Nonprofits, Stop Doing Needs Assessments.

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Design for Social Impact: “Too many non-profits and funders still roll into communities with a clipboard and a mission to document everything “missing.”

Needs assessments have become a default tool for diagnosing deficits, reinforcing a saviour mentality where outsiders decide what’s broken and needs fixing.

I’ve sat in meetings where non-profits present lists of what communities lack:

  • “Youth don’t have leadership skills”
  • “Parents don’t value education”
  • “Grassroots organisations don’t have capacity”

The subtext? “They need us.”

And because funding is tied to these narratives of scarcity, organisations learn to describe themselves in the language of need rather than strength—because that’s what gets funded…Now, I’m not saying that organisations or funders should never ask people what their needs are. The key issue is how needs assessments are framed and used. Too often, they use extractive “data” collection methodologies and reinforce top-down, deficit-based narratives, where communities are defined primarily by what they lack rather than what they bring.

Starting with what’s already working (asset mapping) and then identifying what’s needed to strengthen and expand those assets is different from leading with gaps, which can frame communities as passive recipients rather than active problem-solvers.

Arguably, a balanced synergy between assessing needs and asset mapping can be powerful—so long as the process centres on community agency, self-determination, and long-term sustainability rather than diagnosing problems for external intervention.

Also, asset-based mapping to me does not mean that you swoop in with the same clipboard and demand people document their strengths…(More)”.

The New Control Society

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Jon Askonas: “Let me tell you two stories about the Internet. The first story is so familiar it hardly warrants retelling. It goes like this. The Internet is breaking the old powers of the state, the media, the church, and every other institution. It is even breaking society itself. By subjecting their helpless users to ever more potent algorithms to boost engagement, powerful platforms distort reality and disrupt our politics. YouTube radicalizes young men into misogynists. TikTok turns moderate progressives into Hamas supporters. Facebook boosts election denialism; or it censors stories doubting the safety of mRNA vaccines. On the world stage, the fate of nations hinges on whether Twitter promotes color revolutions, WeChat censors Hong Kong protesters, and Facebook ads boost the Brexit campaign. The platforms are producing a fractured society: diversity of opinion is running amok, consensus is dead.

The second story is very different. In the 2023 essay “The age of average,” Alex Murrell recounts a project undertaken in the 1990s by Russian artists Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid. The artists commissioned a public affairs firm to poll over a thousand Americans on their ideal painting: the colors they liked, the subjects they gravitated toward, and so forth. Using the aggregate data, the artists created a painting, and they repeated this procedure in a number of other countries, exhibiting the final collection as an art exhibition called The People’s Choice. What they found, by and large, was not individual and national difference but the opposite: shocking uniformity — landscapes with a few animals and human figures with trees and a blue-hued color palette..(more)”.

Generative AI for data stewards: enhancing accuracy and efficiency in data governance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Ankush Reddy Sugureddy: “The quality of data becomes an essential component for the success of an organisation in a world that is largely influenced by data, where data analytics is becoming increasingly popular in the process of informing strategic decisions. The failure to improve the quality of the data can lead to undesirable outcomes such as poor decisions, ineffective strategies, dysfunctional operations, lost commercial prospects, and abrasion of the consumer. In the process of organisations shifting their focus towards transformative methods such as generative artificial intelligence, several use cases may emerge that have the potential to aid the improvement of data quality. Streamlining procedures such as data classification, metadata management, and policy enforcement can be accomplished by the incorporation of generative artificial intelligence into data governance frameworks. This, in turn, reduces the workload of human data stewards and minimises the possibility of human error. In order to ensure compliance with legal standards such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), generative artificial intelligence may analyse enormous datasets by utilising machine learning algorithms to discover patterns, inconsistencies, and compliance issues…(More)”.

In Online Democracy, Fun Is Imperative

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Joe Mathews: “Governments around the world, especially those at the subnational and local levels, find themselves stuck in a vise. Planetary problems like climate change, disease, and technological disruption are not being addressed adequately by national governments. Everyday people, whose lives have been disrupted by those planetary problems, press the governments closer to them to step up and protect them. But those governments lack the technical capacity and popular trust to act effectively against bigger problems.

To build trust and capacity, many governments are moving governance into the digital world and asking their residents to do more of the work of government themselves. Some cities, provinces, and political institutions have tried to build digital platforms and robust digital environments where residents can improve service delivery and make government policy themselves.

However, most of these experiments have been failures. The trouble is that most of these platforms cannot keep the attention of the people who are supposed to use them. Too few of the platforms are designed to make online engagement compelling. So, figuring out how to make online engagement in government fun is actually a serious question for governments seeking to work more closely with their people.

What does fun look like in this sphere? I first witnessed a truly fun and engaging digital tool for citizen governance in Rome in 2018. While running a democracy conference with Mayor Virginia Raggi and her team, they were always on their phones, and not just to answer emails or texts. They were constantly on a digital environment called Rousseau.

Rousseau was named after Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the eighteenth-century philosopher and author of The Social Contract. In that 1762 book, Rousseau argued that city-states (like his hometown of Geneva) were more naturally suited to democracy than nation-states (especially big nations like France). He also wrote that the people themselves, not elected representatives, were the best rulers through what we today call direct democracy…(More)”.

California Governor Launches New Digital Democracy Tool

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Phil Willon: “California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday announced a new digital democracy initiative that will attempt to connect residents directly with government officials in times of disaster and allow them to express their concerns about matters affecting their day-to-day lives.

The web-based initiative, called Engaged California, will go live with a focus on aiding victims of the deadly wildfires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena who are struggling to recover. For example, comments shared via the online forum could potentially prompt government action regarding insurance coverage, building standards or efforts to require utilities to bury power lines underground.

In a written statement, Newsom described the pilot program as “a town hall for the modern era — where Californians share their perspectives, concerns, and ideas geared toward finding real solutions.”


“We’re starting this effort by more directly involving Californians in the LA firestorm response and recovery,” he added. “As we recover, reimagine, and rebuild Los Angeles, we will do it together.”

The Democrat’s administration has ambitious plans for the effort that go far beyond the wildfires. Engaged California is modeled after a program in Taiwan that became an essential bridge between the public and the government at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Taiwanese government has relied on it to combat online political disinformation as well…(More)”.

The Missing Pieces in India’s AI Puzzle: Talent, Data, and R&D

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Anirudh Suri: “This paper explores the question of whether India specifically will be able to compete and lead in AI or whether it will remain relegated to a minor role in this global competition. The paper argues that if India is to meet its larger stated ambition of becoming a global leader in AI, it will need to fill significant gaps in at least three areas urgently: talent, data, and research. Putting these three missing pieces in place can help position India extremely well to compete in the global AI race.

India’s national AI mission (NAIM), also known as the IndiaAI Mission, was launched in 2024 and rightly notes that success in the AI race requires multiple pieces of the AI puzzle to be in place.3 Accordingly, it has laid out a plan across seven elements of the “AI stack”: computing/AI infrastructure, data, talent, research and development (R&D), capital, algorithms, and applications.4

However, the focus thus far has practically been on only two elements: ensuring the availability of AI-focused hardware/compute and, to some extent, building Indic language models. India has not paid enough attention to, acted toward, and put significant resources behind three other key enabling elements of AI competitiveness, namely data, talent, and R&D…(More)”.

How Innovation Ecosystems Foster Citizen Participation Using Emerging Technologies in Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

OECD Report: “This report examines how actors in Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands interact and work together to contribute to the development of emerging technologies for citizen participation. Through in-depth research and analysis of actors’ motivations, experiences, challenges, and enablers in this nascent but promising field, this paper presents a unique cross-national perspective on innovation ecosystems for citizen participation using emerging technology. It includes lessons and concrete proposals for policymakers, innovators, and researchers seeking to develop technology-based citizen participation initiatives…(More)”.

Data Sovereignty and Open Sharing: Reconceiving Benefit-Sharing and Governance of Digital Sequence Information

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Masanori Arita: “There are ethical, legal, and governance challenges surrounding data, particularly in the context of digital sequence information (DSI) on genetic resources. I focus on the shift in the international framework, as exemplified by the CBD-COP15 decision on benefit-sharing from DSI and discuss the growing significance of data sovereignty in the age of AI and synthetic biology. Using the example of the COVID-19 pandemic, the tension between open science principles and data control rights is explained. This opinion also highlights the importance of inclusive and equitable data sharing frameworks that respect both privacy and sovereign data rights, stressing the need for international cooperation and equitable access to data to reduce global inequalities in scientific and technological advancement…(More)”.

Organisations in the Age of Algorithms

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Phanish Puranam: “When Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai recently revealed that 25 percent of the company’s software is now machine-generated, it underscored how quickly artificial intelligence is reshaping the workplace. 

What does this mean for how we organise and manage? Will there still be room for humans in tomorrow’s organisations? And what might their work conditions look like? I tackle these questions in my new book “Re-Humanize: How to Build Human-Centric Organizations in the Age of Algorithms”. 

The answers are not a given. They will depend on what we choose to do – what kinds of organisations we design. I make the case that successful organisation designs will have to pursue both goal-centricity (i.e. achieving objectives) and human-centricity (i.e. creating social environments that people find attractive). A myopic focus on only one or the other will not bode well for us.

The dual purpose of organisations

Why focus on organisations at a time when technology seems to be making such exciting strides? This was the very first question that INSEAD alumna Joanna Gordon asked me in a recent digital@INSEAD webinar. 

My answer: Homo sapiens’s most impressive accomplishments, from building the pyramids to developing Covid-19 vaccines, are not individual achievements. They were possible only because many people worked together effectively. “How to organise groups to attain goals” is our oldest general-purpose technology (GPT!). 

But there is more. To humans, organisations don’t just help accomplish goals. We are a species that has evolved to survive and thrive in groups, and organisations (i.e. groups with goals) are the natural habitat of Homo sapiens. They provide us with a sense of community and, as research has shown, help us strike a balance between our needs for social connection, individual autonomy and feeling capable and effective…(More)”.

Critical Data Studies: An A to Z Guide to Concepts and Methods

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Rob Kitchin: “Critical Data Studies has come of age as a vibrant, interdisciplinary field of study. Taking data as its primary analytical focus, the field theorises the nature of data; examines how data are produced, managed, governed and shared; investigates how they are used to make sense of the world and to perform practical action; and explores whose agenda data-driven systems serve.

This book is the first comprehensive A-Z guide to the concepts and methods of Critical Data Studies, providing succinct definitions and descriptions of over 400 key terms, along with suggested further reading. The book enables readers to quickly navigate and improve their comprehension of the field, while also acting as a guide for discovering ideas and methods that will be of value in their own studies…(More)”