{"ID":2884057,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.07203","arxiv_id":"2508.07203","title":"Civil Servants as Builders: Enabling Non-IT Staff to Develop Secure Python and R Tools","abstract":"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.","short_abstract":"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...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.07203","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.07203v1","authors":"[\"Prashant Sharma\"]","published":"2025-08-10T06:56:22Z","proceeding":"cs.HC","tasks":"[\"cs.HC\",\"cs.CR\",\"cs.SE\"]","methods":"[]","has_code":false}