Collection

Open Data Barometer (second edition)

Curated on January 21, 2015August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

The second edition of the Open Data Barometer: “A global movement to make government “open by default” picked up steam in 2013 when the G8 leaders signed an Open Data Charter – promising to make public sector data openly available, without charge and in re-useable formats. In 2014 the G20 largest industrial economies followed up by pledging to advance open data as a tool against corruption, and the UN recognized the need for a “Data Revolution” to achieve global development goals.
However, this second edition of the Open Data Barometer shows that there is still a long way to go to put the power of data in the hands of citizens. Core data on how governments are spending our money and how public services are performing remains inaccessible or paywalled in most countries. Information critical to fight corruption and promote fair competition, such as company registers, public sector contracts, and land titles, is even harder to get. In most countries, proactive disclosure of government data is not mandated in law or policy as part of a wider right to information, and privacy protections are weak or uncertain.
Our research suggests some of the key steps needed to ensure the “Data Revolution” will lead to a genuine revolution in the transparency and performance of governments:

High-level political commitment to proactive disclosure of public sector data, particularly the data most critical to accountability
Sustained investment in supporting and training a broad cross-section of civil society and entrepreneurs to understand and use data effectively
Contextualizing open data tools and approaches to local needs, for example by making data visually accessible in countries with lower literacy levels.
Support for city-level open data initiatives as a complement to national-level programmes
Legal reform to ensure that guarantees of the right to information and the right to privacy underpin open data initiatives

Over the next six months, world leaders have several opportunities to agree these steps, starting with the United Nation’s high-level data revolution in Africa conference in March, Canada’s global International Open Data Conference in May and the G7 summit in Germany this June. It is crucial that these gatherings result in concrete actions to address the political and resource barriers that threaten to stall open data efforts….(More)”.

Do Experts or Collective Intelligence Write with More Bias? Evidence from Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia.

Curated on January 20, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Working Paper by Shane Greenstein and Feng Zhu. Which source of information contains greater bias and slant—text written by an expert or that constructed via collective intelligence? Do the costs of acquiring, storing, displaying and revising information shape those differences? We evaluate these questions empirically by examining slanted and biased phrases in content on US political issues from two sources — Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia. Our overall slant measure is less (more) than zero when an article leans towards Democrat (Republican) viewpoints, while bias is the absolute value of the slant. Using a matched sample of pairs of articles from Britannica and Wikipedia, we show that, overall, Wikipedia articles are more slanted towards Democrat than Britannica articles, as well as more biased. Slanted Wikipedia articles tend to become less biased than Britannica articles on the same topic as they become substantially revised, and the bias on a per word basis hardly differs between the sources. These results have implications for the segregation of readers in online sources and the allocation of editorial resources in online sources using collective intelligence…Key concepts include:

The costs of producing, storing, and distributing knowledge shape different biases and slants in the collective intelligence (Wikipedia) and the expert-based model (Britannica).
Many of the differences between Wikipedia and Britannica arise because Wikipedia faces insignificant storage, production, and distribution costs. This leads to longer articles with greater coverage of more points of view. The number of revisions of Wikipedia articles results in more neutral point of view. In the best cases, it reduces slant and bias to a negligible difference with an expert-based model.
As the world moves from reliance on expert-based production of knowledge to collectively-produced intelligence, it is unwise to blindly trust the properties of knowledge produced by the crowd. Their slants and biases are not widely appreciated, nor are the properties of the production model as yet fully understood.”…(More)

Can 311 Call Centers Improve Service Delivery? Lessons from New York and Chicago

Curated on January 19, 2015October 30, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Jane Wiseman: “This paper is the first of the IDB’s “Innovations in Public Service Delivery” series, which identifies and analyzes innovative experiences of promising practices in Latin America and the Caribbean and around the world to improve the quality and delivery of public services. It presents the 311 Programs in New York City and Chicago, leading 311 centers in the United States. “311” is the universal toll-free number that provides citizens with a single point of entry to a wide array of information and services in major cities. In the cities studied, these centers have evolved to support new models of service delivery management. This publication provides an overview of these programs, analyzing their design and implementation, results, and impacts, and identifying their success factors. The final section consolidates the lessons learned from these experiences, highlighting what policymakers and public officials should consider when developing similar solutions…Download in PDF“.

Is Transparency a Recipe for Innovation?

Curated on January 19, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Dr. Bastiaan Heemsbergen: “Innovation is a key driver in organizational sustainability, and yes, openness and transparency are a recipe for innovation. But, according to Tapscott and Williams, “when it comes to innovation, competitive advantage and organizational success, ‘openness’ is rarely the first word one would use to describe companies and other societal organizations like government agencies or medical institutions. For many, words like ‘insular,’ ‘bureaucratic,’ ‘hierarchical,’ ‘secretive’ and ‘closed’ come to mind instead.”1 And yet a few months ago, The Tesla Model S just became the world’s first open-source car. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motor Vehicles, shared all the patents on Tesla’s electric car technology, allowing anyone — including competitors — to use them without fear of litigation. Elon wrote in his post “Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla patents in the lobby of our Palo Alto headquarters. That is no longer the case. They have been removed, in the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology.”2
In the public sector, terms such as open government, citizen sourcing, and wiki government are also akin to the notion of open innovation and transparency. As Hilgers and Ihl report, “a good example of this approach is the success of the Future Melbourne program, a Wiki and blog-based approach to shaping the future urban landscape of Australia’s second largest city. The program allowed citizens to directly edit and comment on the plans for the future development of the city. It attracted more than 30,000 individuals, who submitted hundreds of comments and suggestions (futuremelbourne.com.au). Basically, problems concerning design and creativity, future strategy and local culture, and even questions of management and service innovation can be broadcasted on such web-platforms.”3 The authors suggest that there are three dimensions to applying the concept of open innovation to the public sector: citizen ideation and innovation (tapping knowledge and creativity), collaborative administration (user generated new tasks and processes), and collaborative democracy (improve public participation in the policy process)….(More)”.

Empowering Users through Design

Curated on January 19, 2015October 10, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

New Book edited by David Bihanic: “At the crossroads of various disciplines, this collective work examines the possibility of a new end-user “engagement” in ongoing digital/technological products and services development. It provides an overview of recent research specifically focused on the user’s democratic participation and empowerment. It also enables readers to better identify the main opportunities of participatory design, a concept which encourages the blurring of the role between user and designer. This allows people to escape their status as “end-user” and to elevate themselves to the level of creator.
This book explores new avenues for rethinking the processes and practices of corporate innovation in order to cope with current socio-economic and technological changes. In so doing, it aims to help companies renew industrial models that allow them to design and produce new ranges of technological products and services by giving the user an active role in the development process, far beyond the basic role of consumer.
Intended for designers, design researchers and scientists interested in innovation and technology management, this book also provides a valuable resource for professionals involved in technology-based innovation processes….(More).”

VoXup

Curated on January 19, 2015May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Nesta: “Does your street feel safe? Would you like to change something in your neighbourhood? Is there enough for young people to do?
All basic questions, but how many local councillors have the time to put these issues to their constituents? A new web app aims to make it easier for councillors and council officers to talk to residents – and it’s all based around a series of simple questions.
Now, just a year after VoXup was created in a north London pub, Camden Council is using it to consult residents on its budget proposals.
One of VoXup’s creators, Peter Lewis, hit upon the idea after meeting an MP and being reminded of how hard it can be to get involved in decision-making….

Now VoXup is being used by Camden Council to engage with residents about its spending plans.
“They’ve got to cut a lot of money and they want to know which services people would prioritise,” Lewis explains.
“So we’ve created a custom community, and most popular topics have got about 200 votes. About 650 people have taken part at some level, and it’s only just begun. We’ve seen a lot of activity – of the people who look at the web page, almost half give an opinion on something.”

‘No need for smartphone app’
What does the future hold for VoXup? Lewis, who is working on the project full-time, says one thing the team won’t be doing is building a smartphone app.
“One of the things we thought about doing was creating a mobile app, but that’s been really unnecessary – we built VoXup as a responsive web app,” he says…. (More)”.

Helping the Poor in Education: The Power of a Simple Nudge

Curated on January 19, 2015August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Susan Dynarski in The New York Times: “There are enormous inequalities in education in the United States. A child born into a poor family has only a 9 percent chance of getting a college degree, but the odds are 54 percent for a child in a high-income family. These gaps open early, with poor children less prepared than their kindergarten classmates.

How can we close these gaps?….

Yet as these debates rage, researchers have been quietly finding small, effective ways to improve education. They have identified behavioral “nudges” that prod students and their families to take small steps that can make big differences in learning. These measures are cheap, so schools or nonprofits could use them immediately.

Let’s start with college. At every step of the way, low-income students are more likely to stumble on the path to higher education. Even the summer after high school is a perilous time, with 20 percent of those who plan to attend college not actually enrolling — a phenomenon known as “summer melt.” Bureaucratic barriers, like the labyrinthine process of applying for financial aid, explain some of the drop-off.

While they were graduate students at Harvard, two young professors designed and tested a program to help students stick to their college plans. Benjamin L. Castleman, now at the University of Virginia, and Lindsay C. Page, at the University of Pittsburgh, set up a system of automatic, personalized text messages that reminded high school students about their college deadlines. The texts included links to required forms and live counselors.

The result? Students who received the texts were more likely to enroll in college: 70 percent, compared with 63 percent of those who did not get them. Seven percentage points is a big increase in this field, similar to the gains produced by scholarships that cost thousands of dollars. Yet this program cost only $7 per student.

The same researchers also tested a texting program to keep students from dropping out of college….(More)”

Stakeholders in Action

Curated on January 18, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

New book edited by Rita Cancino & Lise-Lotte Holmgreen: “The relationship between organisations and the communities in which they operate has been the focus of much attention over the past decades, both in real-life organisational contexts and in research. From an organisational point of view, a central concern in this development is the identification of stakeholders and stakeholder roles, which may pave the way for dedicated management and communication strategies to enhance and bolster relationships. This volume follows in the footsteps of the many researchers who have studied and explored the field; however, as opposed to much current literature, which often takes a primarily theoretical approach to the study of stakeholders and stakeholder management, the chapters in this book are first and foremost focused on the practical aspects of the field. Thus, through seven separate case studies, the book discusses how stakeholders are constructed implicitly and explicitly in corporate and institutional texts, investigating the possible consequences of these constructions for the communication and engagement between stakeholders and organisations….(More)”.

inBloom and the Failure of Innovation 1.0

Curated on January 18, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by Steven Hodas at The Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE): “Michael Horn’s recent piece on the failure of inBloom captures why it was the very opposite of a disruptive innovation from a markets perspective, as well the fatal blind spots and judgment errors present from its inception.
inBloom was a textbook example of what I call “Innovation 1.0”, which thinks of innovation as a noun, a thing with transformative transitive properties that magically make its recipient “innovative.” It’s the cargo–cult theory of innovation: I give you this innovative thing (a tablet, a data warehouse, an LMS) and you thereby become innovative yourself. This Innovation 1.0 approach to both product and policy has characterized a great deal of foundation and Federal efforts over the past ten years.
But as Michael points out (and as real innovators and entrepreneurs understand viscerally), “innovation” is not a noun but a verb. It is not a thing but a process, a frame of mind, a set of reflexes. He correctly notes the essential iterative approach that characterizes innovation–as–a–verb, its make–something–big–by–making–something–small theory of action (this is fundamentally different from piloting or focus–grouping, but that’s another topic).
But it’s important to go deeper and understand why iteration is important. Simply, it is a means to bake into the process, the product, or the policy a respect for users’ subjectivity and autonomy. In short, functional iteration requires that you listen.
True, durable innovation, “Innovation 2.0” is not some thing I can give to you, do to you, or even do for you: it must be a process I do with you. Lean Startup theory—with its emphasis on iteration, an assumption of the innovator’s fallibility and limited perspective, and the importance of low–cost, low–stakes discovery of product–market fit that Michael describes—is essentially a cookbook for baking empathy into the development of products, services, or policies…..
That doesn’t mean inBloom was a bad idea. But the failure to anticipate its vehement visceral rejection—however misinformed and however cynically exploited by those with larger agendas—was a profound failure of imagination, of empathy, of the respect for user subjectivity that characterizes Innovation 2.0….(More).”