“Nudge units” – where they came from and what they can do

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Zeina Afif at the Worldbank: “You could say that the first one began in 2009, when the US government recruited Cass Sunstein to head The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) to streamline regulations. In 2010, the UK established the first Behavioural Insights Unit (BIT) on a trial basis, under the Cabinet Office. Other countries followed suit, including the US, Australia, Canada, Netherlands, and Germany. Shortly after, countries such as India, Indonesia, Peru, Singapore, and many others started exploring the application of behavioral insights to their policies and programs. International institutions such as the World Bank, UN agencies, OECD, and EU have also established behavioral insights units to support their programs. And just this month, the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland launched its own Behavioral Economics Unit.

The Future
As eMBeD, the behavioral science unit at the World Bank, continues to support governments across the globe in the implementation of their units, here are some common questions we often get asked.

What are the models for a Behavioral Insights Unit in Government?
As of today, over a dozen countries have integrated behavioral insights with their operations. While there is not one model to prescribe, the setup varies from centralized or decentralized to networked….

In some countries, the units were first established at the ministerial level. One example is MineduLab in Peru, which was set up with eMBeD’s help. The unit works as an innovation lab, testing rigorous and leading research in education and behavioral science to address issues such as teacher absenteeism and motivation, parents’ engagement, and student performance….

What should be the structure of the team?
Most units start with two to four full-time staff. Profiles include policy advisors, social psychologists, experimental economists, and behavioral scientists. Experience in the public sector is essential to navigate the government and build support. It is also important to have staff familiar with designing and running experiments. Other important skills include psychology, social psychology, anthropology, design thinking, and marketing. While these skills are not always readily available in the public sector, it is important to note that all behavioral insights units partnered with academics and experts in the field.

The U.S. team, originally called the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team, is staffed mostly by seconded academic faculty, researchers, and other departmental staff. MineduLab in Peru partnered with leading experts, including the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), Fortalecimiento de la Gestión de la Educación (FORGE), Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), and the World Bank….(More)”

Federal Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science Catalog

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

About: “The catalog contains information about federal citizen science and crowdsourcing projects. In citizen science, the public participates voluntarily in the scientific process, addressing real-world problems in ways that may include formulating research questions, conducting scientific experiments, collecting and analyzing data, interpreting results, making new discoveries, developing technologies and applications, and solving complex problems. In crowdsourcing,organizations submit an open call for voluntary assistance from a group of individuals for online, distributed problem solving.

Projects in the catalog must meet the following criteria:

  • The project addresses societal needs or accelerates science, technology, and innovation consistent with a Federal agency’s mission.
  • Project outcomes include active management of data and data quality.
  • Participants serve as contributors, collaborators or co-creators in the project.
  • The project solicits engagement from individuals outside of a discipline’s or program’s traditional participants in the scientific enterprise.
  • Beyond practical limitations, the project does not seek to limit the number of participants or partners involved.
  • The project is opt-in; participants have full control over the extent that they participate.
  • The US Government enables or enhances the project via funding or providing an in-kind contribution. The US Government’s in-kind contribution to the project may be active or passive, formal or informal….(More)”.

Implementing Randomized Evaluations in Government

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

J-Pal Blog: “The J-PAL State and Local Innovation Initiative supports US state and local governments in using randomized evaluations to generate new and widely applicable lessons about the effectiveness of their programs and policies. Drawing upon the experience of the state and local governments selected to participate in the initiative to date, this guide provides practical guidance on how to identify good opportunities for randomized evaluations, how randomized evaluations can be feasibly embedded into the implementation of a program or policy, and how to overcome some of the common challenges in designing and carrying out randomized evaluations….(More)”.

Civil, the blockchain-based journalism marketplace, is building its first batch of publications

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

 at NiemanLab: “Civil is an idea that has started to turn heads, both among investors and within journalism circles. .. It’s also attracted its first publication, Popula, an alternative news and politics site run by journalist… Maria Bustillos, and joined by Sasha Frere-Jones, Ryan Bradley, Aaron Bady, and other big-name reporters. The site goes live in January.

Built on top of blockchain (the same technology that underpins bitcoin), Civil promises to use the technology to build decentralized marketplaces for readers and journalists to work together to fund coverage of topics that interest them, or for those in the public interest. Readers will support reporters using “CVL” tokens, Civil’s cryptocurrency, giving them a speculative stake in the currency that will — hopefully — increase in value as more people buy in over time. This, Civil, hopes will encourage more people to invest in the marketplaces, creating a self-sustaining system that will help fund more reporting…

Civil is also pitching its technology as a way for journalists around the world to fight censorship. Because all changes made to the blockchain are public, it’s impossible for third parties — governmental or otherwise — to change or alter the information on it without notice. “No one will be able to remove the record or prevent her organization from publishing what it wants to publish,” said Matthew Iles, Civil’s founder, referring to Popula. He also pointed to the other key parts of Civil’s value proposition, which include direct connections with readers, ease of access to financing, and a reduced reliance on third-party tech companies….(More)”.

Creative campaign helps earthquake victims

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Springwise: “There were many offers of help after the shocking earthquake in Mexico on 19th September, but two creative directors from Mexico City agency Anonimo decided to do something a bit different. They created Arriba Mexico (which roughly translates as Up With Mexico), a website that initially looks very similar to a home rental site such as Airbnb, but rather than paying to stay in the home, the money paid actually goes directly to help those affected.

The site lists a number of properties destroyed in the earthquake, along with a description and photographs. Titles like ‘Rent a Loft in the Roma Neighborhood’ and ‘Stay in a Room in the Heart of Chiapas’ lead through to a description of the property and the price per night’s stay – which the site naturally informs is a symbolic stay. The user picks the property and the number of nights they’d like to stay for, and the total figure is their donation. 100 percent of the money raised goes directly to CADENA, a disaster relief charity. Some of the money was spent on shelters to provide temporary accommodation, while the eventual aim is to use the remaining funds to rebuild homes in the most heavily damaged areas of Mexico City, Puebla, Oaxaca and Chiapas. At the time of writing, the total money donated was just over USD 473,500. Over 350 died in the earthquake, which registered 8.1 on the Richter scale. Many organizations, governments and charities from all over the world have donated money and time to help the people of Mexico rebuild their lives.

Many innovators and companies are working hard to help those effected by natural disasters. One company in India has produced a modular home that’s built to withstand earthquakes, and MyShake is an app that helps people prepare for earthquakes….(More)”.

Leveraging Crowd Effectively: Bug Bounty Programs for Cybersecurity & Best Practices

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Suresh Siva Malladi and Hemang Subramanian: “Drawing upon crowdsourcing models, bug bounty programs (BBPs) are entering the mainstream of information security with the potential to define future security strategies. However, current approaches in BBPs are limiting. We highlight prominent issues affecting BBPs and suggest actionable best practices to enhance effectiveness. We elaborate the role of scoping and incentives in recruiting and retaining talent. We explain methods to augment quality and mitigate negativity. We urge for a proactive stance to mitigate the unique challenges in BBPs. This paper contributes to inform BBP research and practice. Our recommendations will also guide crowdsourcing and other competence sourcing strategies….(More)”.

The Unexpected Power of Google-Doc Activism

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

 at The Cut: “Earlier this month, after major news outlets published detailed allegations of abuse and harassment by Harvey Weinstein, an anonymous woman created a public Google spreadsheet titled Shitty Media Men. It was a space for other anonymous women to name men in media who had exhibited bad behavior ranging from sleazy DMs to rape. There were just a few rules: “Please never name an accuser,” it said at the top. “Please never share this spreadsheet with a man.” The document was live for less than 48 hours, in which time it was shared with dozens of women — and almost certainly a few men.

The goal of the document was not public accountability, according to its creator. It was to privately warn other women, especially those who are not well connected in the industry, about which men in their profession to avoid. This is information women have always shared among themselves, at after-work drinks and in surreptitious chat messages, but the Google Doc sought to collect it in a way that transcended any one woman’s immediate social network. And because the goal was to occupy a kind of middle ground — not public, not quite private either — with little oversight, it made perfect sense that the information appeared as a Google Doc.

Especially in the year since the election, the shared Google Doc has become a familiar way station on the road to collective political action. Shared documents are ideal for collecting resources in one place quickly and easily, without gatekeepers, because they’re free and easy to use. They have been used to crowdsource tweets and hashtags for pushing back against Trump’s first State of the Union address, to spread information on local town-hall events with members of Congress, and to collect vital donation and evacuee info for people affected by the fires in Northern California. A shared Google Doc allows collaborators to work together across time zones and is easy to update as circumstances change.

But perhaps most notably, a Google Doc can be technically public while functionally quite private, allowing members of a like-minded community to reach beyond their immediate friends and collaborators while avoiding the abuse and trolling that comes with publishing on other platforms….(More)”.

Linux Foundation Debuts Community Data License Agreement

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release: “The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit advancing professional open source management for mass collaboration, today announced the Community Data License Agreement(CDLA) family of open data agreements. In an era of expansive and often underused data, the CDLA licenses are an effort to define a licensing framework to support collaborative communities built around curating and sharing “open” data.

Inspired by the collaborative software development models of open source software, the CDLA licenses are designed to enable individuals and organizations of all types to share data as easily as they currently share open source software code. Soundly drafted licensing models can help people form communities to assemble, curate and maintain vast amounts of data, measured in petabytes and exabytes, to bring new value to communities of all types, to build new business opportunities and to power new applications that promise to enhance safety and services.

The growth of big data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies has allowed people to extract unprecedented levels of insight from data. Now the challenge is to assemble the critical mass of data for those tools to analyze. The CDLA licenses are designed to help governments, academic institutions, businesses and other organizations open up and share data, with the goal of creating communities that curate and share data openly.

For instance, if automakers, suppliers and civil infrastructure services can share data, they may be able to improve safety, decrease energy consumption and improve predictive maintenance. Self-driving cars are heavily dependent on AI systems for navigation, and need massive volumes of data to function properly. Once on the road, they can generate nearly a gigabyte of data every second. For the average car, that means two petabytes of sensor, audio, video and other data each year.

Similarly, climate modeling can integrate measurements captured by government agencies with simulation data from other organizations and then use machine learning systems to look for patterns in the information. It’s estimated that a single model can yield a petabyte of data, a volume that challenges standard computer algorithms, but is useful for machine learning systems. This knowledge may help improve agriculture or aid in studying extreme weather patterns.

And if government agencies share aggregated data on building permits, school enrollment figures, sewer and water usage, their citizens benefit from the ability of commercial entities to anticipate their future needs and respond with infrastructure and facilities that arrive in anticipation of citizens’ demands.

“An open data license is essential for the frictionless sharing of the data that powers both critical technologies and societal benefits,” said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of The Linux Foundation. “The success of open source software provides a powerful example of what can be accomplished when people come together around a resource and advance it for the common good. The CDLA licenses are a key step in that direction and will encourage the continued growth of applications and infrastructure.”…(More)”.

The role of policy entrepreneurs in open government data policy innovation diffusion: An analysis of Australian Federal and State Governments

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Akemi TakeokaChatfield and Christopher G.Reddick: “Open government data (OGD) policy differs substantially from the existing Freedom of Information policies. Consequently OGD can be viewed as a policy innovation. Drawing on both innovation diffusion theory and its application to public policy innovation research, we examine Australia’s OGD policy diffusion patterns at both the federal and state government levels based on the policy adoption timing and CKAN portal “Organization” and “Category” statistics. We found that state governments that had adopted OGD policies earlier had active policy entrepreneurs (or lead departments/agencies) responsible for the policy innovation diffusion across the different government departments. We also found that their efficacy ranking was relatively high in terms of OGD portal openness when openness is measured by the greater number of datasets proactively and systematically published through their OGD portals. These findings have important implications for the role played by OGD policy entrepreneurs in openly sharing the government-owned datasets with the public….(More)”.

Are you doing what’s needed to get the state to respond to its citizens? Or are you part of the problem?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Vanessa Herringshaw at Making All Voices Count: ” …I’ve been reading over the incredibly rich and practically-orientated research and practice papers already on the Making All Voices Count website, and some of those coming out soon. There’s a huge amount of useful and challenging learning, and I’ll be putting out a couple of papers summarising some important threads later this year.

But as different civic tech and accountability actors prepare to come together in Brighton for Making All Voices Count’s final learning event later this week, I’m going to focus here on three things that really stood out and would benefit from the kind of ‘group grappling’ that such a gathering can best support. And I aim to be provocative!

  1. Improving state responsiveness to citizens is a complex business – even more than we realised – and a lot more complex than most interventions are designed to address. If we don’t address this complexity, our interventions won’t work. And that risks making things worse, not better.
  2. It’s clear we need to make more of a shift from narrow, ‘tactical’ approaches to more complex, systems-based ‘strategic’ approaches. Thinking is developing on how to do this in theory. But it’s not clear that our current institutional approaches will support, or even allow, a major shift in practice.
  3. So when we each look at our individual roles and those of our organisations, are we part of the solution, or part of the problem?

Let’s look at each of these in turn….(More)”