Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the Centre for Policy Innovation and Public Engagement (CPIPE): “In recent years, governments all over the world have been embracing new and innovative ways to develop public policies and design public services, from crowdsourcing to human-centred design thinking. This trend in government innovation has led to the rise of the Policy Innovation Lab (PIL): individual units, both inside and outside of government, that apply the traditional principles of scientific laboratories – experimentation, testing, and measurement – to social problems.

PILs are an increasingly important development in public policy making, with a variety of methods and approaches to building relationships between governments, organizations, and citizens, and generating ideas and designing policy. Yet, these labs are under-researched: many are established without a full understanding of their role and value to the policy community. We aim to address this knowledge gap, and create opportunities where policy innovators can make connections with their peers and learn about the current practices and applications of policy innovation from one another.

This report identifies the innovation labs in Canada, profiling their methodologies, projects, and partners, mapping the policy innovation landscape across the country. Each one-page summary provides a profile for each lab, and highlights the existing innovation practices and networks in the public, academic, non-profit, and private sectors, and identifies methodological and ideological trends across the different labs and networks.

This report is the first of its kind in North America. In this highly dynamic space, new labs are emerging and disappearing all the time. The purpose of this report is to put a spotlight on policy innovations and their successes, and to build and strengthen connections between researchers, policymakers, and policy innovators. Through a strengthened and sustained community of practice, we hope to see governments continue to embrace new approaches for effective policymaking…(More)”.

Book by Thouvenin, Florent (et al.): “… examines the fundamental question of how legislators and other rule-makers should handle remembering and forgetting information (especially personally identifiable information) in the digital age. It encompasses such topics as privacy, data protection, individual and collective memory, and the right to be forgotten when considering data storage, processing and deletion. The authors argue in support of maintaining the new digital default, that (personally identifiable) information should be remembered rather than forgotten.

The book offers guidelines for legislators as well as private and public organizations on how to make decisions on remembering and forgetting personally identifiable information in the digital age. It draws on three main perspectives: law, based on a comprehensive analysis of Swiss law that serves as an example; technology, specifically search engines, internet archives, social media and the mobile internet; and an interdisciplinary perspective with contributions from various disciplines such as philosophy, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and economics, amongst others.. Thanks to this multifaceted approach, readers will benefit from a holistic view of the informational phenomenon of “remembering and forgetting”.

This book will appeal to lawyers, philosophers, sociologists, historians, economists, anthropologists, and psychologists among many others. Such wide appeal is due to its rich and interdisciplinary approach to the challenges for individuals and society at large with regard to remembering and forgetting in the digital age…(More)”

Kriss Deiglmeier & Amanda Greco at Stanford Social Innovation Review: “…As we applied the innovation continuum to the cases we studied, we identified barriers to scale that often trap social innovations in a stagnation chasm before they achieve diffusion and scaling.

 

Three barriers in particular repeatedly block social innovations from reaching their broadest impact: inadequate funds for growth, the fragmented nature of the social innovation ecosystem, and talent gaps. If we are serious about propelling proven social innovations to achieve widespread impact, we must find solutions that overcome each of these barriers. The rest of the article will explore in more detail each of these three barriers in turn.

1. Inadequate Funding

Social innovators face a convoluted and often elusive path to mobilize the resources needed to amplify the impact of their work. Of the strategies for scale in Mulgan’s typology, some are very capital intensive, others less so. Yet even the advocacy and network approaches to scaling social impact require resources. It takes time, funding, and expertise to navigate the relationships and complex interdependencies that are critical to success. Some ventures may benefit from earned revenue streams that provide funds for growth, but earned revenue isn’t guaranteed in the social innovation space, especially for innovations that operate where markets fail to meet needs and serve people with no ability to pay. Thus, external funding is usually needed in order to scale impact, whether from donors or from investors depending on the legal structure and financial prospects of the venture….

2. A Fragmented Ecosystem

One sector toiling in isolation or digging into an adversarial approach cannot achieve breakthrough scale on its own. Instead, engaging and coordinating actions across various actors from the private, nonprofit, and public sectors is critical. In the case of microfinance, for example, the innovation garnered interest from government and business when nonprofits like Grameen Bank had demonstrated success in providing financial services to formerly unbanked people.

Following the pioneering role of nonprofits to establish proof of concept, commercial banks entered the market, with mixed social outcomes, given the pressure they faced for profitability. As the microfinance industry matured, governments created a legal and regulatory environment that encouraged transparency, market entry, and competition. The cumulative efforts and engagement across the nonprofit, private, and public sectors were critical to scaling microfinance as we know it today and will continue to refine the approach for better social outcomes in the future…

3. The Talent Gap

To drive social innovations in a world of rapid change, organizations need talented leaders supported by effective teams. The insufficient funding and fragmented ecosystem require highly adept people to shepherd social innovations through the long journey to widespread social impact. Unfortunately, attracting and retaining people to navigate these complexities is a challenge…(More)”.

Norjihan Abdul Ghani et al in Computers in Human Behavior: “Big data analytics has recently emerged as an important research area due to the popularity of the Internet and the advent of the Web 2.0 technologies. Moreover, the proliferation and adoption of social media applications have provided extensive opportunities and challenges for researchers and practitioners. The massive amount of data generated by users using social media platforms is the result of the integration of their background details and daily activities.

This enormous volume of generated data known as “big data” has been intensively researched recently. A review of the recent works is presented to obtain a broad perspective of the social media big data analytics research topic. We classify the literature based on important aspects. This study also compares possible big data analytics techniques and their quality attributes. Moreover, we provide a discussion on the applications of social media big data analytics by highlighting the state-of-the-art techniques, methods, and the quality attributes of various studies. Open research challenges in big data analytics are described as well….(More)”.

Diana Budds at Curbed: “Algorithms are invisible, but they already play a large role in shaping New York City’s built environment, schooling, public resources, and criminal justice system. Earlier this year, the City Council and Mayor Bill de Blasio formed the Automated Decision Systems Task Force, the first of its kind in the country, to analyze how NYC deploys automated systems to ensure fairness, equity, and accountability are upheld.

This week, 20 experts in the field of civil rights and artificial intelligence co-signed a letter to the task force to help influence its official report, which is scheduled to be published in December 2019.

The letter’s recommendations include creating a publicly accessible list of all the automated decision systems in use; consulting with experts before adopting an automated decision system; creating a permanent government body to oversee the procurement and regulation of automated decision systems; and upholding civil liberties in all matters related to automation. This could lay the groundwork for future legislation around automation in the city….Read the full letter here.”

Book by Anand Giridharadas: “… takes us into the inner sanctums of a new gilded age, where the rich and powerful fight for equality and justice any way they can–except ways that threaten the social order and their position atop it. We see how they rebrand themselves as saviors of the poor; how they lavishly reward “thought leaders” who redefine “change” in winner-friendly ways; and how they constantly seek to do more good, but never less harm. We hear the limousine confessions of a celebrated foundation boss; witness an American president hem and haw about his plutocratic benefactors; and attend a cruise-ship conference where entrepreneurs celebrate their own self-interested magnanimity.

Giridharadas asks hard questions: Why, for example, should our gravest problems be solved by the unelected upper crust instead of the public institutions it erodes by lobbying and dodging taxes? He also points toward an answer: Rather than rely on scraps from the winners, we must take on the grueling democratic work of building more robust, egalitarian institutions and truly changing the world. A call to action for elites and everyday citizens alike….(More)”.

Anna Berti Suman in the International Review of Law, Computers & Technology: “This contribution analyses the promises and challenges of using bottom-up produced sensors data to manage public-health risks in the (smart) city. The article criticizes traditional ways of governing public-health risks with the aim to inspect the contribution that a sensor-based risk governance may bring to the fore. The failures of the top-down model serve to illustrate that the smart transformation of the city’s living environments may stimulate a better public-health risk governance and a new city’s utopia.

The central question this contribution addresses is: How could the potential of a city’s network of sensors and of datainfrastructures contribute to smartly realizing healthier cities, free from environmental risk? The central aim of the article is to reflect on the opportunity to combine top-down and bottom-up sensing approaches. In view of this aim, the complementary potential of top and bottom sensing is inspected. Citizen sensing practices are discussed as manifestation of the new public sphere and a taxonomy for a sensor-based risk governance is developed. The challenges hidden behind this arguably inclusive transition are dismantled….(More)”.

Melanie Lefkowitz at Cornell Chronicle: “Cornell research has improved bike sharing in New York and other cities, providing tools to ensure bikes are available when and where they’re needed through a crowdsourcing system that uses real-time information to make decisions.

Citi Bike redistributes its bicycles around New York City using a program called Bike Angels, based on research by David Shmoys, the Laibe/Acheson Professor of Business Management and Leadership Studies in the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering.

Through Bike Angels, which Shmoys helped Citi Bike develop three years ago, cyclists earn points adding up to free rides and other prizes by using or returning bikes at certain high-need stations. Originally, Bike Angels awarded points for the same pattern of stations every morning, and a different fixed pattern each afternoon rush; now the program uses an algorithm that continually updates the pattern of stations for which users earn points.

“The ability to make decisions that are sensitive to exactly what are today’s conditions enables us to be much more effective in assigning those points,” said Shmoys, who is also associate director of Cornell’s Institute for Computational Sustainability.

With co-authors Hangil Chung ’18 and Daniel Freund, Ph.D. ’18, Shmoys wrote “Bike Angels: An Analysis of Citi Bike’s Incentive Program,” a detailed report showing the effectiveness of this approach. …(More)”.

Kaushik Basu at Project Syndicate: “Democracy is in crisis. Fake news – and fake allegations of fake news – now plagues civil discourse, and political parties have proved increasingly willing to use xenophobia and other malign strategies to win elections. At the same time, revisionist powers like Vladimir Putin’s Russia have been stepping up their efforts to interfere in elections across the West. Rarely has the United States witnessed such brazen attacks on its political system; and rarely has the world seen such lows during peacetime….

How can all of this be happening in democracies, and what can be done about it?

On the first question, one hypothesis is that new digital technologies are changing the structural incentives for corporations, political parties, and other major institutions. Consider the case of corporations. The wealth of proprietary data on consumer preferences and behavior is producing such massive returns to scale that a few giants are monopolizing markets. In other words, markets are increasingly geared toward a winner-take-all game: multiple corporations can compete, but to the victor go the spoils.1

Electoral democracy is drifting in the same direction. The benefits of winning an election have become so large that political parties will stoop to new lows to clinch a victory. And, as with corporations, they can do so with the help of data on electoral preferences and behavior, and with new strategies to target key constituencies.

This poses a dilemma for well-meaning democratic parties and politicians. If a “bad” party is willing to foment hate and racism to bolster its chances of winning, what is a “good” party to do? If it sticks to its principles, it could end up ceding victory to the “bad” party, which will do even more harm once it is in office. A “good” party may thus try to forestall that outcome by taking a step down the moral ladder, precipitating a race to the bottom. This is the problem with any winner-takes-all game. When second place confers no benefits, the cost of showing unilateral restraint can grow intolerably high.

But this problem is not as hopeless as it appears. In light of today’s crisis of democracy, we would do well to revisit Václav Havel’s seminal 1978 essay “The Power of the Powerless.” First published as samizdat that was smuggled out of Czechoslovakia, the essay makes a simple but compelling argument. Dictatorships and other seemingly omnipotent forms of authoritarianism may look like large, top-down structures, but in the final analysis, they are merely the outcome of ordinary individuals’ beliefs and choices. Havel did not have the tools of modern economic theory to demonstrate his argument formally. In my new book The Republic of Beliefs, I show that the essence of his argument can be given formal structure using elementary game theory. This, in turn, shows that ordinary individuals have moral options that may be unavailable to the big institutional players….(More)”.

Valerie Hellinghausen and Evan Absher at Kauffman Foundation: “The old measure of “jobs numbers” as an economic indicator is shifting to new metrics to measure a new economy.

With more communities embracing inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystems as the new model of economic development, entrepreneurs, ecosystem builders, and government agencies – at all levels – need to work together on data-driven initiatives. While established measures still have a place, new metrics have the potential to deliver the timely and granular information that is more useful at the local level….

Three better ways to measure the new economy:

1. National and local datasets:Numbers used to discuss the economy are national level and usually not very timely. These numbers are useful to understand large trends, but fail to capture local realities. One way to better measure local economies is to use local administrative datasets. There are many obstacles with this approach, but the idea is gaining interest. Data infrastructure, policies, and projects are building connections between local and national agencies. Joining different levels of government data will provide national scale and local specificity.

2. Private and public data:The words private and public typically reflect privacy issues, but there is another public and private dimension. Public institutions possess vast amounts of data, but so do private companies. For instance, sites like PayPal, Square, Amazon, and Etsy possess data that could provide real-time assessment of an individual company’s financial health. The concept of credit and risk could be expanded to benefit those currently underserved, if combined with local administrative information like tax, wage, and banking data. Fair and open use of private data could open credit to currently underfunded entrepreneurs.

3. New metrics:Developing connections between different datasets will result in new metrics of entrepreneurial activity: metrics that measure human connection, social capital, community creativity, and quality of life. Metrics that capture economic activity at the community level and in real time. For example, the Kauffman Foundation has funded research that uses labor data from private job-listing sites to better understand the match between the workforce entrepreneurs need and the workforce available within the immediate community. But new metrics are not enough, they must connect to the final goal of economic independence. Using new metrics to help ecosystems understand how policies and programs impact entrepreneurship is the final step to measuring local economies….(More)”.