Stefaan Verhulst
Article by Beth Duff-Brown: “…So what steps did Taiwan take to protect its people? And could those steps be replicated here at home?
Stanford Health Policy’s Jason Wang, MD, PhD, an associate professor of pediatrics at Stanford Medicine who also has a PhD in policy analysis, credits his native Taiwan with using new technology and a robust pandemic prevention plan put into place at the 2003 SARS outbreak.
“The Taiwan government established the National Health Command Center (NHCC) after SARS and it’s become part of a disaster management center that focuses on large-outbreak responses and acts as the operational command point for direct communications,” said Wang, a pediatrician and the director of the Center for Policy, Outcomes, and Prevention at Stanford. The NHCC also established the Central Epidemic Command Center, which was activated in early January.
“And Taiwan rapidly produced and implemented a list of at least 124 action items in the past five weeks to protect public health,” Wang said. “The policies and actions go beyond border control because they recognized that that wasn’t enough.”
Wang outlines the measures Taiwan took in the last six weeks in an article published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“Given the continual spread of COVID-19 around the world, understanding the action items that were implemented quickly in Taiwan, and the effectiveness of these actions in preventing a large-scale epidemic, may be instructive for other countries,” Wang and his co-authors wrote.
Within the last five weeks, Wang said, the Taiwan epidemic command center rapidly implemented those 124 action items, including border control from the air and sea, case identification using new data and technology, quarantine of suspicious cases, educating the public while fighting misinformation, negotiating with other countries — and formulating policies for schools and businesses to follow.
Big Data Analytics
The authors note that Taiwan integrated its national health insurance database with its immigration and customs database to begin the creation of big data for analytics. That allowed them case identification by generating real-time alerts during a clinical visit based on travel history and clinical symptoms.
Taipei also used Quick Response (QR) code scanning and online reporting of travel history and health symptoms to classify travelers’ infectious risks based on flight origin and travel history in the last 14 days. People who had not traveled to high-risk areas were sent a health declaration border pass via SMS for faster immigration clearance; those who had traveled to high-risk areas were quarantined at home and tracked through their mobile phones to ensure that they stayed home during the incubation period.
The country also instituted a toll-free hotline for citizens to report suspicious symptoms in themselves or others. As the disease progressed, the government called on major cities to establish their own hotlines so that the main hotline would not become jammed….(More)”.
Paper by Jeroen van der Heijden: “This research paper presents findings from a broad scoping of the international academic literature on the use of systems thinking and systems science in regulatory governance and practice. It builds on a systematic review of peer-reviewed articles published in the top 15 journals for regulatory scholarship. The aim of the research paper is to introduce those working in a regulatory environment to the key concepts of systems thinking and systems science, and to discuss the state of the art of regulatory knowledge on these topics.
It addresses five themes:
(1) the evolution of systems thinking,
(2) examples of systems thinking from the academic literature,
(3) evidence of how systems thinking helps improving regulatory governance, and
(4) the epistemic challenges and
(5) ethical challenges that come with applying systems thinking to regulatory governance and practice….(More)”.
Paper by Nissim Cohen and Hadar Yoana Jabotinsky: “Whilst there is widespread agreement among decision makers that fostering innovation should be a priority, there is far less consensus on how to achieve this objective. Given the fact that the effects of new technologies are often unknown, in the early stages of technological development, there might be insufficient information for conducting a cost-benefit analysis. Under uncertainty, using strict regulatory measures might kill the innovation before the market matures, resulting in inefficiency. Moreover, strict regulation can infringe on entrepreneurs’ right to conduct a business. In addition, using strict regulation without fully understanding the technology and the harm it might cause consumers might not provide them with the needed protection. We argue that when regulating new technologies, the use of nudges is a desirable policy tool, superior to most other policy tools available to regulators. Nudging leaves room for technological developments while allowing the regulators to rely on the Wisdom of the Crowd to move regulation in the most efficient direction….(More)”.
Paper by Dieter Pfoser: “The crowdsourcing of geographic information addresses the collection of geospatial data contributed by non-expert users and the aggregation of these data into meaningful geospatial datasets. While crowdsourcing generally implies a coordinated bottom-up
grass-roots effort to contribute information, in the context of geospatial data the term volunteered geographic information (VGI) specifically refers to a dedicated collection effort inviting non-expert users to contribute. A prominent example here is the OpenStreetMap effort focusing on map datasets. Crowdsourcing geospatial data is an evolving research area that covers efforts ranging from mining GPS tracking data to using social media content to profile population dynamics…(More)”.
Article by Kassie Scott: “People in Milwaukee’s Amani neighborhood are using data to identify safety issues and build relationships with the police. It’s a story of community-engaged research at its best.
In 2017, the Milwaukee Police Department received a grant under the federal Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation program, now called the Community Based Crime Reduction Program, whose purpose is to bridge the gap between practitioners and researchers and advance the use of data in making communities safer. Because of its close ties in the Amani neighborhood, the Dominican Center was selected to lead this initiative, known as the Amani Safety Initiative, and they partnered with local churches, the district attorney’s office, LISC-Milwaukee, and others. To support the effort with data and coaching, the police department contracted with Data You Can Use.
Together with Data You Can Use, the Amani Safety Initiative team first implemented a survey to gauge perceptions of public safety and police legitimacy. Neighborhood ambassadors were trained (and paid) to conduct the survey themselves, going door to door to gather the information from nearly 300 of their neighbors. The ambassadors shared these results with their neighborhood during what they called “data chats.” They also printed summary survey results on door hangers, which they distributed throughout the neighborhood.
Neighbors and community organizations were surprised by the survey results. Though violent crime and mistrust in the police were commonly thought to be the biggest issues, the data showed that residents were most concerned about traffic safety. Ultimately, residents decided to post slow-down signs in intersections.
This project stands out for letting the people in the neighborhood lead the way. Neighbors collected data, shared results, and took action. The partnership between neighbors, police, and local organizations shows how people can drive decision-making for their neighborhood.
The larger story is one of social cohesion and mutual trust. Through participating in the initiative and learning more about their neighborhood, Amani neighbors built stronger relationships with the police. The police began coming to neighborhood community meetings, which helped them build relationships with people in the community and understand the challenges they face….(More).
Paper by Peter John and Fredrik M. Sjoberg: “Citizens respond to information about democracy according to whether they are electoral winners or losers. This difference occurs both at the national and constituency level. Democratic interventions that seek to promote accountability and transparency might therefore impact citizens differentially depending on the political party that people support. In a placebo-controlled experimental design, carried out in Kenya, we find that democracy promotion boosts the external efficacy and political participation of ruling party partisans, but leaves those from the opposition unaffected. These responses—based on national incumbency—are further conditioned by the partisanship of the MP of the constituency where the voter resides. These findings throw new light on the impact of civic interventions, such as Get Out the Vote (GOTV) and civic education, common in Africa as well as elsewhere, as we show their benefits accrue to the electoral winners rather than to the losers…(More)”.
Jordan Ostapchuk at RadicalXChange: “Urban planning as a professional discipline is implicitly flawed towards its approach to the design of cities. The term “urban planning” is a category error—it is a mistake to view urban environments as something that can be planned.
This stems from our modern desire to make messy systems ‘legible’ through maps, plans, strategies, and grids. It temporarily suppresses the underlying messiness without ever solving it.
The dominant urban planning philosophy of today assumes two contradictory stances.
On one hand, it assumes people know what is best for their life and can faithfully express it via the virtues of the free market. “If people want single family homes with yards, far from the activity of the city centre, then by rights the market has provided!” (Ignoring the five-decade legacy of race-driven zoning policies, loss-making municipal infrastructure subsidies, and hidden costs to health and wellbeing.)
On the other hand, contemporary urban planning assumes that people have no idea what is best for their life and must be saved from their follies by the maternal hand of strict zoning policies, design guidelines, and municipal bylaws. “If we do not intervene, neighbourhoods will devolve into chaos; trust the experts to masterplan your streets and buildings!” (Ignoring the irony of assuming a central bureaucrat can decide what is best for a neighbourhood that they do not live in, work in, or worship in. And the repeated failures of historically master-planned cities and the prevalence of bylaw exemptions.)
There is a better way to think about cities, how they evolve and our role in the process.
It helps to start with two fundamental truths:
- Incredibly complex systems arise from a set of very simple rules
- We cannot predict the future, but we can invent it.
By thinking about the city differently, we can reframe “the kind of problem a city is” as Jane Jacobs said, one that is better suited to our 21st century challenges and opportunities.
We need to redefine our thinking about cities as collections of interactions, rather than just physical spaces. We should think about cities as market-based, and socially-driven systems.
Michael Batty defines cities as “…aggregates of multiple decision-making processes that generate designs and decisions pertaining to the way we organize our social and economic activities in space and time,” and this is the way they will be approached here. To invent future cities, we must create a system of “radically innovative political economies and social technologies that are truer to the richness of our diversely shared lives” per RadicalxChange’s mission…(More)”.
Paper by Nahema Marchal: “Concerns over digital interference in elections are widespread. Yet evidence of its impact is still thin and fragmented. How do malicious uses of social media shape, transform, and distort democratic processes? And how should we characterize this impact? Existing research into the effects of social media manipulation has largely focused on measuring its purported impact on opinion swings and voting behavior. Though laudable, this focus might be too reductive. Drawing on normative theories of liberal democracy, in this paper I argue that the threat of digital interference does not lie in its capacity to change people’s views but rather in its power to undermine popular perceptions of electoral integrity, with potentially far-reaching consequences for public trust. Following this assessment, I formulate a preliminary research agenda and highlight previously overlooked relationships that could be explored to better understand how malicious uses of social media might shape such attitudes and to what effect….(More)”.
Payal Arora and Hallam Stevens at First Monday: “This special issue looks closely at contemporary data systems in diverse global contexts and through this set of papers, highlights the struggles we face as we negotiate efficiency and innovation with universal human rights and social inclusion. The studies presented in these essays are situated in diverse models of policy-making, governance, and/or activism across borders. Attention to big data governance in western contexts has tended to highlight how data increases state and corporate surveillance of citizens, affecting rights to privacy. By moving beyond Euro-American borders — to places such as Africa, India, China, and Singapore — we show here how data regimes are motivated and understood on very different terms….(More)”.
Book by Susheel Chhabra: “In recent years, the engagement of stakeholders has become imperative for the overall success of an organization. As the global business landscape continues to evolve, promoting modern leadership techniques and engagement with the community have become two key tactics for organizations to remain competitive in the current market. Understanding and implementing these methodologies is pivotal for professionals and researchers around the globe.
Civic Engagement Frameworks and Strategic Leadership Practices for Organization Development is a critical reference source that provides vital research on the implementation of strategic leadership techniques for promoting civic engagement and sustaining organizational success. While highlighting topics such as social media strategies, analytical tools, and ethical interventions, this book is ideally designed for managers, executives, politicians, researchers, business specialists, government professionals, consultants, academicians, and students seeking current research on the use of civic engagement and strategic leadership initiatives for the overall development of organizations….(More)”.