10 of the World's Top Tech-Enabled Public Innovations

Source: Technology Review

Successful governments are discovering that practical and effective technology strategies enable them to address public sector challenges as well as deliver service improvements. The top ten govtech (government technology) initiatives that show the most impact pertain to these topics : government of things, blockchain, service delivery, economic sustainability and big cities/bigger data. Here are the top 10 initiatives worldwide:

Government of Things:

1. Sweden's national railway is conducting an NFC payment trial where customers can choose to embed a microchip under the skin of their hands. This payment method trial pushes well beyond the e-ticket method most countries consider innovative.

2. India currently has a biometric identity card network called the Aadhaar Program that serves more than 1 billion citizens. The program distributes welfare services annually that approach $40 million. 

Blockchain:

3. Ghana is working with Bitland to develop a national land registry built on the tokens from blockchain. 

4. The United Arab Emirates is investing in a digital transaction platform based on blockchain that will serve the entire government. The goal will be to remove close to 100 million official documents from government processes. The project is already in pilot testing with more than 20 current blockchain use cases. 

Service Delivery and Economic Sustainability

5. The United Kingdom will aim to provide 1.5 million more citizens with access to cognitive therapy services by 2021 by using AI and digital health providers. One of these providers, Ieso, uses text messaging to provide cognitive behavior therapy. 

6. Tanzania is fighting whitefly-borne diseases by using portable, DNA sequencing devices to identify virus strains and enable proactive measures. 

7. The Development Bank of Japan has invested heavily into a space launch company who has goals of developing lunar products financed by displaying advertisements on the moon. 


Big Cities, Bigger Data 

8. Korea has built an autonomous-driving facility for R&D so large it's called K-city.

9. Hangzhou partnered with Alibaba to develop an AI platform called City Brain that has help decrease traffic congestion by 10 percent by rerouting it.

10. Australia launched a National City Performance Framework (a policy and planning tool based on data) to help boost the rollout of Smart Cities around the country. 

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