Stefaan Verhulst
Blog post by Rosie Beacon: “Covid-19 has created an unprecedented challenge for parliaments and legislatures. Social distancing and restrictions on movement have forced parliaments to consider new methods of scrutiny, debate, and voting. The immediate challenge was simply to replicate existing procedures remotely, but the crisis has presented a unique window of opportunity to innovate.
As policymakers slowly transition back to “normal”, they should not easily dismiss the potential of this new relationship between democracy and technology. Parliamentarians should use what they’ve learned and the expertise of the democracy tech and deliberative democracy community to build greater trust in public institutions and open up traditional processes to wider deliberation, bringing people closer to the source of democratic power.
This note sets out some of the most interesting examples of crisis-led parliamentary innovation from around the world and combines it with some of the lessons we already know from democracy and deliberative tech to chart a way forward.
There are five core principles political leaders should embrace from this great experiment in digital parliamentary democracy:
- Discover and adopt: The world’s parliaments and legislatures have been through the same challenge. This is an opportunity to learn and improve democratic engagement in the long-term.
- Experiment with multiple tools: There is no one holistic approach to applying digital tools in any democracy. Some will work, others will fail – technology does not promise infallibility.
- Embrace openness: Where things can be open, experiment with using this to encourage open dialogue and diversify ideas in the democratic and representative process.
- Don’t start from scratch: Learn how the deliberative democracy community is already using technology to help remake representative systems and better connect to communities.
- Use multi-disciplinary approaches: Create diverse teams, with diverse skill sets. Build flexible tools that meet today’s needs of democracies, citizens and representatives.
Approaches From Around the World
The approaches globally to Covid-19 continuity have been varied depending on the geographical, political and social context, but they generally follow one of these scenarios:
- Replicating everything using digital tools – Welsh Assembly, Crown dependencies (Jersey, Isle of Man),Brazil
- Using technology in every way possible to continue the current parliamentary agenda online.
- Moving priority processes online, deprioritising the rest – France National Assembly,New Zealand, Canada
- No physical presence in parliaments and prioritising the most important elements of the current parliamentary agenda, usually Covid-19-related legislation, to adapt for online continuation.
- Shifting what you can online while maintaining a minimal physical parliament – Denmark, Germany, UK
- Hybrid parliaments appear to be a popular choice for larger parliaments. This generally allows for the parliamentary agenda to continue with amendments to how certain procedures are conducted.
- Reducing need for physical attendance and moving nothing online – Ireland, Sweden
- Houses can continue to sit in quorum (an agreed proportion of MPs representative of overall party representation), but certain parts of legislative agenda have been suspended for the time being….(More)”.
Paper by Abdullah Almaatouq et al: “Social networks continuously change as new ties are created and existing ones fade. It is widely acknowledged that our social embedding has a substantial impact on what information we receive and how we form beliefs and make decisions. However, most empirical studies on the role of social networks in collective intelligence have overlooked the dynamic nature of social networks and its role in fostering adaptive collective intelligence. Therefore, little is known about how groups of individuals dynamically modify their local connections and, accordingly, the topology of the network of interactions to respond to changing environmental conditions. In this paper, we address this question through a series of behavioral experiments and supporting simulations. Our results reveal that, in the presence of plasticity and feedback, social networks can adapt to biased and changing information environments and produce collective estimates that are more accurate than their best-performing member. To explain these results, we explore two mechanisms: 1) a global-adaptation mechanism where the structural connectivity of the network itself changes such that it amplifies the estimates of high-performing members within the group (i.e., the network “edges” encode the computation); and 2) a local-adaptation mechanism where accurate individuals are more resistant to social influence (i.e., adjustments to the attributes of the “node” in the network); therefore, their initial belief is disproportionately weighted in the collective estimate. Our findings substantiate the role of social-network plasticity and feedback as key adaptive mechanisms for refining individual and collective judgments….(More)”.
Roadmap by the United Nations System: “Since 2018, the Secretary-General has pursued an ambitious agenda to prepare the UN System for the challenges of the 21st century. In lockstep with other structural UN reforms, he has launched a portfolio of initiatives through the CEB to help transform system-wide approaches to new technologies, innovation and data. Driven by the urgency and ambition of the “Decade of Action”, these initiatives are designed to nurture cross-cutting capabilities the UN System will need to deliver better “for people and planet”. Unlocking data and harnessing the potential of statistics will be critical to the success of UN reform.
Recognizing that data are a strategic asset for the UN System, the UN Secretary-General’s overarching Data Strategy sets out a vision for a “data ecosystem that maximizes the value of our data assets for our organizations and the stakeholders we serve”, including high-level objectives, principles, core workstreams and concrete system-wide data initiatives. The strategy signals that improving how we collect, manage, use and share data should be a crosscutting strategic concern: Across all pillars of the UN System, across programmes and operations, and across all level of our organizations.
The System-wide Roadmap for Innovating UN Data and Statistics contributes to the overall objectives of the Data Strategy of the Secretary-General that constitutes a framework to support the Roadmap as a priority initiative. The two strategic plans converge around a vision that recognizes the power of data and stimulates the United Nations to embrace a more coherent and modern approach to data…(More)”.
Maroosha Muzaffar at OZY: “At the G-20 summit last June, when Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe introduced a resolution endorsing the free flow of data across borders, India, South Africa and Indonesia refused to sign it. India’s then foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale described data as a “new form of wealth” to explain the country’s reluctance to part with it.
It wasn’t an isolated standoff. President Donald Trump’s trade war with China and tariff battles with India and Europe dominated the global financial discourse in the months before the coronavirus crisis. But the next trade conflict after the pandemic eases is already brewing, and it won’t involve only tariffs on products. It’ll be focused on territorial control of data.
A growing number of emerging economies with giant populations, like China, India, Nigeria, Indonesia and South Africa, are leveraging the markets they offer to demand that foreign firms keep the data they gather from these countries within their borders, and not on servers in the West. That’s leading to rising tensions over “data localization,” especially with the U.S., which has an overall global trade deficit but enjoys a massive trade surplus in digital services — in good measure because of its control over global data, say experts.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi dangled his country’s 1.3 billion-strong market during a visit to the U.S. last September, calling data the “new gold.” China has 13 data localization laws that span all sectors of life — all data on Chinese nationals and infrastructure must be stored within the country. Nigeria has a similar requirement. An Indian government panel has meanwhile recommended that New Delhi do the same…(More)”.
Stefaan G. Verhulst at the Harvard Business Review: “Twenty years ago, Kevin Rivette and David Kline wrote a book about the hidden value contained within companies’ underutilized patents. These patents, Rivette and Kline argued, represented “Rembrandts in the Attic” (the title of their book). Patents, the authors suggested, shouldn’t be seen merely as passive properties, but as strategic assets — a “new currency” that could be deployed in the quest for competition, brand reputation, and advances in research and development.
We are still living in the knowledge economy, and organizations are still trying to figure out how to unlock under-utilized assets. But the currency has changed: Today’s Rembrandts in the attic are data.
It is widely accepted now that the vast amounts of data that companies generate represents a tremendous repository of potential value. This value is monetary, and also social; it contains terrific potential to impact the public good. But do organizations — and do we as a society — know how to unlock this value? Do we know how to find the insights hidden in our digital attics and use them to improve society and peoples’ lives?
In what follows, I outline four steps that could help organizations maximize their data assets for public good. If there is an overarching theme, it is about the value of re-using data. Recent years have seen a growing open data movement, in which previously siloed government datasets have been made accessible to outside groups. Despite occasional trepidation on the part of data holders, research has consistently shown that such initiatives can be value-enhancing for both data holders and society. The same is true for private sector data assets. Better and more transparent reuse of data is arguably the single most important measure we can take to unleash this dual potential.
To help maximize data for the public good, we need to:
- Develop methodologies to measure the value of data...
- Develop structures to incentivize collaboration. ….
- Encourage data collaboratives. …
- Identify and nurture data stewards. …(More)”
Beth Noveck and Dane Gambrell at the Hill: “…While an important first step in helping to resume operations, Congress needs to follow the lead of those many legislatures around the world who have changed their laws and rules and are using technology to continue to legislate, conduct oversight and even innovate.
Though efforts to restart by adopting proxy voting are a step in the right direction, they do not go far enough to create what Georgetown University’s Lorelei Kelly calls the “modern and safe digital infrastructure for the world’s most powerful national legislature.”
Congress has all but shut down since March. While the Senate formally “re-opened” on May 4, the chamber is operating under restrictive new guidelines, with hearings largely closed to the public and lawmakers advised to bring only a skeleton crew to run their offices. Considering that the average age of a senator is 63 and the average age of a Member of the House is 58, this caution comes as no surprise.
Yet when we take into account that parliaments around the world from New Zealand to the Maldives are holding committee meetings, running plenary sessions, voting and even engaging the public in the lawmaking process online, we should be asking Congress to do more faster.
Instead, bitter partisan wrangling — with Republicans accusing Democrats of taking advantage of social distancing to launch a power grab and Democrats accusing Republicans of failing to exercise oversight — is delaying the adoption of long available and easy to use technologies. More than a left-right issue, moving online is a top-down issue with leadership of both parties using the crisis to consolidate power.
Working online
The Parliament of the United Kingdom, for example, is one of dozens of legislatures turning to online video conferencing tools such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Cisco Web Meetings and Google Hangouts to do plenary or committee meetings. After 800 years, lawmakers in the House of Commons convened the first-ever “virtual Parliament” at the end of April. In this hybrid approach, some MPs were present in the legislative chamber while most joined remotely using Zoom…(More)”.
Reema Patel at Significance: “There is a saying, incorrectly attributed to Mark Twain, that states: “History never repeat itself but it rhymes”. Seeking to understand the implications of the current crisis for the effective use of data, I’ve drawn on the nineteenth-century cholera outbreak in London’s Soho to identify some “rhyming patterns” that might inform our approaches to data use and governance at this time of public health crisis.
Where better to begin than with the work of Victorian pioneer John Snow? In 1854, Snow’s use of a dot map to illustrate clusters of cholera cases around public water pumps, and of statistics to establish the connection between the quality of water sources and cholera outbreaks, led to a breakthrough in public health interventions – and, famously, the removal of the handle of a water pump in Broad Street.
Data is vital
We owe a lot to Snow, especially now. His examples teaches us that data has a central role to play in saving lives, and that the effective use of (and access to) data is critical for enabling timely responses to public health emergencies.
Take, for instance, transport app CityMapper’s rapid redeployment of its aggregated transport data. In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, this formed part of an analysis of compliance with social distancing restrictions across a range of European cities. There is also the US-based health weather map, which uses anonymised and aggregated data to visualise fever, specifically influenza-like illnesses. This data helped model early indications of where, and how quickly, Covid-19 was spreading….
Ethics and human rights still matter
As the current crisis evolves, many have expressed concern that the pandemic will be used to justify the rapid roll out of surveillance technologies that do not meet ethical and human rights standards, and that this will be done in the name of the “public good”. Examples of these technologies include symptom- and contact-tracing applications. Privacy experts are also increasingly concerned that governments will be trading off more personal data than is necessary or proportionate to respond to the public health crisis.
Many ethical and human rights considerations (including those listed at the bottom of this piece) are at risk of being overlooked at this time of emergency, and governments would be wise not to press ahead regardless, ignoring legitimate concerns about rights and standards. Instead, policymakers should begin to address these concerns by asking how we can prepare (now and in future) to establish clear and trusted boundaries for the use of data (personal and non-personal) in such crises.
Democratic states in Europe and the US have not, in recent memory, prioritised infrastructures and systems for a crisis of this scale – and this has contributed to our current predicament. Contrast this with Singapore, which suffered outbreaks of SARS and H1N1, and channelled this experience into implementing pandemic preparedness measures.
We cannot undo the past, but we can begin planning and preparing constructively for the future, and that means strengthening global coordination and finding mechanisms to share learning internationally. Getting the right data infrastructure in place has a central role to play in addressing ethical and human rights concerns around the use of data….(More)”.
Blog by Helen Kara: “Since lockdown began, researchers have been discussing how best to change our methods. Of the ‘big three’ – questionnaires, interviews, and focus groups – only questionnaires are still being used in much the same way. There are no face-to-face interviews or focus groups, though interviews can still be held by telephone and both can be done online. However, doing research online comes with new ethical problems. Some organisations are forbidding the use of Zoom because it has had serious security problems, others are promoting the use of Jitsi because it is open source.
I’ve been thinking about appropriate methods and I have come up with three options I think are particularly worth considering at this time: documentary research, autoethnography, and digital methods. These are all comparatively new approaches and each offers scope for considerable creativity. Documentary research seems to be the oldest; I understand that its first textbook, A Matter of Record by UK academic John Scott, was published in 1990. Autoethnography was devised by US academic Carolyn Ellis in the 1990s, and digital methods have developed as technological devices have become more available to more people through the 21st century….
Doing research in a pandemic also requires considerable thought about ethics. I have long argued that ethical considerations should start at the research question, and I believe that is even more crucial at present. Does this research need doing – or does it need doing now, in the middle of a global collective trauma? If not, then don’t do that research, or postpone it until life is easier. Alternatively, you may be doing urgent research to help combat COVID19, or important research that will go towards a qualification, or have some other good reason. In which case, fine, and the next ethical question is: how can my research be done in a way that places the least burden on others? The methods introduced above all offer scope for conducting empirical research without requiring much input from other people. Right now, everyone is upset; many are worried about their health, income, housing, and/or loved ones; increasing numbers are recently bereaved. Therefore everyone is vulnerable, and so needs more care and kindness than usual. This includes potential participants and it also includes researchers. We need to choose our methods with great care for us all….(More)”.
Stuti Khemani at the WorldBank: “Legitimacy in the time of COVID-19 can be understood as the ability of leaders to win compliance with new public health orders because people share a widespread belief that everyone is complying. This perspective, building on the logic of game theory, which can help explain strategic interactions among large numbers of people in a society or polity, yields a powerful insight: that governments in developing countries, as the first line of defense against a life-threatening disease, have received a windfall of legitimacy.
On the one hand, this legitimacy windfall can be wasted, or worse, used to intensify divisive politics, grab power, and install government at the commanding heights of the economy and society, even after the pandemic recedes. On the other hand, for reform leaders and international development partners that are motivated to improve governance for economic development, the crisis presents opportunities to build trust in public institutions. In this task, international organizations have a comparative advantage precisely because they are not part of domestic political games. But this dynamic may require changing how donors typically approach corruption in developing countries (in the context of financial assistance to countries with institutional weaknesses that predate the crisis); it may also necessitate change in how reform leaders in countries use the advantage of external partners to exert pressure for reform. The availability and strategic communication of credible, nonideological, and nonpartisan knowledge could enable societies to change a vicious cycle of high levels of corruption/low levels of trust to a virtuous one of high levels of trust and low levels of corruption….(More)”.
Paper by Heiko Richter: “The tremendous rate of technological advancement in recent years has fostered a policy de-bate about improving the state’s access to privately held data (‘B2G data sharing’). Access to such ‘data of general interest’ can significantly improve social welfare and serve the common good. At the same time, expanding the state’s access to privately held data poses risks. This chapter inquires into the potential and limits of mandatory access rules, which would oblige private undertakings to grant access to data for specific purposes that lie in the public interest. The article discusses the key questions that access rules should address and develops general principles for designing and implementing such rules. It puts particular emphasis on the opportunities and limitations for the implementation of horizontal B2G access frameworks. Finally, the chapter outlines concrete recommendations for legislative reforms….(More)”.