Stefaan Verhulst
Report by Tera Allas et al: “An increase in the number of successful government transformations could help solve society’s greatest challenges, serve citizens better, and support the more productive use of public resources.
Governments around the world know that to deliver for citizens, they must transform the services they provide. Aging populations are putting huge pressure on health and social services; educational systems need to equip young people with the skills for a technology-driven world; and the changing shape of cities is creating new demands on infrastructure. Many government services do not meet citizens’ growing expectations. These trends are contributing to public discontent
Unfortunately, around 80 percent of government efforts to transform performance don’t fully meet their objectives—a key finding of a survey of nearly 3,000 public officials across 18 countries as part of a new study by the McKinsey Center for Government. The study also includes insights from 80 case studies, as well as 30 in-depth interviews with leaders who have personally led transformations in government. Between them, these leaders have more than 300 years of collective experience in what it takes to succeed.
The failure rate of government transformations is far too high. It represents a huge missed opportunity to tackle society’s greatest challenges more effectively, to give citizens better experiences with government, and to make more productive use of limited public resources. If governments around the world matched their most improved counterparts, they could save as much as $3.5 trillion a year by 2021 while maintaining today’s levels of service quality. Alternatively, they could release substantial funds for the services citizens most care about, while keeping overall government expenditure constant….(More)”.
Book by Rufus Pollock: “Forget everything you think you know about the digital age. It’s not about privacy, surveillance, AI or blockchain—it’s about ownership. Because, in a digital age, who owns information controls the future.
In this urgent and provocative book, Rufus Pollock shows how today’s “Closed” digital economy is the source of problems ranging from growing inequality, to unaffordable medicines, to the power of a handful of tech monopolies to control how we think and vote. He proposes a solution that charts a path to a more equitable, innovative and profitable future for all….(More)”.
Alberto Alemanno in the European Journal of Risk Regulation: “It is almost a truism to argue that data holds a great promise of transformative resources for social good, by helping to address a complex range of societal issues, ranging from saving lives in the aftermath of a natural disaster to predicting teen suicides. Yet it is not public authorities who hold this real-time data, but private entities, such as mobile network operators and business card companies, and – with even greater detail – tech firms such as Google through its globally-dominant search engine, and, in particular, social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter. Besides a few isolated and self-proclaimed ‘data philanthropy’ initiatives and other corporate data-sharing collaborations, data-rich companies have historically shown resistance to not only share this data for the public good, but also to identify its inherent social, non-commercial benefit. How to explain to citizens across the world that their own data – which has been aggressively harvested over time – can’t be used, and not even in emergency situations? Responding to this unsettling question entails a fascinating research journey for anyone interested in how the promises of big data could deliver for society as a whole. In the absence of a plausible solution, the number of societal problems that won’t be solved unless firms like Facebook, Google and Apple start coughing up more data-based evidence will increase exponentially, as well as societal rejection of their underlying business models.
This article identifies the major challenges of unlocking private-held data to the benefit of society and sketches a research agenda for scholars interested in collaborative and regulatory solutions aimed at unlocking privately-held data for good….(More)”.
Adi Gaskell: “One of the more significant areas of promise in health technology is the ability for data to be generated by us as individuals, and for AI to provide insights based upon this live stream of lifestyle data. An example of what’s possible comes via a project researchers at Imperial College London have undertaken with the Vodafone Foundation.
The project aims to tap into the power of users smartphones to crunch cancer related data whilst they sleep. Such distributed computing projects have been popular for some time, but this is one of the first to utilize the power in our smartphones.
The rationale for the project is identical to that of the early distributed computing ventures, such as SETI@Home, which utilized spare computing resources to process data from space. The average smartphone contains a huge amount of computing power that generally lies dormant over night.
Dream Lab
Users participate by downloading the DreamLab app onto their phone and run it for six hours overnight as the phone charges. The sleep downloads a small packet of data overnight, with the processors in the phone then running millions of calculations, uploading the results to a central server, and clearing the data from the phone.
The app has already been used in Australia, with researchers using it to crunch data for pancreatic cancer, and is now ready to be used for the first time in Europe. If they can secure 100,000 users running the app each night, the team can process as much data as a single desktop computer could process in 100 years.
“Through harnessing distributed computing power, DreamLab is helping to make personalised medicine a reality,” the researchers say. “This project demonstrates how Imperial’s innovative research partnerships with corporate partners and members of the public are working together to tackle some of the biggest problems we face today, generating real societal impact.”…(More)”.
NBER Working Paper by Emiliano Huet-Vaughn, Nicholas Muller, and Yen-Chia Hsu: “Most environmental policy assumes the form of standards and enforcement. Scarce public budgets motivate the use of disclosure laws. This study explores a new form of pollution disclosure: real-time visual evidence of emissions provided on a free, public website. The paper tests whether the disclosure of visual evidence of emissions affects the nature and frequency of phone calls to the local air quality regulator. First, we test whether the presence of the camera affects the frequency of calls to the local air quality regulator about the facility monitored by the camera. Second, we test the relationship between the camera being active and the number of complaints about facilities other than the plant recorded by the camera. Our empirical results suggest that the camera did not affect the frequency of calls to the regulator about the monitored facility. However, the count of complaints pertaining to another prominent industrial polluter in the area, steel manufacturing plants, is positively associated with the camera being active. We propose two behavioral reasons for this finding: the prior knowledge hypothesis and affect heuristics. This study argues that visual evidence is a feasible approach to environmental oversight even during periods with diminished regulatory capacity….(More)”.
The Conversation: “It is a bitter irony that politicians lament the threat to democracy posed by the internet, instead of exploiting its potential to enhance the existing system. Hackers and bots may help to sway elections, but modern technology has allowed the power of the multitude to positively disrupt the world of business and beyond. Now, crowdsourcing should be allowed to shake up the lawmaking process to make democracies more participatory and efficient.
The crowd clearly can be harnessed, whether it is Apple outsourcing the creation of apps, Wikipedia amassing an encyclopedia of unprecedented magnitude, or National Geographic searching for the Tomb of Genghis Khan. If we can agree that the most important factor of a responsive democracy is participation, then there must be a way to capitalise on this collective intelligence.
In fact, political participation hasn’t been this easy since the first days of democracy in Athens 2,500 years ago. Modern social media can turn into a reality the utopian vision of direct civic engagement on a massive scale. Lawmaking can now be married to public consent through technology. The crowd can be unleashed.
Sharing a platform
Governments haven’t completely missed out. Iceland used crowdsourcing to include citizens in its constitutional reform beginning in 2010, while petition websites are increasingly common and have forced parliamentary debates in the UK. US federal agencies have initiated “national dialogues” on topics of public concern and, in many US municipalities, citizens can provide input on budget decisions online and follow instantaneously whether items make it into the budget.
These initiatives show promise in improving what goes into and what comes out of the process of government. However, they are on too small a scale to counter what many believe to be a period of fundamental democratic disenchantment. That is why government needs to throw its weight behind a full online system through which citizens can easily access all ongoing legislative initiatives and provide input during periods of public consultation. That is a challenge, but not mission impossible. Over 2016/2017 a little over 200 bills were introduced in the UK’s parliament.
It could put the power of participation in the hands of the people, and grant greater legitimacy to government. Through websites and apps, the public would be given an intuitive, one-stop shop for democracy, accessible from any device, and which allowed them to engage no matter where they were – on the beach or on the bus. Registered users would get notifications when new legislation was up for consultation. If the legislation were of interest, it could be bookmarked in order to stay updated.
Users would be able to comment on each paragraph of a draft. Moderators would curate the debate by removing irrelevant and inappropriate content and by continuously summarising the most important and common comments to head off an overflow of information. At the end of the consultation period, the moderators could summarise suggestions, concerns and praise in a memo available to policymakers and the public….(More)”.
Book by Russell Dalton: “The dilemma of democracy arises from two contrasting trends. More people in the established democracies are participating in civil society activity, contacting government officials, protesting, and using online activism and other creative forms of participation. At the same time, the importance of social status as an influence on political activity is increasing. The democratic principle of the equality of voice is eroding. The politically rich are getting richer-and the politically needy have less voice.
This book assembles an unprecedented set of international public opinion surveys to identify the individual, institutional, and political factors that produce these trends. New forms of activity place greater demands on participants, raising the importance of social status skills and resources. Civil society activity further widens the participation gap. New norms of citizenship shift how people participate. And generational change and new online forms of activism accentuate this process. Effective and representative government requires a participatory citizenry and equal voice, and participation trends are undermining these outcomes.
The Participation Gap both documents the growing participation gap in contemporary democracies and suggests ways that we can better achieve their theoretical ideal of a participatory citizenry and equal voice….(More)”.
Darrell M. West and Theron Kelso at Brookings: “Artificial intelligence provides a way to use automated software to perform a number of different tasks. Private industry, government, and universities have deployed it to manage routine requests and common administrative processes. Fields from finance and healthcare to retail and defense are witnessing a dramatic expansion in the use of these tools.
Yet non-profits often lack the financial resources or organizational capabilities to innovate through technology. Most non-profits struggle with small budgets and inadequate staffing, and they fall behind the cutting edge of new technologies. This limits their group’s efficiency and effectiveness, and makes it difficult to have the kind of impact they would like.
However, there is growing interest in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and data analytics in non-profit organizations. Below are some of the many examples of non-profits using emerging technologies to handle finance, human resources, communications, internal operations, and sustainability.
FINANCE
Fraud and corruption are major challenges for any kind of organization as it is hard to monitor every financial transaction and business contract. AI tools can help managers automatically detect actions that warrant additional investigation. Businesses long have used AI and ML to create early warning systems, spot abnormalities, and thereby minimize financial misconduct. These tools offer ways to combat fraud and detect unusual transactions.
HUMAN RESOURCES
Advanced software helps organizations advertise, screen, and hire promising staff members. Once managers have decided what qualities they are seeking, AI can match applicants with employers. Automated systems can pre-screen resumes, check for relevant experience and skills, and identify applicants who are best suited for particular organizations. They also can weed out those who lack the required skills or do not pass basic screening criteria.
COMMUNICATIONS
Every non-profit faces challenges in terms of communications. In a rapidly-changing world, it is hard to keep in touch with outside donors, internal staff, and interested individuals. Chatbots automate conversations for commonly asked questions through text messaging. These tools can help with customer service and routine requests such as how to contribute money, address a budget question, or learn about upcoming programs. They represent an efficient and effective way to communicate with internal and external audiences….(More)”.
Ethan Zuckerman: “I am concerned that we’ve not had a robust conversation about what we want social media to do for us.
We know what social media does for platform companies like Facebook and Twitter: it generates enormous masses of user-generated content that can be monetized with advertising, and reams of behavioral data that make that advertising more valuable. Perhaps we have a sense for what social media does for us as individuals, connecting us to distant friends, helping us maintain a lightweight awareness of each other’s lives even when we are not co-present. Or perhaps it’s a machine for disappointment and envy, a window into lives better lived than our own. It’s likely that what social media does for us personally is a deeply idiosyncratic question, dependent on our own lives, psyches and decisions, better discussed with our therapists than spoken about in generalities.
I’m interested in what social media should do for us as citizens in a democracy. We talk about social media as a digital public sphere, invoking Habermas and coffeehouses frequented by the bourgeoisie. Before we ask whether the internet succeeds as a public sphere, we ought to ask whether that’s actually what we want it to be.
I take my lead here from journalism scholar Michael Schudson, who took issue with a hyperbolic statement made by media critic James Carey: “journalism as a practice is unthinkable except in the context of democracy; in fact, journalism is usefully understood as another name for democracy.” For Schudson, this was a step too far. Journalism may be necessary for democracy to function well, but journalism by itself is not democracy and cannot produce democracy. Instead, we should work to understand the “Six or Seven Things News Can Do for Democracy”, the title of an incisive essay Schudson wrote to anchor his book, Why Democracies Need an Unloveable Press….
In this same spirit, I’d like to suggest six or seven things social media can do for democracy. I am neither as learned or as wise as Schudson, so I fully expect readers to offer half a dozen functions that I’ve missed. In the spirit of Schudson’s public forum and Benkler’s digital public sphere, I offer these in the hopes of starting, not ending, a conversation.
Social media can inform us…
Social media can amplify important voices and issues…
Social media can be a tool for connection and solidarity…
Social media can be a space for mobilization…
Social media can be a space for deliberation and debate…
Social media can be a tool for showing us a diversity of views and perspectives…
Social media can be a model for democratically governed spaces…(More).
Asha McLean at ZDNet: “The New Zealand government has announced it will be assessing how government agencies are using algorithms to analyse data, hoping to ensure transparency and fairness in decisions that affect citizens.
A joint statement from Minister for Government Digital Services Clare Curran and Minister of Statistics James Shaw said the algorithm “stocktake” will be conducted with urgency, but cites only the growing interest in data analytics as the reason for the probe.
“The government is acutely aware of the need to ensure transparency and accountability as interest grows regarding the challenges and opportunities associated with emerging technology such as artificial intelligence,” Curran said.
It was revealed in April that Immigration New Zealand may have been using citizen data for less than desirable purposes, with claims that data collected through the country’s visa application process that was being used to determine those in breach of their visa conditions was in fact filtering people based on their age, gender, and ethnicity.
Rejecting the idea the data-collection project was racial profiling, Immigration Minister Iain Lees-Galloway told Radio New Zealand that Immigration looks at a range of issues, including at those who have made — and have had rejected — multiple visa applications.
“It looks at people who place the greatest burden on the health system, people who place the greatest burden on the criminal justice system, and uses that data to prioritise those people,” he said.
“It is important that we protect the integrity of our immigration system and that we use the resources that immigration has as effectively as we can — I do support them using good data to make good decisions about where best to deploy their resources.”
In the statement on Wednesday, Shaw pointed to two further data-modelling projects the government had embarked on, with one from the Ministry of Health looking into the probability of five-year post-transplant survival in New Zealand.
“Using existing data to help model possible outcomes is an important part of modern government decision-making,” Shaw said….(More)”.