Book by Maxat Kassen: “… offers a cross-national comparison of open data policies in Estonia and Kazakhstan. By analyzing a broad range of open data-driven projects and startups in both countries, it reveals the potential that open data phenomena hold with regard to promoting public sector innovations. The book addresses various political and socioeconomic contexts in these two transitional
Thinking about GovTech: A brief guide for policymakers
Report by Tanya Filer: “If developed with care, the emergent GovTech ecosystem, in which start-ups and innovative small and medium enterprises (SMEs) provide innovative technology products and services to public sector clients, could contribute to achieving these objectives. Thinking about GovTech introduces the concept of GovTech and identifies eight activities that policymakers can undertake to foster national GovTech innovation ecosystems and help to steer them towards positive outcomes for citizens and public administrators. It suggests that policymakers:
1. Build the social and technical foundations for GovTech
2. Embed expectations of accountability at an ecosystem-wide level
3. Address GovTech procurement barriers
4. Ensure the provision of appropriate, and often patient, capital
5. Engage academia at each stage of the GovTech innovation lifecycle
6. Develop pipelines of technological talent, emphasising public sector problems and
opportunities
7. Build translator capacity within the public sector
8. Develop and utilise regional and international networks
Thinking about GovTech is the first GovTech guide written for a fully international audience of policymakers. It offers examples of emerging international policy and programme design and urges policymakers to think carefully about local context and capacity for implementation….(More)”.
Nudging does not necessarily improve decisions
University of Zurich: “Nudging is a well-known and popular concept in behavioral economics. It refers to non-coercive interventions that influence the choices people make by changing the way a situation is presented. A well-known example of this is placing the salad bar near the cafeteria entrance to promote a healthy diet. It has been shown that simple change has an effect on the food people choose to eat for lunch. However, is a light salad really the best option from the employee’s perspective, or is it their employer who will benefit from staff who perform better in the afternoon? And, is improving the decisions we make really that simple?
Measuring the quality of a decision
Whether a nudge ultimately results in a person making decisions that are better suited to their needs is an important factor in assessing the effectiveness of nudges. This is the starting point of the research work of Nick Netzer and Jean-Michel Benkert from the Department of Economics at the University of Zurich. How do you measure whether a nudge improves a decision in the eyes of the person being nudged? “We can’t determine whether a nudge improves the choices a person makes until we understand how they reach their decisions,” says Nick Netzer, putting the hype surrounding nudging into perspective. “Depending on which behavioral model we take as a starting point, it is possible to measure the effectiveness of nudges — or not.”
Traditional economics assumes that a person’s preferences can be inferred from their decisions and behavior. According to the rational behavior model, a person’s decision to have a salad or a steak for lunch is based on which meal meets their needs. When it comes to assessing nudges, however, this model is problematic, since nudging manipulates precisely the behavior that is supposed to shed light on a person’s preferences. The researchers
Facebook could be forced to share data on effects to the young
Nicola Davis at The Guardian: “Social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter could be required by law to share data with researchers to help examine potential harms to young people’s health and identify who may be at risk.
Surveys and studies have previously suggested a link between the use of devices and networking sites and an increase in problems among teenagers and younger children ranging from poor sleep to bullying, mental health issues and grooming.
However, high quality research in the area is scarce: among the conundrums that need to be looked at are matters of cause and effect, the size of any impacts, and the importance of the content of material accessed online.
According to a report by the Commons science and technology committee on the effects of social media and screen time among young people, companies should be compelled to protect users and legislation was needed to enable access to data for high quality studies to be carried out.
The committee noted that the government had failed to commission such research and had instead relied on requesting reviews of existing studies. This was despite a 2017 green paper that set out a consultation process on aUK internet safety strategy.
“We understand [social media companies’] eagerness to protect the privacy of users but sharing data with bona fide researchers is the only way society can truly start to understand the impact, both positive and negative, that social media is having on the modern world,” said Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat MP who chairs the committee. “During our inquiry, we heard that social media companies had openly refused to share data with researchers who are keen to examine patterns of use and their effects. This is not good enough.”
Prof Andrew Przybylski, the director of research at the Oxford Internet Institute, said the issue of good quality research was vital, adding that many people’s perception of the effect of social media is largely rooted in hype.
“Social media companies must participate in open, robust, and transparent science with independent scientists,” he said. “Their data, which we give them, is both their most valuable resource and it is the only means by which we can effectively study how these platforms affect users.”…(More)”
Toward an Open Data Demand Assessment and Segmentation Methodology
Stefaan Verhulst and Andrew Young at IADB: “Across the world, significant time and resources are being invested in making government data accessible to all with the broad goal of improving people’s lives. Evidence of open data’s impact – on improving governance, empowering citizens, creating economic opportunity, and solving public problems – is emerging and is largely encouraging. Yet much of the potential value of open data remains untapped, in part because we often do not understand who is using open data or, more importantly, who is not using open data but could benefit from the insights it may generate. By identifying, prioritizing, segmenting, and engaging with the actual and future demand for open data in a systemic and systematic way, practitioners can ensure that open data is more targeted. Understanding and meeting the demand for open data can increase overall impact and return on investment of public funds.
The GovLab, in partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank, and with the support of the French Development Agency developed the Open Data Demand and Assessment Methodology to provide open data policymakers and practitioners with an approach for identifying, segmenting, and engaging with demand. This process specifically seeks to empower data champions within public agencies who want to improve their data’s ability to improve people’s lives….(More)”.
Evidence vs Democracy: what are we doing to bridge the divide?
Jonathan Breckon, and Anna Hopkins at the Alliance for Useful E
The evidence movement must respond to the ‘politics of distrust’. We cannot carry on regardless. For evidence advocates like us, reaching over the heads of the public to get research into the hands of elite policy-makers is not enough. Let’s be honest and accept that a lot of our work goes on behind closed doors. The UK’s nine What Works Centres only rarely engage with the public – more often with professionals, budget holders or civil servants. The evidence movement needs to democratise.
However, the difficulty is that evidence is hard work. It needs slow-thinking, and at least a passing knowledge of statistics, economics, or science. How on earth can you do all that on Twitter or Facebook?
In a report published today we look at ‘mini-publics’ – an alternative democratic platform to connect citizens with research. Citizens’ Juries, Deliberative Polls, Consensus Conferences and other mini-publics are forums that bring people and evidence together, for constructive, considered debate. Ideally, people work in small groups, that are randomly chosen, and have the chance to interrogate experts in the field in question.
This is not a new idea. The idea of a ‘minipopulus’ was set out by the American political theorist Robert Dahl in the 1970s. Indeed, there is an even older heritage. Athenian classical democracy did for a time select small groups of officials by lot.
It’s also not a utopian idea from the past, as we have found many promising recent examples. For example in the UK, a Citizens’ Assembly on adult social care gave recommendations to two parliamentary Select Committees last year. There are also examples of citizens contributing to our public institutions and agendas by deliberating – through NICE’s Citizens Council or the James Lind Alliance.
We shouldn’t ignore this resistance to the mood of disaffection. Initiatives like the RSA’s Campaign for Deliberative Democracy are making the case for a step-change. To break the political deadlock on Brexit, there has been a call to create a Citizens’ Assembly on Brexit by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Stella Creasy MP and others. And there are many hopeful visions of a democratic future from abroad – like the experiments in Canada and Australia. Our report explores many of these international examples.
Citizens can make informed decisions – if we allow them to be citizens. They can understand, debate and interrogate research
How to use ‘design thinking’ to create better policy
Public Admin Explainer: “Public policies and programs are intended to improve the lives of citizens, so how can we ensure that they are as well-designed as possible?
In a recent article in Policy Design and Practice, ANZSOG’s Professor Michael Mintrom and Madeline Thomas explore the neglected connection between design thinking and the successful commissioning of public services.
Prof. Mintrom and
Design thinking encourages end-users, policy designers, central departments, and line agencies to work in a collaborative and iterative manner.
The most important skill for a design thinker is to “imagine the world from multiple perspectives – those of colleagues, clients, end-users, and customers”. This is where greater empathy for different perspectives emerges.
Design thinking does not start with a presumption of a known answer or even a well-defined problem. Through iterative ethnographic methods, design thinking can reduce gaps between the goals of policymaking and the experiences of citizens as they interact with government-funded services.
This kind of design thinking can be pursued through a range of techniques:
- Environment Scanning: This strategy explores present
behaviours of individuals and groups in given localities and the outcomes resulting from thosebehaviours . It also seeks to identify trends that may influence future outcomes. Used appropriately, it creates an evidence-based method of gathering,synthesising , and interpreting information, which can shift the attention of anorganisation towards new opportunities, threats, and potential blind spots. - Participant Observation: While environment scanning facilitates the broad exploration of an issue, observation requires engaging with people encountering specific problems. Participant observation can access tacit, otherwise, difficult-to-capture knowledge from subjects. This gives
policy makers the ability to notice significant and seemingly insignificant details to gather information. - Open-to-Learning Conversation: There is a common tendency, not limited to the public sector, for service-producing
organisations to limit choices for clients and make incremental adjustments. Problems are addressed using standard operating procedures that attempt to maintain predefined notions of order. Rather than just trying to find alternate strategies within an existing set of choices,policy makers should try and question the existing choice set. To achieve divergent thinking, it is important to have a diverse group of people involved in the process. Diverging thinking is less aboutanalysing existing options and more about the creation of new options and questioning the fundamental basis of existing structures. - Mapping: Mapping has long been used in policymaking to explore the links between mechanism design and implementation. A concept map can be used to develop a conceptual framework to guide evaluation or planning. Mapping allows the designer to
visualise how things connect and spot emerging patterns. This can be done by putting one idea, or user, at thecentre and then mapping how the other ideas and insights play off it. Journey mapping communicates the user experience from beginning to end and offersbroader , sophisticated, and holistic knowledge of that experience. This can be a very powerful antidote to complacency and a good way to challenge conventional thinking. - Sensemaking: The sensemaking perspective suggests that in organisational settings, much latitude exists in the interpretation of situations and events. Sensemaking requires connections to be forged between seemingly unrelated issues through a process of selective pruning and visual organisation. Dialogue is critical to sensemaking. Once data and insights have been
externalised – for example, in the form of post-it notes on the wall – designers can begin the more intellectual task of identifying explicit and implicit relationships….(More)”.
The city as collective intelligence
Geoff Mulgan at Social Innovation Exchange: “As cities grow in size and significance, they can become sites of complex social problems – but also hubs for exploring possible solutions. While every city faces distinct problems, they all share a need for innovative approaches to
We all roughly know how our brains work. But what would a city look like that could truly think and act? What if it could be fully aware of all of its citizens experiences; able to remember and create; and then to act and learn?
This might once have been a fantasy. But it is coming closer. Cities can see in new ways – with citizen generated data on everything from the prevalence of floods to the quality of food in restaurants. Cities can create in new ways, through open challenges that mobilise public creativity. And they can decide in new ways, as cities like Madrid and Barcelona have done with online platforms that let citizens propose policies and then deliberate. Some of this is helped by technology. Our mobile phones collect data on a vast scale, and that’s now matched by sensors and the smart chips in our cars, buildings and trains. But the best examples combine machine intelligence with human intelligence: this is the promise of collective intelligence, and it has obvious relevance to a city like Seoul with millions of smart citizens, fantastic infrastructures and very capable institutions, from government to universities, NGOs to business.
Over the last few years, many experiments have shown how thousands of people can collaborate online analysing data or solving problems, and there’s been an explosion of new technologies to sense, analyse and predict. We can see some of the results in things like Wikipedia; the spread of citizen science in which millions of people help to spot new stars in the galaxy. There are new business models like Duolingo which mobilises volunteers to improve its service providing language teaching, and collective intelligence examples in health, where patients band together to design new technologies or share data.
I’m interested in how we can use these new kinds of collective intelligence to solve problems like climate change or disease, and am convinced that every organisation and every city can work more successfully if it taps into a bigger mind – mobilising more brains and computers to help it.
Doing that requires careful design, curation and orchestration. It’s not enough just to mobilise the crowd. Crowds are all too capable of being foolish, prejudiced and malign. Nor it is enough just to hope that brilliant ideas will emerge naturally. Thought requires work – to observe, analyse, create, remember and judge and to avoid the many pitfalls of delusion and deliberate misinformation.
But the emerging field of collective intelligence now offers many ways for cities to organise themselves in new ways.
Take air quality as an example. A city using collective intelligence methods will bring together many different kinds of data to understand what’s happening to air, and the often complex patterns of particulates. Some of this will come from its own sensors, and some data can be generated by citizens. Artificial intelligence tools can then be trained to predict how it may change, for example because of a shift in the weather. The next stage then is to mobilise citizens and experts to investigate the options to improve air quality looking in detail at which roads have the worst levels or which buildings are emitting the most, and what changes would have most impact. And
Privacy concerns collide with the public interest in data
Gillian Tett in the Financial Times: “Late last year Statistics Canada — the agency that collects government figures — launched an innovation: it asked the country’s banks to supply “individual-level financial transactions data” for 500,000 customers to allow it to track economic trends. The agency argued th
Corporate boards around the world should take note. In the past year, executive angst has exploded about the legal and reputational risks created when private customer data leak out, either by accident or in a cyber hack. Last year’s Facebook scandals have been a hot debating topic among chief executives at this week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, as has the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. However, there is another important side to this Big Data debate: must companies provide private digital data to public bodies for statistical and policy purposes? Or to put it another way, it is time to widen the debate beyond emotive privacy issues to include the public interest and policy needs. The issue has received little public debate thus far, except in Canada. But it is becoming increasingly important.
Companies are sitting on a treasure trove of digital data that offers valuable real-time signals about economic activity. This information could be even more significant than existing
But the biggest data collections sit inside private companies. Big groups know this, and some are trying to respond. Google has created its own measures to track inflation, which it makes publicly available. JPMorgan and other banks crunch customer data and publish reports about general economic and financial trends. Some tech groups are even starting to volunteer data to government bodies. LinkedIn has offered to provide
MIT Sloan study finds crowdsourcing an effective tool to fight spread of fake news
MIT Sloan Press Release: “Fake news isn’t a new problem, but it’s becoming a greater concern because of social media, where it is easily created and rapidly distributed. A recent study by MIT Sloan School of Management Prof. David Rand and Prof. Gordon Pennycook of the University of Regina finds there is a possible solution: crowdsourcing. As their research shows that laypeople trust reputable news outlets more than outlets that create misinformation, social media platforms could use trust ratings to inform how they promote content.
“There has been a lot of research examining fake news and how it spreads, but this study is among the first to suggest a potential long-term solution, which is cause for measured optimism. If we can decrease the amount of misinformation spreading on social media, we can increase agreement on basic facts across political parties, which will hopefully lead to less political polarization and a greater ability to compromise on how to run the country,” says Rand. “It may also make it harder for individuals to win elections based on false claims.”
He notes that current solutions for fighting misinformation deployed by social media companies haven’t been that effective. For example, partnering with fact-checkers isn’t scalable because they can’t keep up with the rapid creation of false stories. Further, putting warnings on content found to be false can be counterproductive, because it makes misleading stories that didn’t get checked seem more accurate – the “implied truth” effect.
“Our study is good news because we find a scalable solution to this problem, based on the surprisingly good judgment of everyday Americans. Things may not be as hopeless as most coverage of fake news makes you think,” says Rand.
In their study, Rand and Pennycook examined whether crowdsourcing could work as an effective tool in fighting the spread of misinformation. They asked laypeople to rate familiarity with and trust in news sources across three categories: mainstream media outlets, hyper-partisan websites, and websites that produce blatantly false content (“fake news”). The pool of people surveyed was nationally representative across age, gender, ethnicity, and political affiliations. They also asked professional fact-checkers the same questions to compare responses.
They found that laypeople trust reputable news outlets more than those that create misinformation and that the trust ratings of the laypeople surveyed closely matched the trust ratings of professional fact-checkers. “Our results show that laypeople are much better than many would have expected at knowing which outlets to trust,” says Rand. “Although there were clear partisan differences, with Republicans distrusting all mainstream outlets (except for Fox News) relative to Democrats, there was a remarkable consensus regarding non-mainstream outlets being untrustworthy.”…(More)”.