Stefaan Verhulst

Martin Lundqvist and PeterBraad Olesen at McKinsey: “Government agencies around the world are under internal and external pressure to become more efficient by incorporating digital technologies and processes into their day-to-day operations. For a lot of public-sector organizations, however, the digital transformation has been bumpy. In many cases, agencies are trying to streamline and automate workflow and processes using antiquated systems-development approaches. Such methods make direct connections between citizens and governments over the Internet more difficult. They also prevent IT organizations from quickly adapting to ever-changing systems requirements or easily combining information from disparate systems. Despite the emergence, over the past decade, of a number of productivity-enhancing technologies, many government institutions continue to cling to old, familiar ways of developing new processes and systems. Nonetheless, a few have been able to change mind-sets internally, shed outdated approaches to improving processes and developing systems, and build new ones. Critically, they have embraced newer techniques, such as agile development, and succeeded in accelerating the digital transformation in core areas of their operations. The Danish Business Authority is one of those organizations.…(More)”

Springwise: “MyShake is an app that enables anyone to contribute to a worldwide seismic network and help people prepare for earthquakes.

The sheer number of smartphones on the planet make them excellent tools for collecting scientific data. We have already seen citizen scientists use their devices to help crowdsource big data about jellyfish and pollution.Now, MyShake is an Android app from Berkeley University, which enables anyone to contribute to a worldwide seismic network and help reduce the effects of earthquakes.

To begin, users download the app and enable it to run silently in the background of their smartphone. The app monitors for movement that fits the vibrational profile of an earthquake and sends anonymous information to a central system whenever relevant. The crowdsourced data enables the system to confirm an impending quake and estimate its origin time, location and magnitude. Then, the app can send warnings to those in the network who are likely to be affected by the earthquake. MyShake makes use of on the fact that the average smartphone can record earthquakes larger than magnitude five and within 10 km.

MyShake is free to download and the team hopes to launch an iPhone version in the future….(More)”

IBM Center for the Business of Government: “In January 2017, the next administration will begin the hard work of implementing the President’s priorities. Regardless of the specific policies, implementation in many cases will require working across agency boundaries. By taking an “enterprise government” approach – starting in the transition and continuing into the White House – the next administration can deliver on their promises more effectively. In a new report, Jane Fountain lays out recommendations and a framework for how the new administration can build an enterprise government.

Learn more about our Management Roadmap for the Next Administration, which includes highlights of our transition roundtables, blogs on transition topics, and reports that include recommendations and next steps….(Full report: Building An Enterprise Government.pdf)

Special issue of the International Journal of Sociology: “Interest in the use of “big data” in the social sciences is growing dramatically. Yet, adequate methodological research on what constitutes such data, and about their validity, is lacking. Scholars face both opportunities and challenges inherent in this new era of unprecedented quantification of information, including that related to political actions and attitudes. This special issue of the International Journal of Sociology addresses recent uses of “big data,” its multiple meanings, and the potential that this may have in building a stronger understanding of political behavior. We present a working definition of “big data” and summarize the major issues involved in their use. While the papers in this volume deal with various problems – how to integrate “big data” sources with cross-national survey research, the methodological challenges involved in building cross-national longitudinal network data of country memberships in international nongovernmental organizations, methods of detecting and correcting for source selection bias in event data derived from news and other online sources, the challenges and solutions to ex post harmonization of international social survey data – they share a common viewpoint. To make good on the substantive promise of “big data,” scholars need to engage with their inherent methodological problems. At this date, scholars are only beginning to identify and solve them….(More)”

John Hasnas and Annette Hasnas at the Hill: “A perennial complaint about our democracy is that too large a portion of the electorate is poorly informed about important political issues. This is the problem of the ignorant voter. Especially this year, with its multiplicity of candidates, keeping track of the candidates’ various, and often shifting, policy positions can be extraordinarily difficult. As a result, many of those voting in the presidential primaries will cast their ballots with little idea of where the candidates stand on several important issues.

Isn’t there some way to nudge the voters into making more informed choices? Well, actually, yes, there is. But in making this claim, we use the word nudge advisedly.

Among contemporary policy analysts, “nudge” is a term of art. It refers to creating a context within which people make choices–a “choice architecture”–that makes it more likely that people will select one option rather than another. The typical example of a nudge is a school cafeteria in which fruits and vegetables are placed in front in easy to reach locations and less healthy fare is placed in less visible and harder to reach locations. No one is forced to select the fruit or vegetables, but the choice architecture makes it more likely that people will.
The key feature of a nudge is that it is not coercive. It is an effort to influence choice, not to impose it. People are always able to “opt out” of the nudge. Thus, to nudge is to design the context in which individuals make decisions so as to influence their choice without eliminating any options.

We think that nudging can be employed to help voters make more informed decisions in the voting booth.

Imagine the following scenario. A bipartisan good government group creates a list of the most significant contemporary policy issues. It then invites all candidates to state their positions on the issues. In the current campaign, candidates could be invited to state where they stand on gay marriage, immigration, intervention in Syria, climate change, tax reform, the minimum wage, gun control, income inequality, etc. This information would be collected and fed into the relevant election commission computer. When voters enter the voting booth, they would have the option of electronically recording their policy preferences on the same form that the candidates completed. The computer would display a ranking of the candidates on the basis of how closely their positions aligned with the voter’s. After receiving this information, voters would cast their ballots.

Our proposal is a nudge. It is completely non-coercive. No candidate would be required to complete the list of his or her policy positions, although refusing to do so might be viewed negatively by voters. No voter would be required to utilize the option. All would remain free to simply walk into the booth and cast their vote. Even those who utilize the option remain free to disregard its results and vote for whomever they please. The proposal simply alters the choice architecture of voting to build in access to a source of information about the candidates. Yet, it makes it more likely that citizens will cast more informed votes than they do at present….(More)”

Savo Heleta at the Conversation: “Research and creative thinking can change the world. This means that academics have enormous power. But, as academics Asit Biswas and Julian Kirchherr have warned, the overwhelming majority are not shaping today’s public debates.

Instead, their work is largely sitting in academic journals that are read almost exclusively by their peers. Biswas and Kirchherr estimate that an average journal article is “read completely by no more than ten people”. They write:

Up to 1.5 million peer-reviewed articles are published annually. However, many are ignored even within scientific communities – 82% of articles published in humanities [journals] are not even cited once.

This suggests that a lot of great thinking and many potentially world altering ideas are not getting into the public domain. Why, then, are academics not doing more to share their work with the broader public?

The answer appears to be threefold: a narrow idea of what academics should or shouldn’t do; a lack of incentives from universities or governments; and a lack of training in the art of explaining complex concepts to a lay audience….

Academics need to start playing a more prominent role in society instead of largely remaining observers who write about the world from within ivory towers and publish their findings in journals hidden behind expensive digital paywalls.

Government and university policies need to become more prescriptive in what they expect from academics. Publishing research in peer-reviewed journals is and will remain highly important. But incentives should be added to encourage academics to share their research with the general public.

Doing this sort of work ought to count towards promotions and should yield rewards for both universities and individual academics.

Quality academic research and innovation are crucial. It is equally important, though, to get ideas out into the world beyond academia. It could make a real difference in people’s lives….(More)”

SmartCitiesCouncil: “Welcome to the Readiness Guide. This document was assembled with input from many of the world’s leading smart city practitioners – the members and advisors of the Smart Cities Council. It will help you create a vision for the future of your own city. Equally important, it will help you build an action plan to get to that better future.

The first goal of the Readiness Guide is to give you a “vision” of a smart city, to help you understand how technology will transform the cities of tomorrow.

The second goal is to help you construct your own roadmap to that future. It suggests the goals to which you should aspire, the features and functions you should specify, the best practices that will gain you the maximum benefits for the minimum cost, at reduced risk.

The Readiness Guide is intended for mayors, city managers, city planners and their staffs. It helps cities help themselves by providing objective, vendor-neutral information to make confident, educated choices about the technologies that can transform a city.

Cities around the world are already making tremendous progress in achieving economic, environmental and social sustainability, in export-based initiatives and in the creation of 21st century jobs. All of these are excellent ways to improve city living standards and economies. The concept of smart cities doesn’t compete with these efforts. Instead, smart city technologies can support and  enhance work already underway….Contents:

Ben Castleman at Brookings: “America’s community colleges offer the promise of a more affordable pathway to a bachelor’s degree. Students can pay substantially less for the first two years of college, transfer to a four-year college or university, and still earn their diploma in the same amount of time. At least in theory. Most community college students—80 percent of them—enter with the intention to transfer, but only 20 percent actually do so within five years of entering college. This divide represents a classic case of what behavioralists call an intention-action gap.

Why would so many students who enter community colleges intending to transfer fail to actually do so? Put yourself in the shoes of a 20-something community college student. You’ve worked hard for the past couple years, earning credits and paying a lot less in tuition than you would have if you had enrolled immediately in a four-year college or university. But now you want to transfer, so that you can complete your bachelor’s degree. How do you figure out where to go? Ideally you’d probably like to find a college that would take most of your credits, where you’re likely to graduate from, and where the degree is going to count for something in the labor market. A college advisor could probably help you figure this out,but at many community colleges there are at least 1,000 other students assigned to your advisor, so you might have a hard time getting a quality meeting.  Some states have articulation agreements between two- and four-year institutions that guarantee admission for students who complete certain course sequences and perform at a high enough level. But these agreements are often dense and inaccessible.

The combination of big data and behavioral insights has the potential to help students navigate these complex decisions and successfully follow through on their intentions. Big data analytic techniques allow us to identify concrete transfer pathways where students are positioned to succeed; behavioral insights ensure we communicate these options in a way that maximizes students’ engagement and responsiveness…..A growing body of innovative research has demonstrated that, by applying behavioral science insights to the way we communicate with students and families about the opportunities and resources available to them, we can help people navigate these complex decisions and experience better outcomes as a result. A combination of simplified information, reminders, and access to assistance have improved achievement and attainment up and down the education pipeline, nudging parents to practice early-literacy activities with their kids or check in with their high schoolers about missed assignments, andencouraging students to renew their financial aid for college….

These types of big data techniques are already being used in some education sectors. For instance, a growing number of colleges use predictive analytics to identify struggling students who need additional assistance, so faculty and administrators can intervene before the student drops out. But frequently there is insufficient attention, once the results of these predictive analyses are in hand, about how to communicate the information in a way that is likely to lead to behavior change among students or educators. And much of the predictive analytics work has been on the side of plugging leaks in the pipeline (e.g. preventing drop-outs from higher education), rather than on the side of proactively sending students and families personalized information about educational and career pathways where they are likely to flourish…(More)”