Civil Servants as Builders: Enabling Non-IT Staff to Develop Secure Python and R Tools
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2025
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| _version_ | 1866912530867159040 |
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| author | Sharma, Prashant |
| author_facet | Sharma, Prashant |
| contents | Current digital government literature focuses on professional in-house IT teams, specialized digital service teams, vendor-developed systems, or proprietary low-code/no-code tools. Almost no scholarship addresses a growing middle ground: technically skilled civil servants outside formal IT roles who can write real code but lack a sanctioned, secure path to deploy their work. This paper introduces a limits-aware, open-source and replicable platform that enables such public servants to develop, peer review, and deploy small-scale, domain-specific applications within government networks via a sandboxed, auditable workflow. By combining Jupyter Notebooks, preapproved open-source libraries, and lightweight governance, the platform works within institutional constraints such as procurement rules and IT security policies while avoiding vendor lock-in. Unlike low/no-code approaches, it preserves and enhances civil servants' programming skills, keeping them technically competitive with their private-sector peers. This contribution fills a critical gap, offering a replicable model for public-sector skill retention, resilience, and bottom-up digital transformation. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_07203 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Civil Servants as Builders: Enabling Non-IT Staff to Develop Secure Python and R Tools Sharma, Prashant Human-Computer Interaction Cryptography and Security Software Engineering Current digital government literature focuses on professional in-house IT teams, specialized digital service teams, vendor-developed systems, or proprietary low-code/no-code tools. Almost no scholarship addresses a growing middle ground: technically skilled civil servants outside formal IT roles who can write real code but lack a sanctioned, secure path to deploy their work. This paper introduces a limits-aware, open-source and replicable platform that enables such public servants to develop, peer review, and deploy small-scale, domain-specific applications within government networks via a sandboxed, auditable workflow. By combining Jupyter Notebooks, preapproved open-source libraries, and lightweight governance, the platform works within institutional constraints such as procurement rules and IT security policies while avoiding vendor lock-in. Unlike low/no-code approaches, it preserves and enhances civil servants' programming skills, keeping them technically competitive with their private-sector peers. This contribution fills a critical gap, offering a replicable model for public-sector skill retention, resilience, and bottom-up digital transformation. |
| title | Civil Servants as Builders: Enabling Non-IT Staff to Develop Secure Python and R Tools |
| topic | Human-Computer Interaction Cryptography and Security Software Engineering |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.07203 |