The Economics of Shared Digital Infrastructures Authored by David Eaves, Diane Coyle, Beatriz Vasconcellos, and Sumedha Deshmukh

Have you seen www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/pub... and www.imf.org/en/publicati...

We have more still coming.

I’m dying.

Probably the Canadian metaphor is how we have higher interprovincial tariffs than we collectively have with the US. And even in the midst of an existential crises we can’t get rid of them.

A little less of an everyday example.

A UK metaphor hides in that story that’d be great in a book on public services.

There is something depressingly hilarious about all the stalls & reps hawking Heathrow Express tickets before you even clear customs(!) hoodwinking people into buying a £30 ticket before they get to a train platform _it shares with the Elizabeth line_ which is not much slower and 1/3 the cost.

🆕 Launching IIPP's Digital Case Studies: The Story Behind UK Notify

Join IIPP's @eaves.ca, Mike Bracken, @jordynfetter.bsky.social, and Kassim Vera for a virtual session on UK Notify as a key example of digital public infrastructure in practice.

🔗 Register here: buff.ly/M4Kpk5x

🆕 Launching IIPP's Digital Case Studies: The Story Behind UK Notify

Join IIPP's @eaves.ca, Mike Bracken, @jordynfetter.bsky.social, and Kassim Vera for a virtual session on UK Notify as a key example of digital public infrastructure in practice.

🔗 Register here: buff.ly/TCk6WHZ

Patch em if you got em.

BSB -> LIS -> LHR
Wonderful couple of days with some dedicated public servants in Brasilia and civil society members in São Paulo.

Laughing at this bad on my flight home. Me too!

Warning: Apple TV is really unusable when trying to watch or manage downloaded content.

The AI Agents are Here: A Technical Blueprint for Governments AI agents are reshaping how systems operate across sectors. This piece argues that the imminent challenge to address is autonomy, including how agents act, interact, and scale in open environments. It...

As Sarosh Nagar and @eaves.ca of @iipp-ucl.bsky.social + @ucl.ac.uk describe, AI agents are already acting autonomously and interacting in open environments.

How to govern that well? Trust infrastructure, multi-agent coordination, and public sector capacity.

👾 rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/ai-agen...

✍️ Governments need to build the capacity to become digital market shapers

IIPP Co-Deputy Director @eaves.ca outlines how governments can shape the digital cloud market, drawing on historical examples in his recent article for @techpolicypress.bsky.social.

🔗 Read more here: buff.ly/qt5rz60

CSG Expands Support for States as New Home of Intergovernmental Software Collaborative - The Council of State Governments A national, multi-state software collaborative addressing shared government policy and operational challenges is joining CSG under its National Center for Interstate Compacts (NCIC), transitioning fro...

I'm delighted to announce that the State Software Collaborative, that Robin Carnahan and I started in 2020, is growing up and leaving its @beeckcenter.bsky.social nest— @csgovts.bsky.social is taking it on as a major new initiative, building and supporting shared intergovernmental software.

Big congrats on this to all involved!

✍️ Digital ID, payments, and data exchange should be treated as public infrastructure, not siloed IT projects.

@eaves.ca, @dianecoyle1859.bsky.social, and Beatriz Vasconcellos argue governments must build shared digital foundations to avoid fragmentation.

🔗 Read their new article: buff.ly/bo9FpiL

✍️ Digital ID, payments, and data exchange should be treated as public infrastructure, not siloed IT projects.

@eaves.ca, @dianecoyle1859.bsky.social, and Beatriz Vasconcellos argue governments must build shared digital foundations to avoid fragmentation.

🔗 Read their new article: buff.ly/bo9FpiL

Four solid takes on it, in a tasty bite sized form factor.

🆕 Governments need to build the capacity to become digital market shapers

In his recent @techpolicypress.bsky.social article, IIPP Co-Deputy Director @eaves.ca outlines how governments can shape the digital cloud market, drawing on historical examples.

🔗 Read more here: buff.ly/HRCM8Yt

Gemini in gmail - just to search, find trends, is amazing.
Co-pilot in outlook is the opposite. A comparatively hostile experience.
The contrast is stunning. All my email in outlook feels “trapped”.
To be fair to MS mail.app is a vacuum. Search doesn’t exist. Even its non ai search is a disaster.

@mzjacobson.bsky.social has anyone attempted to do a chart like this for any other states? Would be curious what it looks like for a high performing red state with a different policy mix.

BLR -> BOM -> LHR
Great week with friends and colleagues old and new.

Uhhhh. Nothing? I believe our metaverse avatars got legs…

YouTube Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

Was a delight to be interviewed by Taki Sarantakis for the Canadian School of the Public Service on digital government, services & sovereignty.

You can see it here:
youtu.be/OzNAe4geVlU?...

If you have only a few minutes FF to the 39th minute.

Whoops! That was weird. Worked in LinkedIn! Thank you!!!

Was a delight to be interviewed by Taki Sarantakis for the Canadian School of the Public Service on digital government, services & sovereignty.

You can see it here:
m.youtube.com/watch?v=OzNAe4…

It’s long. And gets better as we go. But if you have only a few minutes FF to the 39th minute.

18F blog archive Our blog as it existed before March 1, 2025, covering topics like acquisitions, data, engineering, how we worked, user research, security, and others.

Grateful to blog.18f.org for posting all their all files. I had linked to a piece or two in my syllabus and a student just noticed the old "official" links are all dead... but I've just nicely replaced them with this great archive!

Dr Kareem Carr man: i wish to publish @kareem_carr Jan 21 reviewer 2: your paper is no good man: i'll do anything to improve reviewer 2: it's simple. you must read the work of the great scientist Pagliarini man: *bursts into tears* but i am Pagliarini Andre Pagliarini @apagliar Jan 21 a first: in rejecting an article I submitted to a journal, reviewer 2 noted I failed to engage the work of one Andre Pagliarini Jan 21, 2026 • 3:47 PM UTC

I just thought everyone should see this

Building tomorrow's digital public infrastructure What is digital public infrastructure and what can the UK learn from global use cases?

Event | Building tomorrow's digital public infrastructure

@rwilkinson.bsky.social, @davidlawrenceuk.bsky.social and Jon Lloyd join @eaves.ca to discuss what the UK can learn from digitalization efforts around the world.

Date📅: 22 January
Time⌚️: 17:30

Find out more⤵️

Canada has what the world wants — and in this era of profound change, we’re a strong, reliable partner with ambition to build.

At the World Economic Forum, I met with business leaders from across sectors and nations who want to build with us.

I'm looking for someone who can clean up the group blog of which I'm part, Crooked Timber. All of the old hyperlinks have been borked so that <a href = URL>text</a> becomes "text":URL/. There's also a problem in the comments, where quote marks have been replaced by –