Grant Guardian

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

About: “In the philanthropic sector, limited time and resources can make it challenging to thoroughly assess a nonprofit’s financial stability. Grant Guardian transforms weeks of financial analysis into hours of strategic insight–creating space for deep, meaningful engagement with partners while maintaining high grantmaking standards.

Introducing Grant Guardian

Grant Guardian is an AI-powered financial due diligence tool that streamlines the assessment process for both foundations and nonprofits. Foundations receive sophisticated financial health analyses and risk assessments, while nonprofits can simply submit their existing financial documents without the task of filling out multiple custom forms. This streamlined approach helps both parties focus on what matters most–their shared mission of creating impact.

How Does It Work?

Advanced AI Analyses: Grant Guardian harnesses the power of AI to analyze financial documents like 990s and audits, offering a comprehensive view of a nonprofit’s financial stability. With rapid data extraction and analysis based on modifiable criteria, Grant Guardian bolsters strategic funding with financial insights.

Customized Risk Reports: Grant Guardian’s risk reports and dashboards are customizable, allowing you to tailor metrics specifically to your organization’s funding priorities. This flexibility enables you to present clear, relevant data to stakeholders while maintaining a transparent audit trail for compliance.

Automated Data Extraction: As an enterprise-grade solution, Grant Guardian automates the extraction and analysis of data from financial reports, identifies potential risks, standardizes assessments, and minimizes user error from bias. This standardization is crucial, as nonprofits often vary in the financial documents they provide, making the due diligence process more complex and error-prone for funders…(More)”.

From social media to artificial intelligence: improving research on digital harms in youth

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Karen Mansfield, Sakshi Ghai, Thomas Hakman, Nick Ballou, Matti Vuorre, and Andrew K Przybylski: “…we critically evaluate the limitations and underlying challenges of existing research into the negative mental health consequences of internet-mediated technologies on young people. We argue that identifying and proactively addressing consistent shortcomings is the most effective method for building an accurate evidence base for the forthcoming influx of research on the effects of artificial intelligence (AI) on children and adolescents. Basic research, advice for caregivers, and evidence for policy makers should tackle the challenges that led to the misunderstanding of social media harms. The Personal View has four sections: first, we conducted a critical appraisal of recent reviews regarding effects of technology on children and adolescents’ mental health, aimed at identifying limitations in the evidence base; second, we discuss what we think are the most pressing methodological challenges underlying those limitations; third, we propose effective ways to address these limitations, building on robust methodology, with reference to emerging applications in the study of AI and children and adolescents’ wellbeing; and lastly, we articulate steps for conceptualising and rigorously studying the ever-shifting sociotechnological landscape of digital childhood and adolescence. We outline how the most effective approach to understanding how young people shape, and are shaped by, emerging technologies, is by identifying and directly addressing specific challenges. We present an approach grounded in interpreting findings through a coherent and collaborative evidence-based framework in a measured, incremental, and informative way…(More)”

Strategic Foresight Toolkit for Resilient Public Policy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

OECD Toolkit: “By exploring 25 evidence-based potential disruptions across environmental, technological, economic, social, and geopolitical domains, the Strategic Foresight Toolkit for Resilient Public Policy helps anticipate challenges and opportunities that could reshape the policy landscape between 2030 and 2050. These disruptions are not predictions, but hypothetical future developments identified through extensive research, expert consultations, and workshops. The Strategic Foresight Toolkit features a five-step foresight process, guiding users to challenge assumptions, create scenarios, stress-test strategies, and develop actionable plans. It includes facilitation guides and case studies to support effective implementation. Each disruption is accompanied by insights on emerging trends, potential future impacts, and both immediate and long-term policy options to ensure resilience and preparedness. Designed for policymakers, public administrators, and foresight practitioners, this publication is designed to promote holistic, strategic and evidence-informed decision-making. It aims to support countries and organisations in using strategic foresight to design and prepare robust and adaptable public policies for a range of possible futures. With its practical methodology and forward-looking approach, the Strategic Foresight Toolkit is a vital resource for building sustainable, resilient, and effective public policies…(More)”

Problems of participatory processes in policymaking: a service design approach

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Susana Díez-Calvo, Iván Lidón, Rubén Rebollar, Ignacio Gil-Pérez: “This study aims to identify and map the problems of participatory processes in policymaking through a Service Design approach….Fifteen problems of participatory processes in policymaking were identified, and some differences were observed in the perception of these problems between the stakeholders responsible for designing and implementing the participatory processes (backstage stakeholders) and those who are called upon to participate (frontstage stakeholders). The problems were found to occur at different stages of the service and to affect different stakeholders. A number of design actions were proposed to help mitigate these problems from a human-centred approach. These included process improvements, digital opportunities, new technologies and staff training, among others…(More)”.

The disparities and development trajectories of nations in achieving the sustainable development goals

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Fengmei Ma, et al: “The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a comprehensive framework for societal progress and planetary health. However, it remains unclear whether universal patterns exist in how nations pursue these goals and whether key development areas are being overlooked. Here, we apply the product space methodology, widely used in development economics, to construct an ‘SDG space of nations’. The SDG space models the relative performance and specialization patterns of 166 countries across 96 SDG indicators from 2000 to 2022. Our SDG space reveals a polarized global landscape, characterized by distinct groups of nations, each specializing in specific development indicators. Furthermore, we find that as countries improve their overall SDG scores, they tend to modify their sustainable development trajectories, pursuing different development objectives. Additionally, we identify orphaned SDG indicators — areas where certain country groups remain under-specialized. These patterns, and the SDG space more broadly, provide a high-resolution tool to understand and evaluate the progress and disparities of countries towards achieving the SDGs…(More)”

Suspense and surprise in the book of technology: Understanding innovation dynamics

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Oh-Hyun Kwon, Jisung Yoon, Lav R. Varshney, Woo-Sung Jung, Hyejin Youn: “We envision future technologies through science fiction, strategic planning, or academic research. Yet, our expectations do not always match with what actually unfolds, much like navigating a story where some events align with expectations while others surprise us. This gap indicates the inherent uncertainty of innovation-how technologies emerge and evolve in unpredictable ways. Here, we elaborate on this inherent uncertainty of innovation in the way technologies emerge and evolve. We define suspense captures accumulated uncertainty and describing events anticipated before their realization, while surprise represents a dramatic shift in understanding when an event occurs unexpectedly. We identify those connections in U.S. patents and show that suspenseful innovations tend to integrate more smoothly into society, achieving higher citations and market value. In contrast, surprising innovations, though often disruptive and groundbreaking, face challenges in adoption due to their extreme novelty. We further show that these categories allow us to identify distinct stages of technology life cycles, suggesting a way to identify the systematic trajectory of technologies and anticipate their future paths…(More)”.

Big data for decision-making in public transport management: A comparison of different data sources

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Valeria Maria Urbano, Marika Arena, and Giovanni Azzone: “The conventional data used to support public transport management have inherent constraints related to scalability, cost, and the potential to capture space and time variability. These limitations underscore the importance of exploring innovative data sources to complement more traditional ones.

For public transport operators, who are tasked with making pivotal decisions spanning planning, operation, and performance measurement, innovative data sources are a frontier that is still largely unexplored. To fill this gap, this study first establishes a framework for evaluating innovative data sources, highlighting the specific characteristics that data should have to support decision-making in the context of transportation management. Second, a comparative analysis is conducted, using empirical data collected from primary public transport operators in the Lombardy region, with the aim of understanding whether and to what extent different data sources meet the above requirements.

The findings of this study support transport operators in selecting data sources aligned with different decision-making domains, highlighting related benefits and challenges. This underscores the importance of integrating different data sources to exploit their complementarities…(More)”.

Developing a Framework for Collective Data Rights

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Jeni Tennison: “Are collective data rights really necessary? Or, do people and communities already have sufficient rights to address harms through equality, public administration or consumer law? Might collective data rights even be harmful by undermining individual data rights or creating unjust collectivities? If we did have collective data rights, what should they look like? And how could they be introduced into legislation?

Data protection law and policy are founded on the notion of individual notice and consent, originating from the handling of personal data gathered for medical and scientific research. However, recent work on data governance has highlighted shortcomings with the notice-and-consent approach, especially in an age of big data and artificial intelligence. This special reports considers the need for collective data rights by examining legal remedies currently available in the United Kingdom in three scenarios where the people affected by algorithmic decision making are not data subjects and therefore do not have individual data protection rights…(More)”.

You Be the Judge: How Taobao Crowdsourced Its Courts

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Excerpt from Lizhi Liu’s new book, “From Click to Boom”: “When disputes occur, Taobao encourages buyers and sellers to negotiate with each other first. If the feuding parties cannot reach an agreement and do not want to go to court, they can use one of Taobao’s two judicial channels: asking a Taobao employee to adjudicate or using an online jury panel to arbitrate. This section discusses the second channel, a unique Chinese institutional innovation.

Alibaba’s Public Jury was established in 2012 to crowdsource justice. It uses a Western-style jury-voting mechanism to solve online disputes and controversial issues. These jurors are termed “public assessors” by Taobao. Interestingly, the name “public assessor” was drawn from the Chinese talent show “Super Girl” (similar to “American Idol”), which, after the authority shut down its mass voting system, transitioned to using a small panel of audience representatives (or “public assessors”) to vote for the show’s winner. The public jury was widely used by the main Taobao site by 2020 and is now frequently used by Xianyu, Taobao’s used-goods market.

Why did Taobao introduce the jury system? Certainly, as Taobao expanded, the volume of online disputes surged, posing challenges for the platform to handle all disputes by itself. However, according to a former platform employee responsible for designing this institution, the primary motivation was not the caseload. Instead, it was propelled by the complexity of online disputes that proved challenging for the platform to resolve alone. Consequently, they opted to involve users in adjudicating these cases to ensure a fairer process rather than solely relying on platform intervention.

To form a jury, Taobao randomly chooses each panel of 13 jurors from 4 million volunteer candidates; each juror may participate in up to 40 cases per day. The candidate needs to be an experienced Taobao user (i.e., those who have registered for more than a year) with a good online reputation (i.e., those who have a sufficiently high credit rating, as discussed below). This requirement is high enough to prevent most dishonest traders from manipulating votes, but low enough to be inclusive and keep the juror pool large. These jurors are unpaid yet motivated to participate. They gain experience points that can translate into different virtual titles or that can be donated to charity by Taobao as real money…(More)”

Un-Plateauing Corruption Research?Perhaps less necessary, but more exciting than one might think

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Dieter Zinnbauer: “There is a sense in the anti-corruption research community that we may have reached some plateau (or less politely, hit a wall). This article argues – at least partly – against this claim.

We may have reached a plateau with regard to some recurring (staid?) scholarly and policy debates that resurface with eerie regularity, tend to suck all oxygen out of the room, yet remain essentially unsettled and irresolvable. Questions aimed at arriving closure on what constitutes corruption, passing authoritative judgements  on what works and what does not and rather grand pronouncements on whether progress has or has not been all fall into this category.

 At the same time, there is exciting work often in unexpected places outside the inner ward of the anti-corruption castle,  contributing new approaches and fresh-ish insights and there are promising leads for exciting research on the horizon. Such areas include the underappreciated idiosyncrasies of corruption in the form of inaction rather than action, the use of satellites and remote sensing techniques to better understand and measure corruption, the overlooked role of short-sellers in tackling complex forms of corporate corruption and the growing phenomena of integrity capture, the anti-corruption apparatus co-opted for sinister, corrupt purposes.

These are just four examples of the colourful opportunity tapestry for (anti)corruption research moving forward, not in form of a great unified project and overarching new idea  but as little stabs of potentiality here and  there and somewhere else surprisingly unbeknownst…(More)”