<h2>The story so far...</h2><p>In our series on open ecosystems, so far we have <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://platformable.com/measuring-the-value-of-open-ecosystems/">defined what we mean by "open ecosystems"</a>. We have <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://platformable.com/measuring-the-value-of-open-ecosystems-2/">described how APIs are the central unit enabling open ecosystems to operate effectively and at scale.</a> Now we are discussing the types of relationships that stakeholders can foster with others in an open ecosystem. In our final part, we will discuss why mapping ecosystems and measuring the value generated in open ecosystems is so important.</p><h2>Relationship activity types</h2><p>In open ecosystems, we also talk about five relationship activity types:</p><ul><li>Co-create</li><li>Collaborate</li><li>Complement</li><li>Compete</li><li>Coordinate.</li></ul><h3>Co-create</h3><figure class="image image_resized image-style-align-center" style="width:15.36%;"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/platform1/image/upload/v1616597456/co_create_b1fe865a98.png"></figure><p>&nbsp;</p><p><strong>Definition:</strong> The use of data, open APIs, and other digital components that allow consumers to build their own value.</p><p><strong>Examples:</strong></p><ul><li>In open banking, large enterprises may use a bank’s APIs directly in their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to automate foreign exchange rates in real-time.</li><li>Any business can use <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://platformable.com/blog/measuring-the-value-of-open-ecosystems-3-types-of-relationships/clearbit.com">Clearbit’</a>s business APIs and integrate data directly into their spreadsheets.</li></ul><h3>Collaborate</h3><p>&nbsp;</p><figure class="image image-style-align-center"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/platform1/image/upload/v1618996323/Thumbnail_collaborate_ver2_808a60d036.png"></figure><p>&nbsp;</p><p><strong>Definition:</strong> When two or more entities identify a customer experience or product that they can deliver together, utilizing their respective core competencies. When this joint venture approach works most effectively, the value from the resulting solution is greater than the sum of its parts. The organizations involved form a symbiotic relationship: the offering creates a mutual dependency, but also offers mutual benefit.</p><p><strong>Examples:</strong></p><ul><li>Our look at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://platformable.com/blog/an-api-framework-for-digital-government-in-the-age-of-covid-19/">how governments and industry can work together in complex areas like responding to COVID-19</a> highlights &nbsp;one collaboration project where health insurance providers, healthcare, alternative healthcare, rideshare services, data analytics companies, and social services could work together to build a COVID rapid response solution,</li></ul><h3>Complement</h3><figure class="image image-style-align-center"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/platform1/image/upload/v1618996326/Thumbnail_complement_1_e631b1aea7.png"></figure><p>&nbsp;</p><p><strong>Definition:</strong> When APIs are used to create additional value to a customer or user base.</p><p><strong>Examples:</strong></p><ul><li>CRM software <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://integrations.salesflare.com/">Salesflare</a> uses an integration marketplace to make APIs available from other Software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers directly to their product. This lets end users link their software and data flows together to increase the value their get from their SaaS tools.</li></ul><h3>Compete</h3><figure class="image image-style-align-center"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/platform1/image/upload/v1618996323/Thumbnail_compete_ver2_d1f358c947.png"></figure><p>&nbsp;</p><p><strong>Definition:</strong> When stakeholders directly compete with each other, for example, by offering APIs with the same functionalities to API consumers, or when two or more API consumers build products with similar value propositions for use by end customers.</p><p><strong>Examples:</strong></p><ul><li>In open finance, there are a range of payment APIs that can be used to integrate payments functionalities into websites and apps. Payments APIs compete against each other to be the one provider to digital businesses.</li></ul><h3>Coordinate</h3><figure class="image image-style-align-center"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/platform1/image/upload/v1618996324/Thumbnail_coordinate_1_19fc79328b.png"></figure><p>&nbsp;</p><p><strong>Definition:</strong> Some ecosystem stakeholders may participate in an open ecosystem from a regulatory, standards or data intermediary perspective. These stakeholders may ensure stakeholders are participating to agreed legislative and regulatory constraints, may participate in order to assist with setting common standards and data models, or may manage ‘sandboxes’ and other test environments that allow other stakeholders to share data or services within a constrained setting in order to test proof of concepts.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p><strong>Examples:</strong></p><ul><li>The Central Bank of Brazil has established regulatory sandboxes to allow fintech to begin experimenting with open banking APIs in a secure environment. Fintech can test their product use case ideas and demonstrate that they can manage customer information securely and safely under the eyes of the regulator before releasing their commercial products.</li><li>Standards bodies like HL7 for healthcare APIs, and OpenAPI Initiative for the OpenAPI Specification, facilitate industry-wide agreements on new features and approaches to common standards so that open ecosystems can grow effectively.</li><li>The Internet of Things standardised APIs and network, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.fiware.org/">FIWARE</a>, helps promote products and services built with their technologies, facilitates sectoral networking (for example, in agriculture or smart cities), and promotes products through their marketplace.</li></ul><h3>&nbsp;</h3><h3>Why not co-opetition?</h3><p>We haven’t used the term "co-opetition" as one of our five relationship activity types, as it is a way to describe the multiple relationships that may occur between stakeholders. Co-opetition occurs when open ecosystem stakeholders work together on some goals, and directly compete at other times. Our approach tries to break down those relationships so that we define which relationship is occurring at which time.</p><p>For example, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.programmableweb.com/news/uncle-sam-to-healthcare-it-voluntary-guidelines-open-apis-not-quite-so-voluntary/analysis/2016/10/10">many healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies may work collaboratively at times to agree on standards and data schemas</a> for health APIs and then compete at other times when using APIs (built on those standards) to build relationships with third parties and create their platforms.</p><p>We recently spoke with <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://platformable.com/p/a7f0c975-0d15-4fd8-94f8-e4dec6b47086/financialdataexchange.org">Financial Data Exchange</a>, an industry-led standards body in the US &amp; Canada that build open API standards for banking. They discussed how members may work collaboratively to agree on standards, and then how those members use those standards in their products to compete against each other directly.</p><p>The <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.openapis.org/">OpenAPI Initiative</a> invites participation from API tool makers who <strong>collaborate</strong> on the API specification standard roadmap. Some toolmakers focus on different parts of the API development lifecycle, so their products also <strong>complement</strong> each other and are intended to be used together. Other participants offer directly <strong>competing</strong> products that are built off the OAS standard that both stakeholders have been involved in defining.</p><p>So depending on which point in the value flow we are discussing, we would describe the relationship as collaborative or competitive. Overall, we would say that the open ecosystem enables "co-opetition".</p><h2>&nbsp;</h2><h2>Drawing on the evidence base</h2><p>The following articles and research papers were instrumental in creating this taxonomy of relationship activity types:</p><ul><li>Matt McLarty’s <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://blogs.mulesoft.com/api-integration/strategy/api-economy-patterns/">classification of co-creation value patterns</a> was especially useful</li><li>In their paper on the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0024630120302429">ecosystem blueprint</a>, while the terms suggested above are not used, Lingens, Miehé and Gassmann discuss the need for "multilateral" relationships in an ecosystem, and they describe the orchestration role (which we have called coordination here, to stick with our alliteration)</li><li>Ojala, Helander and Tyrväinen discuss power asymmetries in digital ecosystems (<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://library.oapen.org/viewer/web/viewer.html?file=/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/41747/2020_Book_MeasuringTheBusinessValueOfClo.pdfhttps://library.oapen.org/viewer/web/viewer.html?file=/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/41747/2020_Book_MeasuringTheBusinessValueOfClo.pdf?sequence=1&amp;isAllowed=y">Chapter 6</a> in the open science copy of <i>Measuring the Business Value of Cloud Computing)</i>. Their work - especially on the source of power &nbsp;in each focal relationship in a digital ecosystem - helped us organise the different categories of what we call 'relationship activity types'</li><li>Anik Shekhar Bal's work on <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/270319418.pdf">understanding value co-creation</a> was fundamental to our design. The researcher identifies 7 "modes of collaboration within the value co-creation process". These helped form the basis of our model, although our viewpoints are somewhat different. Anik Shekhar Bal's work combines theoretical models focused on creating products and services as well as communication approaches. We wanted to focus more on the relationship of existing businesses and how they use APIs to enhance the co-creation process. We also wanted to use an alliteration technique to describe the relationship types, as we will be referring to them repeatedly in our open ecosystem work, so it is easier for us to share stories and keep reflecting on the different approaches. While not an exact fit, 'Co-developing' aligns with collaborate, 'Co-designing' aligns with co-create, 'Co-ordination' aligns with complement, 'Compromise' aligns with compete, and 'Consultation', 'Negotiation' and 'Feedback' &nbsp;align with co-ordination, although these are also expected communication roles between ecosystem actors at any time as well.</li></ul><h3>&nbsp;</h3><h3>In summary</h3><p>This is the third post in our series explaining how we view open ecosystems and why our mission to map and measure the value they generate is so important. Posts in this series so far have covered:</p><ul><li><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://platformable.com/measuring-the-value-of-open-ecosystems/">Our definition of open ecosystems and how they differ from platforms and closed ecosystems</a></li><li><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://platformable.com/measuring-the-value-of-open-ecosystems-2/">Why APIs are the central unit in open ecosystems</a></li><li>The types of relationships that can occur between stakeholders (this post).</li></ul><p>In the final part in this series, we will discuss <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://platformable.com/measuring-the-value-of-open-ecosystems-4/">why it is important to measure the value that open ecosystems generate.</a></p><p>Following that, in our next series on open ecosystems, we will start sharing the data models and value flows we monitor in specific domain areas, including open banking/open finance, digital government, public health, and the circular economy.</p><p>We'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Please feel free to book a time with our team via our Calendly:</p>

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Open Ecosystems

Mark

Measuring the value of open ecosystems: 3. Relationships

<p><strong>Last updated:</strong> 5 February 2021</p><div class="raw-html-embed"><div id="textbox-yellow">
<strong>What it’s about:</strong> There are a range of techniques to measure the value of individual companies, but measuring the value of platform businesses and their wider ecosystems is fairly new. Measuring open ecosystems is even more challenging to do. There is little discussion as yet on the importance of measuring open ecosystems.<br><br>
<strong>Why it’s important:</strong> Measuring and mapping open ecosystems can make sure that as we move to new digital economies, value is distributed so that everyone can participate and co-create. 
</div></div><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Measuring open ecosystems is important for several reasons:</p><ul><li><strong>To guide regulation and oversight.</strong> We need to ensure that ecosystems do not create imbalances that redistribute power and restrict resources to a select few</li><li><strong>To help individual stakeholders identify how value flows.</strong> This will help identify where opportunities exist to build relationships, fill market gaps, and build new products and services in untapped areas</li><li><strong>To guide development of business models.</strong> It will be easier to understand revenue-sharing potential, indirect revenue opportunities, and to identify services that foster collaboration.</li><li><strong>To enable new networks and collaborative alliances to form.</strong> It will be essential to work together to respond to today’s most complex challenges in areas like COVID-19, the climate crisis, and redressing systemic inequities.</li></ul><figure class="image image-style-align-center"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/platform1/image/upload/v1618996326/regulation_and_oversight_ver2_5793081c73.png"></figure><h3>&nbsp;</h3><h3>Guide regulatory oversight</h3><p>Closed ecosystems occur when a business creates a platform model and maintains management of all stakeholder interactions by using partner or closed APIs or other platform tools. The big tech bodies (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Twitter, Alibaba, Tencent, and others) and many of the sharing platforms (Lyft, Airbnb, Upwork, and others) are closed or semi-closed ecosystems.</p><p>Evidence shows us that closed ecosystems tend to extract value from participants in unequal ways that favor the platform business owner (for example, in <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DcjiB3sJsdw2sdwmeyLY0gj_N1seBmiG/view">Sangeet Paul Choudary’s State of the Platform Revolution 2021</a>, and as discussed in multiple papers and insight briefs from the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://omidyar.com/">Omidyar Network</a>).</p><p>&nbsp;</p><div class="raw-html-embed"><blockquote class="blockquote1--lavender-blue"> 84% of S &amp; P 500 companies in 2018 drew their value from intangible assets i.e. data. The increasing centrality of data to businesses which use it to create efficiencies in their business, build new products, services, and explore new markets, is a cause of some concern for the free-market and competition in digital services. Data accumulation can create monopolies that prevent new competitors from entering the market, or succeed in ones where they are already present. This hurts the economy, and disempowers consumers, who may face lack of choice and, over time, higher prices. <span><a href="ttps://www.weforum.org/projects/business-of-data">WeForum</a></span> </blockquote> </div><p>The evidence from closed ecosystems shows that, if left to grow at their own pace, open ecosystems will eventually create market imbalances in which some stakeholders benefit at the expense of others, thus replicating the market imbalances inherent in closed ecosystem models. (n Platformable’s post on <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://platformable.com/blog/how-government-apis-can-address-structural-racism-and-inequality/">addressing structural racism and inequities with APIs</a>, we give the example of how an Open311 government system could inadvertently widen inequality, for example.)</p><p>We are all participants in key socio-economic domain areas, including open banking and open finance, digital government, public health, and the circular economy. For example, governments around the globe are mandating that banks open up their banking services as APIs in order to create new financial services ecosystems. But in the same way that banking should be available to all citizens and businesses, open banking services should also be accessible to all. As open ecosystems become the norm, our societies will need to measure the impact open ecosystem infrastructures are having on everyone.</p><p>Regulation, industry and community participation, and open discussion can help ensure that open ecosystems do not create inequitable opportunities for stakeholders. For community and market discussion to occur and for regulatory mechanisms to be identified and agreed upon, metrics are needed that measure the value being generated in open ecosystems. How that value is distributed amongst ecosystem participants also needs to be measured.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><figure class="image image-style-align-center"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/platform1/image/upload/v1618996326/Thumbnail_Mapping_value_flows_1_e720774f46.png"></figure><h3>&nbsp;</h3><h3>Identify opportunities</h3><p>The <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://thedataeconomylab.com/">Data Economy Lab</a> proposes new models of data stewardship to ensure that <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://thedataeconomylab.com/2020/06/24/data-stewardship-a-taxonomy/">open data ecosystems create value for all stakeholders</a>. This need is evident in open ecosystems that use APIs to expose data, services and large data pipelines via APIs. We have reworded the following quote to broaden its focus from open data ecosystems to open ecosystems more generally:</p><div class="raw-html-embed"><blockquote class="blockquote1--red-orange"> It is undeniable that there is a need to unlock the value of data and shared services by sharing, such that it is released from the monopolies of big technology companies, and used to empower individuals and address societal problems. It is, therefore, time to build systems and processes that allow for easy and safe digital asset sharing in ways that enable innovation without compromising individual rights and security and to derive public good. This balance of societal good, market innovation, and privacy is at the core of the questions on API and open ecosystem infrastructure governance, which needs to create sharing apparatuses that are equitable, accountable, and just. <span>Rephrasing Data Economy Lab's work on data ecosystems to extend to open ecosystems</span> </blockquote> </div><p>By mapping the value flows and stakeholders of open ecosystems it is possible to identify new relationship opportunities and natural partnerships.</p><p>In open banking, for example, it would be possible for a bank to use open ecosystem mapping to more easily identify fintech consumers of the bank’s APIs that are not in direct competition with a bank’s product range, but are complementary. This can help the bank prioritize partnerships with third party providers who could potentially offer new products and services to their existing customer base.</p><p>In digital government circles, government initiatives like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://api-agro.eu/en/">API-Agro</a> in France and <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.businessfinland.fi/en/for-finnish-customers/services/programs/developing-markets-platform">Business Finland</a> are investing in creating platform ecosystems where businesses expose and build with APIs, whether those produced by government or ones created by other ecosystem stakeholders.</p><p>By mapping open ecosystems and the value flowing between them, again it is possible to identify where partnerships could naturally occur. This can also be used by open source and open API standards stakeholders: they could more easily see what grouping of APIs or standards or technologies are used together by API consumers which may suggest partnership priorities.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><figure class="image image-style-align-center"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/platform1/image/upload/v1618996326/Thumbnail_Competition_0e7bbbb6b2.png"></figure><h3>&nbsp;</h3><h3>Develop new digital business models</h3><p>Open ecosystems may enable mechanisms for market competition including by fostering pricing and business models. But open ecosystems ensure there are also other mechanisms for participation available.</p><p>By mapping an open ecosystem and identifying the types of value that flow between stakeholders (co-create, collaborate, complement or compete) it is possible to brainstorm and identify the appropriate business models that could support and strengthen those relationships. It can also help ecosystem leaders to pursue their strategies with greater internal support. Banks can demonstrate that value is generated indirectly through collaborative partnerships in which external partners bring in new customers to the bank. Digital government leaders can demonstrate they are able to create more digital services for citizens at lower costs by allowing third parties to complement basic digital services with population-specific offerings. Health startups can compete in different areas or with greater dynamism with access to open shared services and data.</p><p>As <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://blogs.mulesoft.com/api-integration/strategy/what-is-an-api-ecosystem-strategy/">Adam Hart from MuleSoft writes</a>, mapping ecosystems “enables businesses to create and nurture value chains and create new, valuable digital experiences and processes that integrate the physical and virtual… New experiences and business models can emerge, the technicalities of mergers and acquisition cease to become risky and disruptive affairs, legacy system migrations are streamlined, outages and continuity handled in a less risky and disruptive manner.”</p><p>&nbsp;</p><figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/platform1/image/upload/v1618996326/Thumbnail_Collaboration_f8ecf60db1.png"></figure><h3>&nbsp;</h3><h3>Solve complex problems</h3><p>COVID-19 taught us that we will need to urgently seek new ways to share data in real-time, work with a wider range of stakeholders, and communicate with citizens and businesses remotely. APIs are the central unit that can support new models in which we can all collaborate and create the societies we need to manage pandemics, redistribute wealth and reduce inequality impacts, and adapt to the climate crisis. As we discussed in our post on <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://platformable.com/blog/an-api-framework-for-digital-government-in-the-age-of-covid-19/">government APIs in the age of COVID-19</a> at the start of 2020, open ecosystems are needed to enable partnership and new forms of collaboration to solve current global and local challenges.</p><p>Being able to measure open ecosystems, the relationships, and the assets available to solve these complex problems is already essential.</p><figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/platform1/image/upload/v1618996326/open_ecosystem_1_cb938f4e30.png"></figure><h2>Platformable’s open ecosystem focus</h2><p>At Platformable, we are currently mapping the value flows of open ecosystems in four key domain areas:</p><ul><li>Open Banking and Open Finance</li><li>Open Government</li><li>Open Health</li><li>Open Sustainability (Circular Economy.)</li></ul><p>While some of the components in open ecosystems are the same - such as the role of enablers like regulation, standards, security and developer experience - and there are common indirect beneficiaries (society, local economies and the environment), each domain area has a different policy context and different key stakeholders.</p><h3>In summary</h3><p>This is the final post in our series explaining how we view open ecosystems and why our mission to map and measure the value they generate is so important. Other posts in this series covered:</p><ul><li><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://platformable.com/blog/measuring-the-value-of-open-ecosystems/">Our definition of open ecosystems and how they differ from platforms and closed ecosystems</a></li><li><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://platformable.com/blog/measuring-the-value-of-open-ecosystems-2/">Why APIs are the central unit in open ecosystems</a></li><li><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://platformable.com/blog/measuring-the-value-of-open-ecosystems-3-types-of-relationships/">The types of relationships that can occur between stakeholders</a>.</li></ul><p>In our next series on open ecosystems, we will start sharing the data models and value flows we monitor in specific domain areas, including open banking/open finance, digital government, public health, and the circular economy.</p><p>In the meantime, we'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Please feel free to book a time with our team via our Calendly:</p><p><br>&nbsp;</p>

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Measuring the value of open ecosystems: 4. Why measure?

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<strong>Who should read this:</strong> Digital government team leaders, government API teams, users of government APIs<br><br>

<strong>What it’s about:</strong> Government API discoverability is the process of making sure all developers can easily find and understand what APIs are published and maintained by a government, in an accessible, equitable, and user-friendly manner. A new research project is being carried out to document current and best practices for Government API discoverability.<br><br>

<strong>Why it’s important:</strong> Understanding and sharing best practices will help governments publish their APIs to allow others to discover, access and use them in ways that create value and drive digital economies. This research needs the input of digital government and government API teams, as well as from developers wanting to use government APIs in their work.<br><br>

<strong>Special note:</strong> The views expressed in this article represent the project researchers from Platformable. This research is partly funded by the European Commission, ISA2 programme, Innovative Public Services action, within the API4IPS project, in collaboration with the Joint Research Centre, the Directorate-General for Informatics, and the Directorate‑General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology.</div></div><p>&nbsp;</p><h2>How easy is it for all types of developers and agencies to find government APIs?</h2><p>Taking a user-centred design approach, a government API provider needs to start by thinking from the developer’s perspective. So, imagine you are a developer working at a business productivity startup. Your company wants to build a new app targeting first responders, to help them connect with local businesses and coordinate access to essential supplies during extreme weather events and other local environmental crises. You want to find out what APIs are available that you could connect into your app (and use according to the terms of use and following attribution requirements, where necessary): things like being able to verify the user’s identity, share latest news feeds on extreme weather, link to databases of local businesses using certain keywords, and other functionalities. Where do you find out what is available?</p><blockquote><p>Where do you find out what government APIs are available?</p></blockquote><p>You could:</p><div class="raw-html-embed"><ul class="roman">
 <li>Use a search engine like DuckDuckGo or Google and enter a combination of keywords like “first responder”, “your area (city, region, nation)”, “business registration”, “extreme weather alerts”, and so on</li>
 <li>You could look on the relevant government’s website, but where? You could scan:
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     <li>Their open data portal?</li>
<li>Emergency services department?</li>
<li>Weather department?</li>
<li>Business support or economic development?</li>
<li>Government communications team?</li> </ul>
 </li>
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</p><p style="margin-left: 40px">The problem with this approach is that it requires you, as the developer, to understand and be able to navigate through government departments to find each agency that might be the custodian of a relevant API for your app, or through government catalogues that have large numbers of open data APIs available.</p>
 <li>Or you could go to the government’s API developer portal if they have one.</li>
</ul></div><figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/platform1/image/upload/v1617989262/discoverability1_cc3fa8c67a.jpg"><figcaption>Current discoverability workflow for a developer looking for Government APIs</figcaption></figure><p>That’s the current scenario for most developers looking to use government APIs in their apps.</p><p>Ideally, a developer should be able to:</p><ul><li>Find available, relevant government APIs quickly</li><li>Be able to start learning what functionalities they offer and how they can be integrated into their apps, and</li><li>Be able to find APIs they can use as a business to transact and connect with government (for example, to register their business activities, pay taxes, book venues or parking, apply for rebates or funding, etc).</li></ul><p>Perhaps the developer has gone to the government’s developer portal which has a catalogue of all available APIs. Perhaps they find out what APIs are available because a government digital ecosystem facilitator has reached out to invite them to a network meeting for digital creators in their industry. Perhaps the government has hosted a hackathon or information session or meetup. Perhaps the developer read about the government’s APIs in the tech or local business media.</p><p>All of these methods of finding out about a government’s APIs are called "discoverability strategies".</p><blockquote><p><strong>Government API discoverability is the process of making sure all developers can easily find and understand what APIs are published and maintained by a government, in an accessible, equitable, and user-friendly manner.</strong></p></blockquote><p>But now imagine a future scenario. As a developer, you assume the government has a developer portal. You scroll down the home page of the government website and in the footer menu, you find the link that says “Developers” just like you are used to doing when you go to any other large agency website, like for a bank or fintech, or for a telco, or tech company.</p><p>The link takes you to a developer portal which includes a catalogue of all the government APIs, but that is now over 100 APIs for the one government. So instead, you use the portal search wizard. With this, you enter your business registration number, or if you don’t want to share that, you describe a little about your business: how many people work there, some keywords that describe the type of work you do. Then you are given two lists:</p><figure class="table"><table><thead><tr><th>Gov APIs as 'raw ingredients'</th><th>Gov APIs as transactional services</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>A list of data and service APIs that match your keywords and that could be useful to help you build products. These APIs were useful to other businesses with similar keywords (like a recommendation engine) or business category (from your registration details). These APIs also match keywords from the API metadata that was entered by the government API creators.</td><td>A list of data and service APIs that match your keywords and that could be useful to help you build products. These APIs were useful to other businesses with similar keywords (like a recommendation engine) or business category (from your registration details). These APIs also match keywords from the API metadata that was entered by the government API creators.</td></tr></tbody></table></figure><figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/platform1/image/upload/v1617989334/discoverability_ideal_9dc5ee6a7a.jpg"><figcaption>Potential ideal workflow to assist developers find the government APIs they need&nbsp;</figcaption></figure><p>Wouldn’t that be neat? It is possible in the future, but first governments need to focus on the basic building blocks for API discoverability before building these more interactive features.</p><h3>Underlying assumptions about digital government and APIs</h3><p>But there are also some underlying assumptions in government API discoverability. Discoverability assumes:</p><ul><li>The government has decided it wants to take a platform approach in which third parties can build new products and services using government services and data exposed via API. (To learn more about why API teams need to understand their government’s platform vision, check out Proposal 2 in the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/publication/application-programming-interface-api-framework-digital-government">API Framework for Digital Governments</a>.)</li><li>The government is facilitating domain-level (that is, industry or sector-based) ecosystems (like transport, environment, healthcare, safety, or so on) and has identified key user groups that might each want to integrate government APIs for specific use cases (see Proposal 6, 7 and 11 of the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/publication/application-programming-interface-api-framework-digital-government">API Framework for Digital Governments</a> which focus on how governments can build ecosystems and take a product management approach to involving stakeholders and targeted developer segments.)</li></ul><p>As digital government processes transform how governments operate, they are increasingly investing in APIs as the composable units to link systems and expose functionalities and data to their ecosystems. But this is still a fairly new phenomena, so API and digital government leaders often need to show that they are creating value for citizens, the economy, and the environment by making APIs available. Often that value is measured in terms of how many apps or developers use the government APIs, and what products they have built.</p><p>Discoverability is a key mechanism that can help governments achieve their intended goals with their APIs. That is:</p><blockquote><p>Discoverability can make sure that government APIs are accessible and available to a wider audience of potential users. These users can then build more products and services, thus demonstrating the value of the government APIs.</p></blockquote><h3>A Government API Discoverability Taxonomy</h3><p>We have identified and categorised 20 discoverability strategies that governments can use to encourage developers to find their APIs:</p><figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/platform1/image/upload/v1617989334/discoverability_taxonomy_72f7a5de5a.jpg"><figcaption>20 Government API discoverability strategies organised into 4 categories</figcaption></figure><h3>Participate in our research study</h3><p>We are currently conducting research to discover:</p><ul><li>Are there other strategies governments are using for discoverability?</li><li>Which of these discoverability strategies are governments using the most, what are the best practices, and which are the most cost-effective?</li><li>What discoverability strategies ensure that government APIs are equitable, accessible and available to all potential users?</li><li>How are governments identifying key user groups for their APIs and measuring whether their discoverability strategies are effective for these user groups?</li><li>What templates, checklists, and other tools would help governments increase discoverability of their APIs?</li></ul><p>Our research will be conducted over the next few months and we would love to have your involvement. This research is partly funded by the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ec.europa.eu/info/index_en">European Commission</a>, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ec.europa.eu/isa2/home_en">ISA2 programme</a>, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ec.europa.eu/isa2/actions/bringing-new-technologies-public-sector_en">Innovative Public Services action</a>, within the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ec.europa.eu/cefdigital/wiki/x/voMoDw">API4IPS project</a>, in collaboration with the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en">Joint Research Centre</a>, the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ec.europa.eu/info/departments/informatics_en">Directorate-General for Informatics</a>, and the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ec.europa.eu/info/departments/communications-networks-content-and-technology_en">Directorate‑General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology</a>.</p><p>To participate in our study as either a government API or digital government leader, or as a developer or agency that would like to make more use of government APIs, you can:</p><ul><li>Join <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://updates.platformable.com/api-trends-newsletter">Platformable's mailing list</a></li><li>Join the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12405281/">APIs4DigitalGovernment LinkedIn group</a></li><li><a href="mailto:mark@platformable.com">Email me directly</a></li><li>Meet with me <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://platformable.com/p/3c02596c-ede5-4c94-8b6d-da30b256f874/calendly.com/platformable">via my Calendly to discuss your perspectives</a></li><li>Fill in our surveys (available soon).</li></ul>

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Research Project: Government API Discoverability

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An API Framework for Digital Government

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Open Health

Digital Government in the Age of COVID-19

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How Government APIs can address structural racism and inequality

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Analysing the Blue Button API Ecosystem

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    <h3>Who should read this:</h3> Digital infrastructure policy leads, API providers, regulators, community advocates <br><br>
    <h3>What it’s about:</h3> To create and nurture value in an open ecosystem, it is essential to be able to map how stakeholders interact and what tools, strategies and types of relationships help foster participation and distribution of value. This post starts to explain the model used by Platformable to measure open ecosystem value.<br><br>
    <h3>Why it’s important:</h3> Platform businesses and ecosystem networks thrive when there are effective relationships between stakeholders. This post outlines how we view open ecosystems and how they differ to platforms.<br>
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    </div><p>Platformable’s core mission is to <i><strong>measure the value of open ecosystems in order to enable all stakeholders to participate and co-create their own value</strong></i>.</p><p>We recognise the challenge laid out by Nambisan, Lyytinen and Yoo in the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781788119979/9781788119979.00016.xml">Handbook of Digital Innovation</a>:</p><div class="raw-html-embed">  
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      <p>As digital innovation now cuts across industries and breaks down old industrial organisation, it is also of significant importance to study the associated individual team, firm and industry level interactions, i.e. to view digital innovation as a dynamic complex (socio-technical) system, recognising the constantly shifting and new boundaries of firms and other entities. This, in turn, calls for more orchestrated efforts to analyse individual, team, firm, community and industry level changes simultaneously, and more importantly, to analyse their dynamics holistically, as firm-level innovation increasingly rests on industry-wide infrastructures while firms' innovation efforts contribute to building such infrastructures. All of this happens in the context of open communities, individual and user-led innovation, and new forms of collaborating and competing at the industry level.</p>
      <div class="author"><h3 class="font-black">Handbook of Digital Innovation</h3></div>
      <div class="second-line">Nambisan, Lyytinen and Yoo</div>
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     </div><p>To measure stakeholders, these relationships, and the value being generated in open ecosystems, we use a range of tools including:</p><ul><li>Taxonomy definitions</li><li>Data modeling</li><li>Open standards usage</li><li>Value network analysis</li><li>Ecosystem mapping.</li></ul><h2>The open ecosystem model</h2><p>We define an open ecosystem as:</p><div class="raw-html-embed">  
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      <p classname="my-3">A network of equitable participation opportunities that allow stakeholders (including governments and regulators, associations, industry enterprises, small and medium enterprises, researchers, community groups and individuals) to co-create, collaborate, complement, and/or compete with each other by using common tools (APIs) and infrastructures.</p>
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      </div><p>Therefore an open ecosystem is made up of:</p><ul><li>the stakeholders themselves,</li><li>their relationships, and</li><li>the infrastructure they need to co-create, collaborate, complement and compete.</li></ul><p>Our definition draws from work including:</p><ul><li>Open Data Institute’s <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://theodi.org/article/mapping-data-ecosystems/">data ecosystems models and mapping process</a></li><li>Kin Lane's <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://platformable.com/blog/measuring-the-value-of-open-ecosystems/apievangelist.com">various work on mapping API ecosystems</a>, including his recent work documenting <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://apievangelist.com/2021/01/11/what-does-open-mean-in-the-world-of-apis/">the attributes of open API ecosystems</a></li><li>The work of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9919-9088">Annabelle Gawler</a>, including “Bridging differing perspectives on technological platforms: Toward an integrative framework” (<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733314000456">2014</a>) and her most recent work with <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/annals.2018.0121">Andrew Shipilov (2020)</a></li><li>UK Competition Markets Authority’s “The economics of closed and open ecosystems” (<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/387718/The_economics_of_open_and_closed_systems.pdf">2014</a> which used Hazlett’s definition (from Hazlett, T, Teece, D and Wavermann, L (2011). Walled Garden Rivalry: The Creation of Mobile Network Ecosystems. George Mason University Law and Economics Research Paper Series, 11 (50).)</li><li><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781788119979/9781788119979.00016.xml">The Handbook of Digital Innovation (2020)</a></li><li>The work of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://forwardcities.org/opportunities/assess-your-ecosystem/">Fay Horwitt and Forward Cities on equitable entrepreneurial ecosystems</a></li><li>OECD’s work on “<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://stip.oecd.org/stip/knowledge-transfer/journeys/influenceOfKnowledgeTransferOnInnovation">How to measure the influence of knowledge transfer on innovation?</a>”</li><li>The work often led by <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://128.171.57.22/bitstream/10125/64002/1/0211.pdf">Nena Helander</a>, with <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://helda.helsinki.fi/dhanken/bitstream/handle/10227/292680/KMIS_2019_60.pdf?sequence=1&amp;isAllowed=y">Vilma Vuori</a>, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/41747/2020_Book_MeasuringTheBusinessValueOfClo.pdf?sequence=1#page=106">Arto Ojala</a>, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/270319418.pdf">Anik Shekhar Bal</a>, and <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://trepo.tuni.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/121567/M%C3%A4%C3%A4tt%C3%A4Samuli.pdf?sequence=2">Samuli Määttä</a></li><li>Sangeet Paul Choudary’s work on <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DcjiB3sJsdw2sdwmeyLY0gj_N1seBmiG/view">State of the Platform Revolution 2021</a>.</li></ul><h3>How platforms, their ecosystems, and open ecosystems differ</h3><p>We differentiate between platforms, their ecosystems, and wider open ecosystems in our work.</p><p><strong>Platforms</strong> are businesses or entities (including governments) that have opened up their functionalities and data in a way that they can mediate relationships between producers and consumers. This may involve exposing their own capabilities and data assets as digital components that can be used by other producers and consumers as “raw ingredients” when creating new value chains, or they may work as intermediaries that facilitate access between producers and consumers who then co-create their own value.</p><p><strong>Ecosystems</strong> are the networks of stakeholders that interconnect around a platform business and that generate further value through network effects and by creating new products and services that build on top of the assets and products that are made available. We see ecosystems as “orbiting” a platform.</p><p><strong>An open ecosystem</strong>, then, is a wider digital market made up of multiple ecosystems within (or across) a given domain. Within ecosystems, some network stakeholders draw on assets from multiple platform businesses. When this occurs, there is a series of interconnected ecosystems being generated across each platform’s own ecosystem, creating open ecosystems.</p><p>Sometimes, governments and regulators force the existence of open ecosystems by mandating that all stakeholders in a given domain must use APIs to generate platform and ecosystem effects. In other cases, open source technologies, API standards bodies and network associations create tools or standards that can be used by all stakeholders, thus creating open ecosystems. This is beginning to occur in open banking, open finance, public health, in resource usage, and to encourage a circular economy. Governments are also increasingly moving to API open ecosystem models to expand the potential of building new digital products and services for their economies, environment and citizens.</p><p>For example, under open banking regulations, banks are moving towards a platform business model in which they expose APIs to third parties that can then build new products and services. The bank and those third parties operate as an ecosystem. Some third parties also connect to other banks' platform APIs. So they are part of multiple ecosystems. Banks themselves may also make use of other bank APIs, and some of the third parties may also be platforms that have their own APIs that others integrate with in their products. All up, at Platformable, we call all of those platforms and ecosystems the open banking/open finance open ecosystem.</p><h3>In summary</h3><p>This post outlines how we define open ecosystems and how they differ from platforms and other types of ecosystems. In the rest of our series, we will cover:</p><ul><li><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://platformable.com/measuring-the-value-of-open-ecosystems-2/">Why APIs are at the centre of open ecosystems</a></li><li><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://platformable.com/measuring-the-value-of-open-ecosystems-3-types-of-relationships/">The types of relationships that can occur between stakeholders</a></li><li><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://platformable.com/measuring-the-value-of-open-ecosystems-4/">Why measuring value in open ecosystems is essential</a>.</li></ul><p>Following this introductory series, we will then start sharing the data models and value flow in the specific ecosystems we work with including open banking/open finance, digital government, public health, and the circular economy.</p>

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Measuring the value of open ecosystems: 1. Our model

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    <h3>Who should read this:</h3> Digital infrastructure policy leads, API providers, community advocates <br><br>
    <h3>What it’s about:</h3> Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are the core unit that enables open ecosystems to flourish. This post continues our series explaining the model used by Platformable to measure open ecosystem value, and describes the integral role of APIs in open ecosystems.<br><br>
    <h3>Why it’s important:</h3> Open ecosystems are an approach that requires a combination of policy and technology decision-making. This post explains how APIs enable business and policy goals to be achieved, and how they are implemented to enable relationships and sharing of digital components.<br>
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    </div><h2>&nbsp;</h2><h2>How we view open ecosystems</h2><p>Our core mission is to <i><strong>measure the value of open ecosystems in order to enable all stakeholders to participate and co-create their own value</strong></i>.</p><p>We describe open ecosystems as a network of equitable participation opportunities that allow stakeholders to co-create, collaborate, complement, and/or compete with each other by using common tools (APIs) and infrastructures.</p><p>Your can read more about our view of open ecosystems and how they differ from platforms and closed ecosystems in <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://platformable.com/blog/measuring-the-value-of-open-ecosystems/">Part 1 of our series on how we measure the value of open ecosystems.</a> &nbsp;</p><h2>How APIs are central to open ecosystems</h2><p>We want to demonstrate the potential of open ecosystems in these areas so we measure:</p><ul><li>How the ecosystems are growing</li><li>How they are enabling each stakeholder to participate and generate their own value, and</li><li>How they foster partnerships that can solve complex problems together.</li></ul><p>At Platformable, we are mostly focused on <i>how APIs are used to enable open ecosystems,</i> but there are other technologies that are used. Open source technologies, open data, and standards, for example, are other types of digital components that also enable an open ecosystem of stakeholders. Often, APIs are used to unlock the value of open data (but not always) or to connect open source technologies, so we have chosen to start our ecosystem measurement system by focusing on APIs as the central unit in an open ecosystem.</p><p>Drawing on definitions from thought leaders like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://medium.com/@medjawii/5-ways-an-api-is-more-than-an-api-bddcdb0517ca">Mehdi Medjaoui</a> and leadership organisations like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://theodi.org/topic/open-standards-and-open-apis/">Open Data Institute</a>, we define APIs as:</p><div class="raw-html-embed">  
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      <p classname="my-3">Application programming interfaces (APIs) are connectors that link systems together using a clear contract on what can be shared between the systems.</p>
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      </div><p>In the book <i>Measuring the Business Value of Cloud Computing,</i> researchers describe APIs as:</p><div class="raw-html-embed">  
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      <p>An API is a set of  functions  and  procedures  allowing  the  creation  of  applications  that  access the features or data of a system, application, or other service. They increasingly  play  an  important  role  in  the  interoperability  of  systems,  whether cloud-based or otherwise, both internally and externally, and the exchange  of  data.  APIs  are  bidirectional — they  can  provide  and  consume — and can be public (open) or private. A key characteristic of APIs is  their  abstraction  from  systems  and  infrastructure  thus  allowing  third  parties to build applications and services that consume APIs.</p>
      <div class="author"><h3 class="font-black">Victoria Paulsson, Vincent C. Emeakaroha, John Morrison, and Theo Lynn</h3></div>
      <div class="second-line">Measuring the Business Value of Cloud Computing</div>
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      </div><h2>Key API roles in open ecosystems</h2><p>In an open ecosystem using APIs, then, we see four key roles:</p><ul><li>API providers/producers (supply-side)</li><li>API consumers (demand-side)</li><li>End users</li><li>Indirect beneficiaries.</li></ul><p>&nbsp;</p><figure class="table"><table><thead><tr><th>Role</th><th>Description</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><strong>API providers/ producers</strong></td><td>Entities that make APIs available for use by others.</td></tr><tr><td><strong>API consumers</strong></td><td>Entities that use available APIs to create products and services, to automate workflows, and to ingest large datasets for machine learning.</td></tr><tr><td><strong>End users</strong></td><td>Users of products and services that have been built using APIs.</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Indirect beneficiaries</strong></td><td>Entities that benefit from the increasing use of APIs but may not be directly involved in the value chain of API production, consumption and end use.</td></tr></tbody></table></figure><h2>&nbsp;</h2><h2>Types of APIs</h2><p>While open APIs are the most common form of API used in an open ecosystem, we use <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.programmableweb.com/news/private-partner-or-public-which-api-strategy-best-business/2014/02/21">Cyril Vart’s categorisations of APIs</a> to categorise APIs as open, partner or private APIs. All three have a role in open ecosystems.</p><figure class="image image-style-align-center"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/platform1/image/upload/v1618996326/open_AP_Is_ver2_6cdeec651c.png"></figure><p>&nbsp;</p><p><i><strong>Open: </strong></i>Open APIs allow entities to publicly expose information and functionalities of one or various systems and applications to third parties that do not necessarily have a relationship with them. They are the core standard unit that enables value to flow within an open ecosystem.</p><figure class="image image-style-align-center"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/platform1/image/upload/v1618996326/partner_AP_Is_62486b67ee.png"></figure><p>&nbsp;</p><p><i><strong>Partner:</strong></i> Partner APIs are used to facilitate communication and integration of software between an entity and its partners. They enable value to flow between open ecosystem stakeholders that have entered into a specific relationship to co-create, collaborate or complement each other, usually in order to compete together or as part of a paid relationship</p><figure class="image image-style-align-center"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/platform1/image/upload/v1618996326/Private_AP_Is_02_4b897b61b4.png"></figure><p><i><strong>Private:</strong></i> Private APIs are used internally to facilitate the integration of different applications and systems used by a company. An internal API-enabled infrastructure is usually a prerequisite to opening APIs to partners more broadly.</p><p>The importance of these roles may differ for stakeholders and enablers. For example, in a digital government context, governments can play all four roles, using all three types of APIs:</p><ul><li>A producer/provider may make APIs available internally to their own department to speed up digital services delivery (private APIs), to other departments (partner APIs), or exposed to external providers to build new products</li><li>As an API consumer, one department may use APIs that are built by another department, or in Europe, one government may use interoperable APIs built by another Member State (open or partner APIs)</li><li>As an end user, governments may use products that others have built using open APIs</li><li>As an indirect beneficiary, governments see a greater range of digital products and services offered to their community. For example in Zaragoza, Spain, the government benefits from making a range of new apps available to citizens because app developers have built them using open APIs.</li><li>&nbsp;</li></ul><div class="raw-html-embed">  
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    <strong><i>Kin Lane, API Evangelist, has documented <a href="http://apievangelist.com/2021/01/11/what-does-open-mean-in-the-world-of-apis/">an inventory of API attributes which can be used to measure the depth and breadth of an individual API provider's openness</a>. <br><br>

API strategies of individual stakeholders could be measured against such an inventory to determine the level at which APIs are being used to foster a truly open ecosystem. </i></strong>
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    </div><h2>&nbsp;</h2><h2>In summary</h2><p>So far in this series, we have defined what we mean by open ecosystems (<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://platformable.com/measuring-the-value-of-open-ecosystems/">see part 1 for a detailed discussion and references to our evidence base</a>), and now we have described how APIs help connect systems, and enable the roles of various stakeholders in an open ecosystem model. In our &nbsp;next post, we will discuss the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://platformable.com/measuring-the-value-of-open-ecosystems-3-types-of-relationships/">five types of relationship activity</a> that occur amongst stakeholders in an open ecosystem. These five activities &nbsp;help drive and distribute value in an open ecosystem. Then in our final part, we will discuss <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://platformable.com/measuring-the-value-of-open-ecosystems-4/">why measuring value in open ecosystems is so important.</a></p><p>Our followup series will then explore the taxonomies and data models we use in each of the four domain areas that we measure here at Platformable. Together, these series aim to provide you with a comprehensive foundation of the open ecosystem model we use at Platformable.</p><p>We'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Please feel free to book a time with our team via our Calendly:</p><p><br>&nbsp;</p>

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Measuring the value of open ecosystems: 2. APIs

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Measuring Value in the Open Banking Ecosystem: 1. The Model

<p>A comprehensive literature review of best practices relevant to Government API activities</p><p><strong>Client:</strong> &nbsp;European Commission's Joint Research Centre</p><p><strong>Timeline:</strong> 6 months (June - December 2019)</p><p><strong>Tools used:</strong> Google Sheets, Google Docs, Zotero, Microsoft Excel, Data Miner Chrome Extension</p><p><strong>Outcomes:</strong></p><ul><li>Literature review of 343 best practice documents</li><li>Used to inform workshop activities held with over 60 government stakeholders</li><li>Analysis of findings used to support creation of evidence-based API Framework for governments</li><li>Creation of open dataset collating the best practice documents: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://data.europa.eu/89h/7340ab8a-ef73-459b-a2d9-b64e1a5bb680">http://data.europa.eu/89h/7340ab8a-ef73-459b-a2d9-b64e1a5bb680</a></li></ul><p>&nbsp;</p>

A map showing a literature review of 343 Government API Best Practices around the world.

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Project: Literature review of Government API Best Practices

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Open Banking / Open Finance

Open banking APIs for sustainability: an open ecosystem approach

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Spencer

What the OnlyFans Changes and Reversal Mean for the Open Finance Platform Economy  

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  <h3 class="">Who should read this:</h3> Greentechs, fintech, participants in the energy sector supply chain, regulators, anyone with an interest in sustainability solutions with the potential to redesign our existing systems to create planetary and human health, wealth and wellbeing <br><br>
  <h3 class="">What it’s about:</h3> Summary of our response to the European Commission public consultation on the Digitalisation of the Energy Sector Action Plan<br><br>
  <h3 class="">Why it’s important:</h3> With the move to digitalising the energy sector, we need open APIs that enable a greater range of stakeholders to collaborate, compete, and co-create to build sustainable products. We see this emerging in the banking/finance open ecosystem, but without access to open energy APIs, products will remain informative only rather than promote action.<br>
  </div></div><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;">As part of the European Energy Roadmap to meet the </span><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=1576150542719&amp;uri=COM%3A2019%3A640%3AFIN"><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;"><u>European Green Deal</u></span></a><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;"> objectives, the European Commission held a </span><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/13141-Digitalising-the-energy-sector-EU-action-plan/public-consultation_en"><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;"><u>public consultation</u></span></a><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;">, seeking feedback on best practices for the digitalisation of the Union’s energy sector.</span></p><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;">Platformable responded to the consultation to highlight how open ecosystem approaches are the most appropriate for encouraging action on reducing energy consumption and moving to renewable energy sources.&nbsp;</span></p><div class="raw-html-embed">    <div class="insetBox2 insetBox2-sustain-dark">
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            <h3>We define open ecosystems as:</h3>
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        “A network of equitable participation opportunities that allow stakeholders (including governments and regulators, associations, industry enterprises, small and medium enterprises, researchers, community groups and individuals) to co-create, collaborate, compete, complement, and/or coordinate with each other, using open standards, common tools, and digital infrastructures.”
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    </div></div><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;">We focused on two facets of the Action Plan: Developing a data-sharing infrastructure and enabling consumer participation.</span></p><h2><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;"><strong>Developing European data-sharing infrastructure for new energy services with an open ecosystem approach</strong></span></h2><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;">To create more robust, secure energy infrastructure will require the following open ecosystem components:</span></p><p>&nbsp;</p><ul><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;font-size:20px;"><strong>Open standards</strong> are more robust and secure than proprietary standards. Proprietary standards create financial and membership barriers for all stakeholders, and therefore smaller players or independent, international enterprises may choose to establish their own standards. This increases complexity and reduces sharing of key information as needed, but also introduces multiple cybersecurity threat vectors. With open standards, whole industry sectors have tested and maintained the standards to prevent new emerging security threats, ensuring there are a diverse set of eyeballs conducting tests.</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;font-size:20px;"><strong>Open data models</strong> enhance and protect energy infrastructure by enabling common formats and machine-readable approaches to the exchange of data so that alerts and oversight can occur in a timely manner. Critical infrastructure monitoring can be automated and automated alerts systems put in place to identify and respond to threats in real-time when industry sectors make use of common data models.</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;font-size:20px;"><strong>Data sharing agreements</strong> between public and private stakeholders that balance the need to preserve commercial-in-confidence and industry secrets, while also enabling more shared data between industry and public services to improve monitoring and automation of energy infrastructure.</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;font-size:20px;"><strong>Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) </strong>create a common technology infrastructure for transmission of data and services in digital environments that are secure, and interoperable. APIs are connectors that establish a contract between the exchange providers. This contract confirms each party’s identity and authority to request and receive information and digital services before information is exchanged.</span></li></ul><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;"><strong>Adopting APIs is recommended for information exchange to monitor the energy data-sharing infrastructure. </strong>Research into </span><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://theodi.org/article/case-study-the-value-of-sharing-data-in-supply-chain-optimisation/#1536315786739-be643616-b84158fa-4ecde7c0-a9a6"><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;"><u>supply chain optimisation</u></span></a><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;"> has for instance found that multi stakeholder, open ecosystem approaches support the creation of shared data models so that data collected in disparate systems can be linked via API and enable automated optimisation to protect critical supply chains.</span></p><h2><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;"><strong>Enabling consumer participation in the new energy services through APIs</strong></span></h2><p>&nbsp;</p><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;">Banks and fintech stakeholders of the open banking and open finance ecosystems are starting to take an active role, offering open APIs that are enabling new sustainability products. However, there is a risk that carbon calculators, for example, focus merely on being informative, rather than driving action. While raising awareness is a necessary first-step, we believe fintech can help move the industry forward by supporting action:</span></p><ul><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;font-size:20px;">A carbon calculator like the ones provided by </span><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&amp;ai=DChcSEwiZ8o_1g8v1AhWIkGgJHTprBOQYABAAGgJ3Zg&amp;ae=2&amp;sig=AOD64_1HL64q-dr8D3e1HaBD4bHOACar4Q&amp;q&amp;adurl&amp;ved=2ahUKEwi51Yj1g8v1AhVQzoUKHZPGBOoQ0Qx6BAgCEAE"><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;font-size:20px;"><u>Klarna</u></span></a><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;font-size:20px;">, </span><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://paygreen.io/climatekit/"><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;font-size:20px;"><u>PayGreen</u></span></a><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;font-size:20px;">, </span><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ecocart.io/business/"><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;font-size:20px;"><u>EcoCart</u></span></a><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;font-size:20px;"> can be integrated to the retailer’s sales funnel and gives an estimate of the GHG intensity of the purchase, but next we need for APIs to also help surface alternative purchasing options that are more sustainable, for example, surfacing products from sites like </span><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://backmarket.com"><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;font-size:20px;"><u>Back Market</u></span></a></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;font-size:20px;">Another type of carbon calculator like </span><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://enfuce.com/the-science-behind-my-carbon-action-calculating-the-lifestyle-carbon-footprint/"><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;font-size:20px;"><u>Enfuce</u></span></a><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;font-size:20px;"> calculates lifestyle carbon footprint impacts by drawing on accounts and payment transactions data via APIs. The next step would be to promote switching such as swapping energy suppliers to a renewable source or purchasing public transport cards, bicycles, or electric vehicles to switch to renewable transport.</span></li></ul><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;">These kinds of customer journeys demonstrate the need for more energy, banking, and finance APIs that enable pricing comparison, energy switching, changes in energy consumption behaviours, and energy efficiency enhancement so that, for instance, after seeing your carbon footprint you can seamlessly change to a different plan or different provider.</span></p><figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/platform1/image/upload/v1644765457/KBC_Green_Energy_Loan_9e8e7c29d5.png"><figcaption><span style="color:#212121;">Source: </span><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://developer.kbc.be/business-solution/kbc-green-energy-loan"><span style="color:#212121;">KBC developer portal</span></a></figcaption></figure><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;">Belgium’s </span><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://developer.kbc.be/"><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;"><u>KBC</u></span></a><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;">, for instance, takes a consumer-centric business and design thinking approach to its API product innovation - aiming at offering financial services that are extended to the end-customers’ lifestyle and life journey. KBC Green Energy Loans APIs build on market interest amongst home owners to reduce their carbon footprint. By making the APIs free to use, KBC can generate new loan customers while merchants tend to increase their sales by 20% if customers can access credit at the point of purchase.</span></p><h2><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;"><strong>Social impacts and potential benefits to startups and SMEs, currently not included as facets of the Action Plan, do count</strong></span></h2><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#212121;">Potential benefits to startups and SMEs where data systems are opened for the integrated energy sector need to be recognised to allow product innovation. It is crucial to adequately address the potential risks in resource displacement and inequality exacerbation if robust information systems are not in place to address critical infrastructure risks such as those of the energy sector.</span></p>

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An open ecosystem approach to digitalise the EU energy sector

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    <h3 class="font-black">Who should read this:</h3> Anyone working with health data <br><br>
    <h3 class="font-black">What it’s about:</h3> WHO are hosting a Data Governance Summit that is open to everyone<br><br>
    <h3 class="font-black">Why it’s important:</h3> Understanding the current level of progress around how health data is governed and stewarded by industry, governments, NGOs and with the participation of patients and civil society advocates is essential to ensure that health data is used with respect to privacy and for social good.<br>
    </div></div><p>(Source image above: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/world-health-data-platform/events/health-data-governance-summit/preread-1-who-data-governance-summit_health-data-landscape.pdf?sfvrsn=1fa04413_8">World Health Organization</a>)</p><p>Mark Boyd, working as Senior Policy Associate with the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://theodi.org/">Open Data Institute</a>, contributed to the development of 3 new resources to be used as background materials (pre-reads) for the World Health Organzation's <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.who.int/data/events/health-data-governance-summit/introduction">Data Governance Summit</a>. The Summit is open to anyone with an interest in health data governance.</p><div class="raw-html-embed">
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    <h3 class="fw-bold">Download the ODI's pre-reads on data governance best practices, created for the World Health Organization</h3>
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    <p>Visit the WHO Data Governance Summit page and download the three pre-reads:<br></p><ul><li><a href="https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/world-health-data-platform/events/health-data-governance-summit/preread-1-who-data-governance-summit_health-data-landscape.pdf?sfvrsn=1fa04413_8">The health data landscape</a></li> 
<li><a href="https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/world-health-data-platform/events/health-data-governance-summit/preread-2-who-data-governance-summit_health-data-as-a-public-good.pdf?sfvrsn=2d1e3ad8_8">Key issues when affirming health data as a global public good</a></li>
<li><a href="https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/world-health-data-platform/events/health-data-governance-summit/preread-3-who-data-governance-summit_data-governance-of-health-data.pdf?sfvrsn=ffbd4a33_10">Health data governance: current maturity and best practices</a> </li> <p></p>
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</div><p>&nbsp;</p><p>The pre-reads provide a summary of where the sector is at in regards to three key areas for health data:</p><ul><li>An overview of the landscape and how all of the stakeholders fit together: our health data landscape summary</li><li>A discussion of how health data is a global public good and some of the current conversations that need to be resolved to achieve global consensus and action</li><li>A summary of how data governance processes can build trust amongst all stakeholders including key components and examples of best practices.</li></ul><h2>The health data landscape</h2><p>For this work, Mark Boyd, working for the ODI, helped design an overview of the health data ecosystem, or landscape.&nbsp;</p><figure class="image image_resized image-style-align-center" style="width:100%;"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/platform1/image/upload/v1624976771/Complete_Diagram_Value_Model_Trust_Letters_Data_Governance_of_Health_Data_Data_Governance_of_Health_Data_Slide_26_copy_b5a81dfd76.png" alt="Diagram of the health data ecosystem showing datasets, stakeholders, data governance processes, and value generated"><figcaption>Platformable's interpretation of the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/world-health-data-platform/events/health-data-governance-summit/preread-1-who-data-governance-summit_health-data-landscape.pdf?sfvrsn=1fa04413_8">WHO pre-reads describing the complete health data ecosystem</a></figcaption></figure><h3>A. Datasets</h3><p>Health data is about people, organisations, society and the environment. Data is stored/collected both within and outside the health sector.</p><h3>B. Stakeholders</h3><p>Health data is used to generate value by a range of stakeholders that draw on data collected and managed by data stewards. Data stewards work with data processors along the data journey (from collection, through validation, storage, and sharing, to use and analysis).</p><h3>C. Data governance processes</h3><p>Underpinning the way data stewards and data processors handle data are data governance principles and processes. Data governance helps ensure that the management and use of health data is handled responsibly and fosters trust.</p><h3>D. Value generation</h3><p>Health data, when used by stakeholders, generates a number of personal, commercial, societal and environmental benefits.</p><p>In the pre-read decks prepared by the ODI, this model was used to demonstrate how health data and value flow in specific case studies. These include:&nbsp;</p><ul><li>Tanzania's health information services</li><li>Brazil's burden of disease registries</li><li>GISAID's shared data for COVID-19 genome sequencing, and</li><li>WHO's Non-Communicable Diseases global data repository.</li></ul><p>Other decks prepared by the ODI focused on health data as a global public good and the current global maturity and adoption of data governance processes.</p><p>You can download all three decks from the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.who.int/data/events/health-data-governance-summit/introduction">WHO Data Governance Summit registration page</a>.</p><p><i>This research was led by the ODI and Vice President of Strategy, Dr Jeni Tennison. &nbsp;Thanks to my colleague Shirley Torho for feedback on drafts and for participation in stakeholder interviews.</i></p>

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Health Data Governance: Understanding the ecosystem and current maturity

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How advanced is the open health data ecosystem in Europe?

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The API Landscape: Measuring the Value Generated by API Tools and Consultants as Ecosystem Enablers

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How APIs Will Invent the Blue Collar Space Opera Future 

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    </div><h2>&nbsp;</h2><h2><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Challenge</span></h2><ul><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">It was taking our writers 1-2 days to prepare a blog post for publication, after they had created inset boxes, quote blocks, and other elements that make a post look engaging.</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">We had a style guide that described our color palette but there was a lot of jumping between different tabs to find the write color hex code, add to the HTML block in our Strapi headless CMS, and then customize the code for each inset box and so on.</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">As a small startup, having to customize text boxes and other elements according to the color palette or adding images and tweaking the layout of block quotes slows down our writing team when uploading content and posts.</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Having to tweak HTML code for non-coders was also cumbersome and introduced errors.</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Even when a blog post was written and uploaded to Strapi, it would then sit again in draft format without being published because these additional fixes needed to be done.</span></li></ul><p>&nbsp;</p><h2><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">What are we doing about this?</span></h2><ul><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">We use Strapi headless CMS which has HTML blocks we can insert into blog posts.</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">We made a blog component code generator as an easy way to insert standard blog components into new posts that matched our style guide.</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Our designer drafted a style guide that outlined how each blog post component should look, including summary boxes, inset boxes, block quotes and coloured tables. These use our core color palette for the sectors we work in (ecosystems, banking/finance, health, sustainability, and government), with a lighter shade for backgrounds. We also have an icon library of common images we want to use in posts, for example, to call out when we are speaking to a specific user persona.</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Our Lead Developer added the color codes and new classes that defined each type of component into our CSS.</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Our blog component generator then offers our writers an easy way to customize each blog component to the correct color and inserting images direct from our media library, and text as needed.</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">The sample blog component is visually shown so the writer can see how it will look in the blog post, and the code is available for copying to the clipboard and inserting into Strapi as an HTML block.</span></li></ul><p>&nbsp;</p><figure class="image image-style-align-center"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/platform1/image/upload/v1643999957/Screenshot_2022_02_04_at_16_37_23_2fe2aa1b7a.png"></figure><p>&nbsp;</p><div class="raw-html-embed">
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    <h5 classname="font-weight-bold text-black text-center flex justify-center bg-primary">The blog component code generator has been released as open source so any Strapi or other headless CMS developer or architect can customize the blog components to their own style guide and offer it to their editors and content creators for use when inserting blog components into their headless CMS based on their site’s consistent style guide rules.</h5>
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    </div><h2>&nbsp;</h2><h2><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">What next?</span></h2><ul><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">We will be creating manuals to help you (whether you are a content manager, developer, or architect) to easily customize based on our elements (for example, to change the color options we offer).</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">We would also like to integrate this with other component tools like </span><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://getbootstrap.com/docs/5.1/examples/"><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#1155cc;"><u>Bootstrap</u></span></a><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">. The difference is with Bootstrap, you have to download the whole library rather than add a CSS class and a small HTML code depending on what you need. We also find these sorts of tools often focus on visual elements like pricing tables rather than smaller blog components for things like summary boxes and callout boxes for text.&nbsp;</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">We are also excited by the </span><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://strapi.io/blog/announcing-strapi-v4"><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#1155cc;"><u>new Strapi plugin feature released as part of version 4.1</u></span></a><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">. We’d like to re-create our codegen tool as a Strapi plugin so that you can build blog components directly into your posts, when you are organizing for creators to upload their content into Strapi.</span></li></ul><p>&nbsp;</p><div class="raw-html-embed"><section id="timeline"><div class="labs-road-text-img-component-container"><div class="labs-road-top-bar-posts-header labs-road-text-img-component"><div class="labs-road-top-bar-posts-header-img labs-road-text-img-component"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/platform1/image/upload/v1623947770/Labs_c8c4b81e63.png" alt=""></div><div class="labs-road-top-bar-posts-text"><h3>Roadmap</h3> </div></div></div><article><div class="inner"><span class="date"><span class="month">1</span></span><h2>Q1 2022</h2><div><p>Release codegen and invite external users to try it</p><p>Complete team manuals and review internal use by our writing team and developer trainees</p></div></div></article><article><div class="inner"><span class="date"><span class="month">2</span></span><h2>Q2 2022</h2><div><p>Conduct usability testing with some external users</p><p>Improve documentation and draft some guest posts about the project</p><p>Release a manual on how to customize to match your style guide</p><p>Look at other integrations such as how to draw from a style guide documented in a tool like Canva and integrate directly into the codegen tool</p></div></div></article><article><div class="inner"><span class="date"><span class="month">3</span></span><h2>Q3 2022</h2><div><p>Look at how to re-create the codegen tool as a Strapi plugin</p></div></div></article></section></div><h2><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">How to get involved</span></h2><ul><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">We would love you to test the tool. You can go to our </span><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://github.com/platformable/platformablecodegenerator"><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#1155cc;"><u>github repository</u></span></a><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">, fork it, create your own branch and start customizing.&nbsp;</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Please send any pull requests for anything you don’t understand or any suggested edits for how we can improve.</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Go to </span><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://github.com/platformable/platformablecodegenerator"><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#1155cc;"><u>https://github.com/platformable/platformablecodegenerator</u></span></a></li></ul><p>&nbsp;</p><p><i>Thanks </i><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/elmira-saifullina"><i>Elmira Saifullina</i></a><i> for the support and adding new features.</i></p><p>&nbsp;</p>

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Alexei

Introducing the Blog Component Code Generator for Headless CMS

<div class="raw-html-embed">  <div class="summary-box text-white summary-box-health-dark">
  <h3 class="">Who should read this:</h3> Healthcare industry leads, healthtech, health equity advocates, API service providers, researchers, regulators, non-governmental health organizations. <br><br>
  <h3 class="">What it’s about:</h3> This article describes our open health data model and our methodology for measuring and mapping ecosystem participation and value generation.<br><br>
  <h3 class="">Why it’s important:</h3> We need to be able to measure whether the opening of health systems is enabling innovation and expanding health and wellbeing and generating other benefits for all stakeholders. With the move to digital infrastructures and open APIs for health, we need to understand how value flows through the ecosystem and how it is distributed. We describe a model that can help identify what should be measured to ensure everyone benefits from open health ecosystems. <br>
  </div></div><p>&nbsp;</p><h2><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Why we need an open ecosystems approach to health</span></h2><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Our society today is facing some major challenges:&nbsp;</span></p><ul><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Populations are expanding globally, especially in urban areas</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Populations in much of the Global North are ageing</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Populations in the Global South are growing with limited resources available</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Climate crises and the pandemic means health needs are changing quickly</span></li></ul><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">No one organisation or stakeholder can address all of these challenges. And no single entity can take full advantage of the new opportunities brought on by advancements in digital health. This needs collaborative action, using a variety of components: data, standards, technologies, community participation, researchers, and more!</span></p><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">This is where open ecosystems come into play. The benefits of working in an open ecosystem include that health outcomes can improve, resources can be optimised, and individuals and businesses can be recognised for their contributions. In fact, we have identified 6 key benefits that can be generated from open ecosystem approaches to health infrastructure:</span>&nbsp;</p><ul><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Better health outcomes throughout the patient journey</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Reduced inequalities through using data to better target services and disaggregate data to understand impacts on vulnerable populations</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Optimised health service and resource efficiencies</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Increased participation, understanding of connections and collaborations, and sense of engagement and involvement in health decision-making by communities and all stakeholders</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Groundbreaking innovation, new industry opportunities, and deeper insights into existing systems</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Commercial advantage, professional recognition, and support for researchers and other stakeholders that collect, use and share data</span></li></ul><figure class="image image-style-align-center"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/platform1/image/upload/v1644254610/Value_Propositions_8a7e1d9952.png"><figcaption>Key benefits of an open health ecosystem approach&nbsp;</figcaption></figure><h2><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">How open health ecosystems are regulated</span></h2><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">This article describes our open health value flow model. First, we want to clarify our definition of open health.</span></p><div class="raw-html-embed"> <div class="insetBox2 insetBox2-health-dark">
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            <h3>Open Health</h3>
            <h4>Platformable’s Definition</h4>
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        A collaborative model of secure and ethical sharing of health data, technology, and digital infrastructures that recognises health data as a public good essential to the reduction of health inequalities and optimisation of health systems. Data stewards and data processors can share data, APIs, and open source technologies to enable value generation. For example, government bodies can use public health data to improve decision-making. Private entities can apply APIs to innovate health products, scientists can utilize data in their research work, and non-governmental agencies can take advantage of data infrastructures to inform their advocacy.

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    </div></div><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">In order to address the challenges described above, we need:</span></p><ul><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Access to quality data, often in real-time</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Common Technologies, digital tools, and platforms that enable collaboration and data sharing</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Engaged stakeholders that are able to interact and work together.</span></li></ul><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">But common concerns that we need to keep in mind are:</span></p><ul><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Health data is personal and sensitive</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Making wrong steps can literally destroy lives or impact their quality of life</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Access to health, wellbeing, and safety are human rights.</span></li></ul><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">So how does an open health ecosystem facilitate relationships and use data and digital tools to enable greater opportunities to generate value and benefits for everyone? Our model describes the flow of value from resources and outputs, and through stakeholder relationships. Our thinking has been advanced by recent work Mark Boyd has done with the Open Data Institute, including </span><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://platformable.com/health-data-governance-understanding-the-ecosystem-and-current-maturity"><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">the work for the World Health Organization's Data Governance Summits in 2021</span></a><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">.&nbsp;</span></p><figure class="image image-style-align-center"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/platform1/image/upload/v1644257536/HIGH_RESOLUTION_OH_Ecosystem_Model_1_4768195a7a.png" alt="Overview of Platformable's value model for open health ecosystems, as described throughout the article"><figcaption>Source: Platformable's model of how value flows through open health ecosystems</figcaption></figure><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">In many cases, governments request regulators and policymakers to establish open health systems to optimise healthcare service delivery and spending, and to enable the use of health data to improve health and wellbeing. Regulators must consider data privacy, health technology assessments and ethical AI development in their policies.&nbsp;</span>&nbsp;</p><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Those with digital health resources can make these available via APIs as components that others can build with. Most often this takes the form of data, available via API, but can also be algorithms and risk calculators, open-source technologies, and other digital tooling that has ways to integrate via API so that they can be used as the raw ingredients in building new products, services or solutions. Health API providers create APIs, often to industry-based standards.</span></p><h2><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">The role of open health API providers</span></h2><figure class="image image_resized image-style-align-center" style="width:75%;"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/platform1/image/upload/v1644256839/API_providers_ef020d9d23.png"></figure><p>Providers make services available through APIs, for example, by creating access to datasets via APIs or by enabling services to be integrated via APIs. For example, we are seeing some providers share their risk calculators and diagnostic algorithms as APIs so that they can be integrated into software and medical equipment to enable in-device or in-service-software risk assessments. Typical API providers include:</p><ul><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Government health departments and statistics offices</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Healthcare industry</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Healthtech</span></li></ul><h2><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Key value enablers in an open health ecosystem</span></h2><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">How much value these APIs can create will depend on how well they are documented, and how secure they are. So developer experience and security and privacy are value enablers that can increase how much value is generated from the health APIs. Low developer experience makes it harder for others to integrate with the APIs and build products and services, and low privacy and security means consumers won’t trust the products built with the APIs.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Another important value enabler is a system of continuous engagement and continuous consent. Whereby every step of the way, health data ecosystem leaders and other stakeholders communicate the use of health data, share the value that is being generated, and describe how the risks and vulnerabilities are being addressed. And a certain level of consent increases accountability and reduces oversight of health data users.&nbsp;</span><br>&nbsp;</p><figure class="image image_resized image-style-align-center" style="width:75%;"><img src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/WBUpeNpy2o9ZiiH3Ns2IN0m9j11ALNmyYVhDZdqCuSt0kmQIe-02RPgmjHRY4lbFZkJaIX1KlM3QIxL3F3ISco9oy7YZT1_L88uu1W0EKMBKZlch-O5bLCrADqPbMF877rAjk3A7"><figcaption><span style="color:rgb(27,1,76);">A proposed approach to continuous engagement/continuous consent for building a trustworthy health data ecosystem (Source: Platformable's elaboration)</span></figcaption></figure><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">API tools providers and ICT systems can help leverage technology to systematically enable APIs to be used as building blocks by:&nbsp;</span></p><ul><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Creating common platforms for data governance</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Building APIs to best practices</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Using API lifecycle tools to make APIs available to API consumers.&nbsp;</span></li></ul><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">This will help enhance the potential value that can flow through an open health ecosystem.&nbsp;</span></p><h2><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"><strong>The role of open health API consumers</strong></span></h2><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">The health APIs are then used by healthcare organisations, non-government organisations (NGOs), governments, researchers, and the media to build products and services. This can happen directly and indirectly. Some examples include:&nbsp;</span></p><ul><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Health tech companies taking the health APIs and integrate each one individually into their products.&nbsp;</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Media drawing on available COVID-19 data to create dashboards to inform the public.</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Medical diagnostic tools using algorithms and risk calculators built with APIs.&nbsp;</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Governments using both algorithms and data via API to set thresholds of when the next stage of pandemic response should be established.&nbsp;</span></li><li><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">NGOs and governments using APIs to better allocate and distribute PPE.</span></li></ul><h2><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"><strong>Flow of trust in open health ecosystems&nbsp;</strong></span></h2><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">More than any other open ecosystem that we see, health requires an underpinning of trust and confidence at every step of the way. That's why we see continuous engagement/continuous consent as a core value enabler through which any potential benefits from APIs must flow.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">A flow of trust between API consumers and end-users is critical to the flow of value. Trust is developed when robust processes with Structural, Legal, and Technical data governance practices.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"><strong>Structural components</strong> establish oversight and guidance for data governance.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"><strong>Legal components</strong> of data governance help set clear boundaries and enable accountability frameworks to be established.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"><strong>Technical components</strong> help operationalise data governance and give data stewards and data processors promising practices that can be adapted to the local context.&nbsp;</span></p><figure class="image image-style-align-center"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/platform1/image/upload/v1644257473/flow_of_trust_1992a11fd2.png"><figcaption>Data governance practices are critical to the flow of trust</figcaption></figure><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">All of these together enable data sharing while protecting individual privacy, and create new partnerships that respect and value the positions of low-income countries, particularly in the Global South.&nbsp;</span>&nbsp;</p><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Health equity advocates also play an essential role in ensuring that the benefits from an open health ecosystem are distributed to those with the greatest health needs.&nbsp;</span></p><h2><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"><strong>How end users and beneficiaries receive value from open health ecosystems</strong></span></h2><figure class="image image-style-align-center"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/platform1/image/upload/v1644256457/end_users_bab2e2c3ae.png"><figcaption>End users and beneficiaries of an open health ecosystem</figcaption></figure><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">Now end-users are able to use those health tech products and services that have been built with the health APIs.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">The end-users contribute to and benefit from the value generated in an open health ecosystem. Everything from apps that help you track your nutrition or sleep patterns, medical devices that automatically distribute insulin, government and media dashboards, and platforms that allow community members to be more actively involved in their chronic health management: the digital products and services being created in an open health ecosystem are only just beginning!&nbsp;</span></p><p><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">At Platformable we are tracking the products being built and the value being generated, </span><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://platformable.com/#subscription"><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;">subscribe to our newsletter</span></a><span style="background-color:transparent;color:#000000;"> to be kept up to date on when our open health content and to be informed when we will be starting our open health trends reports in the coming months. You can also reach out and discuss your thoughts on our model with us, feel free to book a time for a chat with our analyst team:</span></p>

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Measuring Value in the Open Health Ecosystem: The Model

A model showing the flow of ASPI governance compared with the Software Development Lifecycle, and showing what artefacts are built at each step of the process

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API Governance model at Platformable