the fifth SpaceX commercial resupply mission flies in space. (Credit: NASA/Kennedy Space Center)

Thanks to SpaceX and Orbital Sciences – our two commercial cargo partners – we’ve returned Space Station resupply launches to U.S. soil. We’re now poised to do the same with the transport of our astronauts to the space station by SpaceX and The Boeing Company in the coming years – targeting 2017 as the inaugural year for commercial crew missions.

Today’s arrival of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft not only