Ask Once

“It’s time to start asking what your country can do for you.” That was the punchline of Senator Ed Markey’s campaign ad reframing the words of his opponent’s great uncle, President John F. Kennedy.

The “Ask Once” policy of digital government centers on the idea that to access services, a citizen should only have to give their information one time. This allows citizens to efficiently connect to hundreds of government services without navigating a litany of siloed government bureaucracies. It saves residents countless hours of time while also saving the government money through efficiently streamlining services.

Estonia leads the world in advancing an “Ask Once” policy and other nations like the UK are trying to catch up. Is it time for the United States government to “Ask Once” what our country can do for us?

In Estonia, the government democratized public information by creating an online platform housing data registries called “X-Road.” This platform provides the foundation of government information depositories that allow data sharing across different government services. Citizens use a unique electronic identification to login into the government website to access their own information and connect to 800 services. This program has been a success with X-Road experiencing over one million requests a day and 500 million transactions a year (1).

However, Estonia’s political climate and history does not mirror the US. The country’s split from the USSR in the 1990’s allowed them to build fresh without having to reform old legacy systems. The country is small and has just over one million people allowing for significantly greater homogeneity compared to the US’s current fractured political and social landscape.

In the US, distrust in government is at an all-time high and Republican Party membership has actively tried to prevent citizens from attaining basic government services like voter registration or healthcare. If citizen information were housed on one platform, whoever controls the platform and its servers could control citizen access and, potentially, restrict connection to services.

Russia continues to attack US government systems and the belated and haphazard response to intervention in US elections does not instill confidence that the federal government is ready to implement government as a digital platform. The deficit of government trust and the risks of political actors inside the government undermining the system, make it unlikely that the United States is ready to move its government to an “Ask Once” policy. However, the United States has fifty incubators of innovation. As home to one of the largest technology and entrepreneurship hubs in the world, Massachusetts is positioned to implement a government as a platform strategy.

The state is in desperate need of a more efficient policy as citizens waste innumerable time standing in line, listening on the phone, or waiting for a government document to arrive in the mail. A bureaucracy of siloed databases and files means that you have to register your car with one agency but your boat with another, and your business with yet another. If you fall on hard times, you have to access unemployment at one agency but healthcare at another and housing at yet another. This system causes more headaches and time wasted for those who can least afford it.

Compared to the United States, Massachusetts’ political and social structure is relatively harmonious. Trust in state government is significantly higher and citizens overwhelmingly support science and innovation. Like with citizen-focused policies on healthcare, gay marriage, and climate action, Massachusetts can again lead the nation; this time by building a digital government around citizens’ needs. If Massachusetts succeeds, it will be a beta test for the nation and, as proven in the past, the nation will follow Massachusetts’ lead.

(1) Margetts and Naumann, What can Estonia show the world? (2017)