System dynamics modelling of public ICT platforms

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to show how system dynamics modelling can be applied to simulate the behavior of information communication technology based platforms to formulate and validate strategies or development policies of these platforms in the public sector. Typical platforms in the domain of public sector for instance are mobile apps connecting the sides of users and developers, or horizontal or vertical government portals connecting different authorities on one side and users or corporations on the other side. We show in our contribution how system dynamics provides new insights for modelling two-sided markets in general and public ICT platforms in particular. Conclusions and results of our work are mainly theoretical: as an initial step we extended the classic microeconomic equilibrium models mainly concerned with how to determine pricing of the opposing sides into more general parameters of platform quality, externalities and causality analysis of different variables. Based on these theoretical models we suggest simple inference to policy making and some pragmatic decisions in connections with public ICT platforms.