OII Politics and the Internet Seminar Series

There Ain’t No ‘e’ in PPE – How do we fill the digital skills gap at the top levels of government and politics?

Previous epochal technologies (e.g steam, nuclear) affected politics and government but didn’t require leaders to develop any brand new, specialist skills in order to govern effectively. You didn’t have to be a master of atomic physics to understand what the Bomb would do, and reading classic texts like Machiavelli could still help you negotiate, even with the Soviets. But the digital revolution is different. It brings policy options to the table that simply didn’t exist before, and makes the standard forms of public sector delivery implode (think Healthcare.gov or the NHS IT disaster). In this seminar, Tom discusses the nature of this gap, and float some possible solutions.

Please note that this seminar was conducted ‘off-the-record’ under Chatham House rules.