Case Centre resources

In May 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Estonia's Ministry of Social Affairs unexpectedly announced that vaccinations would be opened to all Estonians over 16 years old – 500,000 people – in just one week's time. Up until then, the ministry had gradually made vaccines available to smaller age brackets, with citizens signing up for appointments via the existing national digital patient portal, Digilugu. Even with this staggered approach, the platform had crashed. 

Estonia's Chief Information Officer (CIO) Siim Sikkut worried that this larger influx of users would again stall the system. Another crash not only threatened to delay vaccinations, but also to disrupt regular healthcare services and damage citizens' trust in digital services. Sikkut had raised his concerns with the social affairs ministry and proposed an alternative solution: to work with a group of start-ups that offered to build a new platform. But the ministry, generally considered a digital laggard, believed Digilugu was the best option for delivery in a complex health system on a tight deadline. As CIO, Sikkut did not have direct authority over the digital decisions in the social affairs ministry, but he had to determine what, if anything, he could do as the government's digital services seemed headed towards another failure.

This case study focuses on the phenomenon of pens’ blackout in Brazil where efforts to reduce corruption and increase the authority of control bodies have caused civil servants to avoid taking decisions for fear of being penalised. The case can be used to teach concepts such as how laws and control institutions can backfire by deterring honest civil servants; the role of legal uncertainty and audit; the relationship between executive and control authorities; and how to protect and promote discretion and innovation in the public service.

In June 2022, four Senators, two Republican and two Democrat, gathered in the basement of the US Senate to negotiate the details of what they hoped would become the US’s first national gun safety legislation in decades. Such bipartisan negotiations had long seemed impossible. Debates of gun-related legislation had historically been dominated by the influential National Rifle Association (NRA), which vehemently defended the right to bear arms through a large grassroots base and direct pressure on politicians. Gun safety advocates, on the other hand, had failed to convince politicians to support their mission, struggling to amass enough funding and grassroots support to influence political campaigns – even when the majority of Americans supported stricter gun laws. But gradually over the 2010s, a few large gun-safety activist groups emerged and pursued new strategies, and by the 2020s, they were seeing some political victories at the local and state level.

This had given hope to Democrat Senator Chris Murphy who had supported gun safety since 2012. But now his colleague, Republican Senator John Cornyn, threatened to walk away from the negotiations over the inclusion of ‘red flag laws’, a tool to remove guns from individuals deemed to be at extreme risk to themselves or others. The provision was championed by gun safety groups and derided by the NRA. Murphy did not want to lose this potential moment for change, and he had to figure out if he could hold the coalition together.