Curated findings and actionable knowledge at the intersection of technology, innovation, and governance
Many of these interventions and products have related apps that use gamification in some capacity in order to improve the user experience, offer motivation, and encourage behavior change. We identified 57 apps from nearly 2400 screened apps that both target direct energy use and employ at least one element of gamification.
We evaluated these apps with
Blog by Yoichi Funabashi: “Without the high-quality research that independent think tanks provide, there can be no effective policymaking, nor even a credible basis for debating major issues. Insofar as funding challenges, foreign influence-peddling, and populist attacks on truth pose a threat to such institutions tanks, they threaten democracy itself
The Brookings Institution in Washington, DC – perhaps the world’s top think tank – is under scrutiny for receiving six-figure donations from Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, which many consider to be a security threat. And since the barbaric murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi last October, many other Washington-based think tanks have come under pressure to stop accepting donations from Saudi Arabia.
These recent controversies have given rise to a narrative that Washington-based think tanks are facing a funding crisis. In fact, traditional think tanks are confronting three major challenges that have put them in a uniquely difficult situation. Not only are they facing increased competition from for-profit think tanks such as the McKinsey Global Institute and the Eurasia Group; they also must negotiate rising geopolitical tensions, especially between the United States and China.And complicating matters further, many citizens, goaded by populist harangues, have become dismissive of “experts” and the fact-based analyses that think tanks produce (or at least should produce).
With respect to the first challenge, Daniel Drezner of Tufts University argues in The Ideas Industry: How Pessimists, Partisans, and Plutocrats are Transforming the Marketplace of Ideas that for-profit think tanks have engaged in thought leadership by operating as platforms for provocative thinkers who push big ideas. Whereas many non-profit think tanks – as well as universities and non-governmental organizations – remain “old-fashioned” in their approach to data, their for-profit counterparts thrive by finding the one statistic that captures public attention in the digital age. Given their access to both public and proprietary information, for-profit think tanks are also able to maximize the potential of big data in ways that traditional think tanks cannot.
Moreover, with the space for balanced foreign-policy arguments narrowing, think tanks are at risk of becoming tools of geopolitical statecraft. This is especially true now that US-China relations are deteriorating and becoming more ideologically tinged.
Over time, foreign governments of all stripes have cleverly sought to influence policymaking not only in Washington, but also in London, Brussels, Berlin, and elsewhere, by becoming significant donors to think tanks. Governments realize that the well-connected think tanks that act as “power brokers” vis-à-vis the political establishment have been facing fundraising challenges since the 2008 financial crisis. In some cases, locally based think tanks have even been accused of becoming fronts for foreign authoritarian governments….(More)”.
Special Issue of Global Policy: “The papers in this special issue investigate the politics that shaped the SDGs, the setting of the goals, the selection of the measurement methods. The SDGs ushered in a new era of ‘governance by indicators’ in global development. Goal setting and the use of numeric performance indicators have now become the method for negotiating a consensus vision of development and priority objectives. The choice of indicators is seemingly a technical issue, but measurement methods
The case studies in this collection show the open multi-stakeholder negotiations helped craft more transformative and ambitious goals. But across many goals, there was slippage in ambition when targets and indicators were selected. The papers also highlight how the increasing role of big data and other non-traditional sources of data is altering data production, dissemination and use, and fundamentally altering the epistemology of information and knowledge. This raises questions about ‘data for whom and for what’ – fundamental issues concerning the power of data to shape knowledge, the democratic governance of SDG indicators and of knowledge for development overall.
Knowledge and Politics in Setting and Measuring the SDGs – Sakiko Fukuda-Parr and Desmond McNeill
The Contested Discourse of Sustainable Agriculture – Desmond McNeill
Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment: Feminist Mobilization for the SDGs – Gita Sen
Keeping Out Extreme Inequality from The SDG Agenda – The Politics of Indicators – Sakiko Fukuda-Parr
The Design of Environmental Priorities in the SDGs – Mark Elder and Simon Høiberg Olsen
The IHME in the Shifting Landscape of Global Health Metrics – Manjari Mahajan
The Big (data) Bang: Opportunities and Challenges for Compiling SDG Indicators – Steve MacFeely …(More)”
Center for Data Innovation: “Most Americans (58 percent) are willing to allow third parties to collect at least some sensitive personal data, according to a new survey from the Center for Data Innovation.
While many surveys measure public opinions on privacy, few ask consumers about their willingness to make tradeoffs, such as sharing certain personal information in exchange for services or benefits they want. In this survey, the Center asked respondents whether they would allow a mobile app to collect their biometrics or location data for purposes such as making it easier to sign into an account or getting free navigational help, and it asked whether they would allow medical researchers to collect sensitive data about their health if it would lead to medical cures for their families or others. Only one-third of respondents (33 percent) were unwilling to let mobile apps collect either their biometrics or location data under any of the described scenarios. And overall, nearly 6 in 10 respondents (58 percent) were willing to let a third party collect at least one piece of sensitive personal data, such as
Digital Promise: “Frontline workers, or the workers who interact directly with customers and provide services in industries like retail, healthcare, food service, and hospitality, help make up the backbone of today’s workforce.
However, frontline workforce talent development presents numerous challenges. Frontline workers may not be receiving the education and training they need to advance in their careers and sustain gainful employment. They also likely do not have access to data regarding their own skills and learning, and do not know what skills employers seek in quality workers.
Today, Digital Promise, a nonprofit authorized by Congress to support comprehensive research and development of programs to advance innovation in education, launched “Tapping Data for Frontline Talent Development,” a new, interactive report that shares how the seamless and secure sharing of data is key to creating more effective learning and career pathways for frontline service workers.
The research revealed that the current learning ecosystem that serves frontline workers—which includes stakeholders like education and training providers, funders, and employers—is complex, siloed, and removes agency from the worker.
Although many data types are collected, in today’s system much of the data is duplicative and rarely used to inform impact and long-term outcomes. The processes and systems in the ecosystem do not support the flow of data between stakeholders or frontline workers.
And yet, data sharing systems and collaborations are beginning to emerge as providers, funders, and employers recognize the power in data-driven decision-making and the benefits to data sharing. Not only can data sharing help to improve programs and services, it can create more personalized interventions for education providers supporting frontline workers, and it can also improve talent pipelines for employers.
In addition to providing three case studies with valuable examples of employers, a community, and a state focused on driving change based on data, this new report identifies key recommendations that have the potential to move the current system toward a more data-driven, collaborative, worker-centered learning ecosystem, including:
We invite you to read our new report today for more
Book edited by Ben Wagner, Matthias C. Kettemann and Kilian Vieth: “In a digitally connected world, the question of how to respect, protect and implement human rights has become unavoidable. This contemporary Research Handbook offers new insights into well-established debates by framing them in terms of human rights. It examines the issues posed by the management of key Internet resources, the governance of its architecture, the role of different stakeholders, the legitimacy of
The GovLab: “The road to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals is complex and challenging. Policymakers around the world need both new solutions and new ways to become more innovative. This includes evidence-based policy and program design, as well as improved monitoring of progress made.
Unlocking privately processed data through data collaboratives — a new form of public-private partnership in which private industry, government and civil society work together to release previously siloed data — has become essential to address the challenges of our era.
Yet while research has proven its promise and value, several barriers to scaling data collaboration exist.
Ensuring trust and shared responsibility in how the data will be handled and used proves particularly challenging, because of the high transaction costs involved in drafting contracts and agreements of sharing.
The goal of the Contracts for Data Collaboration (C4DC) initiative is to address the inefficiencies of developing contractual agreements for public-private data collaboration.
The intent is to inform and guide those seeking to establish a data collaborative by developing and making available a shared repository of contractual clauses (taken from existing data sharing agreements) that covers a host of issues, including (non –exclusive):
In addition to the searchable library of contractual clauses, the repository will house use cases, guides and other information that analyse common patterns, language and best practices.
Contracts for Data Collaboration builds on efforts from member organizations that have experience in developing and managing data collaboratives; and have documented the legal challenges and opportunities of data collaboration.
The initiative is an open collaborative with charter members from the GovLab at NYU, UN SDSN Thematic Research Network on Data and Statistics (TReNDS), University of Washington and the World Economic Forum.
Organizations interested in joining the initiative should contact the individuals noted below; or share any agreements they have used for data sharing activities (without any sensitive or identifiable information): Stefaan Verhulst, GovLab ([email protected]) …(More)
Paper by Jessica Stockdale, Jackie Cassell
A range of small studies canvassing patient views, mainly in the USA, have found an overall positive orientation to the use of patient data for societal benefit2–7. However, recent case studies, like NHS England’s ill-fated Care.data scheme, indicate that certain schemes for secondary data use can prove unpopular in the UK. Launched in 2013, Care.data aimed to extract and upload the whole population’s general practice patient records to a central database for prevalence studies and service planning8. Despite the stated intention of Care.data to “make major advances in quality and patient safety”8, this programme was met with a widely reported public outcry leading to its suspension and eventual closure in 2016. Several factors may have been involved in this failure, from the poor public communication about the project, lack of social licence9, or as pressure group MedConfidential suggests, dislike of selling data to profit-making companies10. However, beyond these specific explanations for the project’s failure, what ignited public controversy was a concern with the impact that its aim to collect and share data on a large scale might have on patient privacy. The case of Care.data indicates a reluctance on behalf of the public to share their patient data, and it is still not wholly clear whether the public are willing to accept future attempts at extracting and linking large datasets of medical information. The picture of mixed opinion makes taking an evidence-based position, drawing on social consensus, difficult for legislators, regulators, and data custodians who may respond to personal or media generated perceptions of public views. However, despite differing results of studies canvassing public views, we
John Kay: “For the past fifty years or so, the economic theory of the firm has been based on the paradigmatic model of corporate activity which perceives the firm as a nexus of contracts, its boundaries defined by the relative transaction costs of market-based and hierarchical organisation. Issues of both corporate governance and corporate management are seen as principal-agent problems, to be resolved by the establishment of appropriate incentives. This approach has had considerable influence on corporate behaviour and on public policy. Business has placed ever-greater emphasis on ‘shareholder value’ and incentive-based schemes of executive remuneration have become widespread.
In this paper, I describe the origins, development and effect of the ‘markets and hierarchies’ approach. I argue that this reductionist account fails at a political level, giving no coherent account of the legitimacy of such corporate activity – that is, no answer to the question ‘what gives them the right to do that?’ – and additionally that the model bears little relation to the reality of successful corporations. I describe an alternative tradition in the understanding of business, owing more to organisation theory, corporate strategy and business history, which treats the concept of corporate personality as more than a legal doctrine. In this view, corporations are social organisations: their competitive advantage is based on distinctive capabilities which are the product of their history, their internal architecture and organisational design, and the relationships with employers, customers, suppliers and commentators at large which arise from them. This is not just a more plausible account of what firms actually do: by
Natalie Leal at Global Government Forum: “A new initiative by two US think tanks aims to help public bodies explore innovative ways of consulting and engaging with communities, finding new answers to public policy challenges.
The People-Led Innovation project was launched on Tuesday by GovLab and the Bertelsmann Foundation. Noting that citizens’ knowledge, insights and ideas often hold the key to the problems faced by governments, GovLab co-founder Stefaan Verhulst said the new tools will help officials consider “the most effective ways to engage the right people for the right task at the right time.”
Verhulst explained that the initiative, ‘People-Led Innovation: Toward a Methodology for Solving Urban Problems in the 21st Century’, is “built on the idea that, as governments increasingly experiment with new means for drawing on the public’s knowledge and skills to address common challenges, one-size-fits-all citizen engagement efforts are often too broad and unwieldy to surface useful insights.”
The new site aims to provide leaders with a toolkit and “a set of steps that enable them to tap into their potentially most important – but underutilized – asset: people.” While the project’s main audience is US city governments, the skills and methodology are transferable and the researchers have drawn on case studies from around the world.
The methodology breaks the process down into four distinct stages: defining the problem; curating possible solutions using people and data; experimenting and testing what works in practice; and reviewing and ‘expanding’ – incorporating feedback and transferring lessons learned to a wider audience. At each stage, leaders are encouraged to identify stakeholders to consult or co-create with.
At the heart of the initiative is the idea that everyone – from local residents, small businesses and community bodies through to government agencies, corporate giants and international
“People’s expertise comes in a range of flavours – from interests and experiences to skills and credentialed knowledge – yet all are equally valuable to engage when solving problems,” say the creators in a report on the website.
Four types of engagement methods are suggested as ways to best “tap into the diverse expertise distributed among people outside of government. These are: commenting, for