Politics, Bureaucracy and Successful Governance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Inaugural lecture by K.J. Meier: “One of the major questions, perhaps the major question, in the field of public administration is how to reconcile the need for bureaucracy with the democratic process. Bureaucracies after all are not seen as democratic institutions and operate based on hierarchy and expertise rather than popular will (see Mosher 1968). I take a distinctly minority view in the field, seeing bureaucracy not so much as a threat to democracy in existing mature democracies but as a necessary precondition for the existence of democracy in modern society (Meier 1997).

Democracy is a system of governance with high transactions costs that seeks democratic ideals of representation, equity, and fairness with only modest, if any, concern for efficiency. Effective bureaucracies are the institutions that produce the outcomes that build public support for democracy and in a sense generate the surplus that allows democratic processes to survive and flourish. Although bureaucracies may have none of the trappings of democracy internally, their role in contributing to democratic governance means that they should also be considered democratic institutions. Scholars, politicians, and citizens need to be concerned about preserving and protecting bureaucracy just as they seek to preserve and protect our official institutions of democracy.

Within the general theme of bureaucracy and democracy, this lecture will address two major concerns – (1) the failure of politics which severs the crucial link between voters and elected officials and poses major challenges to bureaucrats seeking to administer effective programs, and (2) the subsequent need for bureaucracy to also become an institution that represents the public. Within this concern about bureaucratic representation, the lecture will address how bureaucracies can assess the needs of citizens, and more narrowly how representative bureaucracy can be and is instrumental to the bureaucracy, and finally the limits of symbolic representation within bureaucracies….(More)”.

Discretion and the Quest for Controlled Freedom

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Tony Evans and Peter Hupe: “Actors in public situations are in some ways subject to control while also exercising freedom. Discretion in contemporary societies is increasingly characterized by cross-cutting systems of control as well as by conflicting conceptions of knowledge and expertise. There is also the paradox of the autonomous individual empowered by social media while simultaneously being subject to its algorithms and surveillance. Narrow disciplinary conceptions of discretion—whether they come from law, economics, sociology or politics—are of limited value in understanding the contemporary dynamics of discretion. This chapter describes these phenomena and also seeks to capture the operation of discretion in different settings while examining its role and evaluating its use. It is argued that we need to recognize developing debates within disciplines, cross-fertilization between them and innovative developments at the margins of those disciplines. That enables the conceptualization of the natures, operations and evaluations of discretion as a context-sensitive and dynamic idea….(More)”.

Government wants access to personal data while it pushes privacy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Sara Fischer and Scott Rosenberg at Axios: “Over the past two years, the U.S. government has tried to rein in how major tech companies use the personal data they’ve gathered on their customers. At the same time, government agencies are themselves seeking to harness those troves of data.

Why it matters: Tech platforms use personal information to target ads, whereas the government can use it to prevent and solve crimes, deliver benefits to citizens — or (illegally) target political dissent.

Driving the news: A new report from the Wall Street Journal details the ways in which family DNA testing sites like FamilyTreeDNA are pressured by the FBI to hand over customer data to help solve criminal cases using DNA.

  • The trend has privacy experts worried about the potential implications of the government having access to large pools of genetic data, even though many people whose data is included never agreed to its use for that purpose.

The FBI has particular interest in data from genetic and social media sites, because it could help solve crimes and protect the public.

  • For example, the FBI is “soliciting proposals from outside vendors for a contract to pull vast quantities of public data” from Facebook, Twitter Inc. and other social media companies,“ the Wall Street Journal reports.
  • The request is meant to help the agency surveil social behavior to “mitigate multifaceted threats, while ensuring all privacy and civil liberties compliance requirements are met.”
  • Meanwhile, the Trump administration has also urged social media platforms to cooperate with the governmentin efforts to flag individual users as potential mass shooters.

Other agencies have their eyes on big data troves as well.

  • Earlier this year, settlement talks between Facebook and the Department of Housing and Urban Development broke down over an advertising discrimination lawsuit when, according to a Facebook spokesperson, HUD “insisted on access to sensitive information — like user data — without adequate safeguards.”
  • HUD presumably wanted access to the data to ensure advertising discrimination wasn’t occurring on the platform, but it’s unclear whether the agency needed user data to be able to support that investigation….(More)”.

Investigators Use New Strategy to Combat Opioid Crisis: Data Analytics

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Byron Tau and Aruna Viswanatha in the Wall Street Journal: “When federal investigators got a tip in 2015 that a health center in Houston was distributing millions of doses of opioid painkillers, they tried a new approach: look at the numbers.

State and federal prescription and medical billing data showed a pattern of overprescription, giving authorities enough ammunition to send an undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agent. She found a crowded waiting room and armed security guards. After a 91-second appointment with the sole doctor, the agent paid $270 at the cash-only clinic and walked out with 100 10mg pills of the powerful opioid hydrocodone.

The subsequent prosecution of the doctor and the clinic owner, who were sentenced last year to 35 years in prison, laid the groundwork for a new data-driven Justice Department strategy to help target one of the worst public-health crises in the country. Prosecutors expanded the pilot program from Houston to the hard-hit Appalachian region in early 2019. Within months, the effort resulted in the indictments of dozens of doctors, nurses, pharmacists and others. Two-thirds of them had been identified through analyzing the data, a Justice Department official said. A quarter of defendants were expected to plead guilty, according to the Justice Department, and additional indictments through the program are expected in the coming weeks.

“These are doctors behaving like drug dealers,” said Brian Benczkowski, head of the Justice Department’s criminal division who oversaw the expansion.

“They’ve been operating as though nobody could see them for a long period of time. Now we have the data,” Mr. Benczkowski said.

The Justice Department’s fraud section has been using data analytics in health-care prosecutions for several years—combing through Medicare and Medicaid billing data for evidence of fraud, and deploying the strategy in cities around the country that saw outlier billings. In 2018, the health-care fraud unit charged more than 300 people with fraud totaling more than $2 billion, according to the Justice Department.

But using the data to combat the opioid crisis, which is ravaging communities across the country, is a new development for the department, which has made tackling the epidemic a key priority in the Trump administration….(More)”.

Capturing citizen voice online: Enabling smart participatory local government

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Tooran Alizadeh, Somwrita Sarkar and Sandy Burgoyne in Cities: “Social media and online communication have changed the way citizens engage in all aspects of lives from shopping and education, to how communities are planned and developed. It is no longer one-way or two- way communication. Instead, via networked all-to-all communication channels, our citizens engage on urban issues in a complex and more connected way than ever before. So government needs new ways to listen to its citizens. The paper comprises three components. Firstly, we build on the growing discussions in the literature focused on smart cities, on one hand, and social media research, on the other, to capture the diversity of citizen voices and better inform decision-making. Secondly, with the support of the Australian Federal Government and in collaboration with the local government partners, we collect citizen voices from Twitter on selected urban projects. Thirdly, we present preliminary findings in terms of quantity and quality of publicly available online data representing citizen concerns on the urban matters. By analyzing the sentiments of the citizen voices captured online, clustering them into topic areas, and then reevaluating citizen’s sentiments within each cluster, we elaborate the scope and value of technologically-enabled opportunities in terms of enabling participatory local government decision making processes….(More)”.

Political innovation, digitalisation and public participation in party politics

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Lisa Schmidthuber, Dennis Hilgers,  and Maximilian Rapp: “Citizen engagement is seen as a way to address a range of societal challenges, fiscal constraints, as well as wicked problems, and increasing public participation in political decisions could help to address low levels of trust in politicians and decreasing satisfaction with political parties. This paper examines the perceived impacts of an experiment by the Austrian People’s Party which, in response to reaching a historic low in the polls, opened up its manifesto process to public participation via digital technology. Analysis of survey data from participants found that self-efficacy is positively associated with participation intensity but negatively related to satisfaction. In contrast, collective efficacy is related to positive perceptions of public participation in party politics but does not influence levels of individual participation. Future research is needed to explore the outcomes of political innovations that use digital technologies to enable public participation on voting behaviour, party membership and attitudes to representative democracy….(More)”.

Smart Governance for Cities: Perspectives and Experiences

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Nuno Vasco Moreira Lopes: “This book provides theoretical perspectives and practical experiences on smart governance for smart cities. It presents a balanced linkage between research, policies and practices on this area. The authors discuss the sustainability challenges raised by rapid urbanization, challenges with smart governance models in various countries, and a new governance paradigm seen as a capable approach able to overcome social, economic and environmental sustainability problems. The authors include case studies on transformation, adaption and transfers; and country, regional, municipal contextualization. Also included are best practices on monitoring and evaluating smart governance and impact assessment. The book features contributions from researchers, academics, and practitioners in the field. 

  • Analyzes smart governance for cities from a variety of perspectives and a variety of sectors – both in theory and in practice
  • Features information on the linkage between United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and smart governance
  • Covers the connection between research, policies and practice in smart governance for smart cities…(More)”.

The Internet Freedom League: How to Push Back Against the Authoritarian Assault on the Web

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Richard A. Clarke And Rob Knake in Foreign Affairs: “The early days of the Internet inspired a lofty dream: authoritarian states, faced with the prospect of either connecting to a new system of global communication or being left out of it, would choose to connect. According to this line of utopian thinking, once those countries connected, the flow of new information and ideas from the outside world would inexorably pull them toward economic openness and political liberalization. In reality, something quite different has happened. Instead of spreading democratic values and liberal ideals, the Internet has become the backbone of authoritarian surveillance states all over the world. Regimes in China, Russia, and elsewhere have used the Internet’s infrastructure to build their own national networks. At the same time, they have installed technical and legal barriers to prevent their citizens from reaching the wider Internet and to limit Western companies from entering their digital markets. 

But despite handwringing in Washington and Brussels about authoritarian schemes to split the Internet, the last thing Beijing and Moscow want is to find themselves relegated to their own networks and cut off from the global Internet. After all, they need access to the Internet to steal intellectual property, spread propaganda, interfere with elections in other countries, and threaten critical infrastructure in rival countries. China and Russia would ideally like to re-create the Internet in their own images and force the world to play by their repressive rules. But they haven’t been able to do that—so instead they have ramped up their efforts to tightly control outside access to their markets, limit their citizens’ ability to reach the wider Internet, and exploit the vulnerability that comes with the digital freedom and openness enjoyed in the West.

The United States and its allies and partners should stop worrying about the risk of authoritarians splitting the Internet. Instead, they should split it themselves, by creating a digital bloc within which data, services, and products can flow freely…(More)”.

Fostering an Enabling Policy and Regulatory Environment in APEC for Data-Utilizing Businesses

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

APEC: “The objectives of this study is to better understand: 1) how firms from different sectors use data in their business models; and considering the significant increase in data-related policies and regulations enacted by governments across the world, 2) how such policies and regulations are affecting their use of data and hence business models. The study also tries: 3) to identify some of the middle-ground approaches that would enable governments to achieve public policy objectives, such as data security and privacy, and at the same time, also promote the growth of data-utilizing businesses. 39 firms from 12 economies have participated in this project and they come from a diverse group of industries, including aviation, logistics, shipping, payment services, encryption services, and manufacturing. The synthesis report can be found in Chapter 1 while the case study chapters can be found in Chapter 2 to 10….(More)”.

Sharing Private Data for Public Good

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Stefaan G. Verhulst at Project Syndicate: “After Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, the direct-mail marketing company Valassis shared its database with emergency agencies and volunteers to help improve aid delivery. In Santiago, Chile, analysts from Universidad del Desarrollo, ISI Foundation, UNICEF, and the GovLab collaborated with Telefónica, the city’s largest mobile operator, to study gender-based mobility patterns in order to design a more equitable transportation policy. And as part of the Yale University Open Data Access project, health-care companies Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic, and SI-BONE give researchers access to previously walled-off data from 333 clinical trials, opening the door to possible new innovations in medicine.

These are just three examples of “data collaboratives,” an emerging form of partnership in which participants exchange data for the public good. Such tie-ups typically involve public bodies using data from corporations and other private-sector entities to benefit society. But data collaboratives can help companies, too – pharmaceutical firms share data on biomarkers to accelerate their own drug-research efforts, for example. Data-sharing initiatives also have huge potential to improve artificial intelligence (AI). But they must be designed responsibly and take data-privacy concerns into account.

Understanding the societal and business case for data collaboratives, as well as the forms they can take, is critical to gaining a deeper appreciation the potential and limitations of such ventures. The GovLab has identified over 150 data collaboratives spanning continents and sectors; they include companies such as Air France, Zillow, and Facebook. Our research suggests that such partnerships can create value in three main ways….(More)”.