Paper by Adam Hill: “Critics frequently argue that nudges are more covert, less transparent, and more difficult to monitor than traditional regulatory tools. Edward Glaeser, for example, argues that “[p]ublic monitoring of soft paternalism is much more difficult than public monitoring of hard paternalism.” As one of the leading proponents of soft paternalism, Cass Sunstein, acknowledges, while “[m]andates and commands are highly visible,” soft paternalism, “and some nudges in particular[,] may be invisible.” In response to this challenge, proponents of nudging argue that invisibility for any given individual in a particular choice environment is compatible with “careful public scrutiny” of the nudge. This paper offers first of its kind experimental evidence that tests whether nudges are, in fact, compatible with careful public scrutiny. Using two sets of experiments, the paper argues that, even when made visible, nudges attract less scrutiny than their “hard law” counterparts….(More)”
A Blueprint for Pro-Peace Innovation
Jason Miklian and Kristian Hoelscher for Harvard International Review (HIR): “Innovators and scholars can meaningfully collaborate to shape peaceful societies. We offer five steps they can take together.
Peace and conflict studies knowledge has expanded dramatically over the last 25 years, and we know much more about why conflicts start and how they can be prevented. At the same time, innovation and technology startups have started to try to tackle peace and conflict issues, beginning new efforts to create more peaceful societies. But innovators have thus far had little interaction with peace scholars as they try to build peace, even as many express a deep interest to positively improve the lives of those in fragile and conflict-affected regions across the globe.
While allocating tech billions for future moonshots seems commonplace, it’s much harder to get funding for projects that actively help those suffering from conflict and violence today. We contend that there is untapped value in promoting joint efforts between academics and innovators to build new violence prevention and peacebuilding tools, and being guided by state-of-the-art peace research will maximize their chances for positive societal impact. By integrating researchers’ deep knowledge of the economic, political and spatial dynamics of peace and conflict processes with innovation and entrepreneurship, we can develop new technologies that support human security and peacebuilding around the globe.
In support, we outline here several opportunities for those working in innovation spaces to become peacebuilders, and call to for innovators and scholars to dramatically increase collaboration. Highlighting the state-of-the-art innovations that are trying to build peace today, we examine select challenges that actors in this space currently face, and outline how innovator-academic partnerships can help address some of today’s most intractable global peace and conflict problems. We call for five ways to take peace innovation forward:
- Build the scholar–entrepreneur–policy triad of peace innovation
- ‘Disrupt Conflict’ – but do so with informed purpose
- Promote ethical innovation through culturally-sensitive engagement
- Make innovations that deliver specific positive impacts in conflict environments
- Globalize the peace-innovation playing field…(More)”
Developing transparency through digital means? Examining institutional responses to civic technology in Latin America
Rebecca Rumbul at Journal of eDemocracy and Open Government: “A number of NGOs across the world currently develop digital tools to increase citizen interaction with official information. The successful operation of such tools depends on the expertise and efficiency of the NGO, and the willingness of institutions to disclose suitable information and data. It is this institutional interaction with civic technology that this study examines. The research explores empirical interview data gathered from government officials, public servants, campaigners and NGO’s involved in the development and implementation of civic technologies in Chile, Argentina and Mexico. The findings identify the impact these technologies have had upon government bureaucracy, and the existing barriers to openness created by institutionalised behaviours and norms. Institutionalised attitudes to information rights and conventions are shown to inform the approach that government bureaucracy takes in the provision of information, and institutionalised procedural behaviour is shown to be a factor in frustrating NGOs attempting to implement civic technology….(More)”.
Pushing the Limits of Collective Intelligence
“Imagine a collective brain shaped by human insights and powered by technology – that’s crowdsourcing. Michael Bernstein, computer scientist at Stanford University, explores how to harness crowdsourcing to tackle daunting challenges. In this episode of Stanford Innovation Lab, Tina Seelig meets with Michael to discuss examples of successful crowdsourcing, tools to gather collective insights, and the evolving relationship between humans and machines….(More)”
Making Citizen-Generated Data Work
Danny Lämmerhirt at Open Knowledge: “We are pleased to announce a new research series investigating how citizens and civil society create data to drive sustainable development. The series follows on from earlier papers on Democratising The Data Revolution and how citizen-generated data can change what public institutions measure. The first report “Making Citizen-Generated Data Work” asks what makes citizens and others want to produce and use citizen-generated data. It was written by myself, Shazade Jameson, and Eko Prasetyo.
“The goal of Citizen-Generated Data is to monitor, advocate for, or drive change around an issue important to citizens”
The report demonstrates that citizen-generated data projects are rarely the work of individual citizens. Instead, they often depend on partnerships to thrive and are supported by civil society organisations, community-based organisations, governments, or business. These partners play a necessary role to provide resources, support, and knowledge to citizens. In return, they can harness data created by citizens to support their own mission. Thus, citizens and their partners often gain mutual benefits from citizen-generated data.
But if CGD projects rely on partnerships, who has to be engaged, and through which incentives, to enable CGD projects to achieve their goals? How are such multi-stakeholder projects organised, and which resources and expertise do partners bring into a project? What can other projects do to support and benefit their own citizen-generated data initiatives? This report offers recommendations to citizens, civil society organisations, policy-makers, donors, and others on how to foster stronger collaborations….(Read the full report here).
Open eGovernment practices in all EU Member States make public services more collaborative, efficient and inclusive
The studies provide a valuable information base and could inspire current and future activities under the European Commission e-Government Action Plan 2016-2020, in particular those related to facilitating digital interaction between administrations and citizens/businesses.
The emergence of Open Government in Member States
The study “Towards faster implementation and uptake of open government” maps 395 inspiring examples of Open eGovernment Services across Europe. This wealth of data and practices, is proof of successful cooperation between public administrations, companies, organizations and citizens. It demonstrates how the process of digitalisation can create better opportunities for everyone and shows concretely how to make it happen. The European Commission will give visibility to these best practices, support the policy processes and invest in digital innovation in the public sector.
Openness between public administrations
This is mostly driven by administrations seeking better efficiency and cost reduction. For example, applying once-only principle – under which people and businesses provide information only once to public authorities – may result in increasingly automated exchanges. For example,
- By applying the once-only principle, the Spanish government saved € 2.8 million (costs of exchange of paper documents between administrations) by introducing SIR (System of Interconnection of Registers).
- In the Netherlands, public administrations share among them the data hosted in 12 existing base registers., This helps to speed up administrative processes and citizens or companies no longer need to provide the same information time and again.
- Agiv, the agency for geographical information in Flanders (Belgium) has a central platform KLIP where administrations share the location of underground cables and pipes, helping thus companies to plan construction works. Its services were requested 100.000 times during the first six months after its launch.
Openness towards third parties
Openess towards third parties aims at increasing transparency and responsiveness and even participation in decision-making, for instance,
- Greek citizens use the Vouliwatch platform to publicly question government officials and share their own expertise;
- More and more cities foresee that citizens can have a say about how their money gets spent. The residents of Madrid vote online on 2% of city budget and those of Paris even on 5% of municipal expenses and can suggest projects within these financial limits; the inhabitants of Southern Italy submit formal web-based evaluations of public services and infrastructure thanks to cooperation of administration with the third sector.
- OpenSpending, an initiative by the Open Knowledge Foundation, contains datasets on public administrations expenditure in 76 countries so that citizens can see how authorities spend taxpayers’ money. Moreover, it allowed the UK government to save £ 4 million in only 15 minutes by simply comparing markets for different services.
Open government can also unlock economic potential for growth and jobs, for example,
- The Belgian Mercurius e-invoicing and e-procurement platform which allows all levels of administrations and businesses to cooperate and reduces the costs of invoices for companies by 62% (with expected 4,5 M € of savings per year)
- The Dutch Base Register Topography works as open data for anyone interested and has developed TopoGPS , a GPS application, based on data from the base registry, with an economic effect estimated at €9 million.
- The British NHS Job Platform, now used by 500 NHS employers, is a focal point for job seekers in the medical sector. Also in the UK, TransportAPI aggregates and analyses public transport data, allowing users and developers to access the transport data opened up by public transportation bodies and to work on their own applications.
Numerous initiatives also support inclusion:
- Konto Bariery uses accessibility data for an app-based map of buildings accessible to disabled people in Czech Republic and the non-profit
- Techfugees is an initiative organised by tech professionals that makes engineers, entrepreneurs, NGOs, public administrations collaborate in order to provide innovative technology solutions to help refugees….(More)
Using Geodata and Geolocation in the Social Sciences: Mapping our Connected World
Book by David Abernathy: “Big data is upon us. With the ‘internet of things’ now a reality, social scientists must get to grips with the complex network of location-based data in order to ask questions and address problems in an increasingly networked, globalizing world.
Using Geodata and Geolocation in the Social Sciences: Mapping our Connected World provides an engaging and accessible introduction to the Geoweb with clear, step-by-step guides for:
- capturing Geodata from sources including GPS, sensor networks, and Twitter
- visualizing Geodata using programmes including QGIS, GRASS and R
Packed with colour images and practical exercises, this book is the perfect guide for students and researchers looking to incorporate location-based data into their social science research….(More) (Companion Website)”
Datafication and democracy: Recalibrating digital information systems to address societal interests
The Centre for Humanitarian Data
Centre for HumData: “The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is establishing a Centre for Humanitarian Data in the Netherlands. It will be operational by early 2017 for an initial three years.
The Centre’s mission is to increase the use and impact of data in the humanitarian sector. The vision is to create a future where all people involved in a humanitarian situation have access to the data they need, when and how they need it, to make responsible and informed decisions.
The Centre will support humanitarian partners and OCHA staff in the field and at headquarters with their data efforts. It will be part of the city of The Hague’s Humanity Hub, a dedicated building for organizations working on data and innovation in the social sector. The location offers OCHA and partners a new, neutral setting where a hybrid culture can be created around data collaboration.
The Centre is a key contribution towards the Secretary-General’s Agenda for Humanity under core commitment four — changing the way we work to end need. The Centre’s activities will accelerate the changes required for the humanitarian system to become data driven….(More)”
Socialbots and Their Friends: Digital Media and the Automation of Sociality
Book edited by Robert W. Gehl and Maria Bakardjieva: “Many users of the Internet are aware of bots: automated programs that work behind the scenes to come up with search suggestions, check the weather, filter emails, or clean up Wikipedia entries. More recently, a new software robot has been making its presence felt in social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter – the socialbot. However, unlike other bots, socialbots are built to appear human. While a weatherbot will tell you if it’s sunny and a spambot will incessantly peddle Viagra, socialbots will ask you questions, have conversations, like your posts, retweet you, and become your friend. All the while, if they’re well-programmed, you won’t know that you’re tweeting and friending with a robot.
Who benefits from the use of software robots? Who loses? Does a bot deserve rights? Who pulls the strings of these bots? Who has the right to know what about them? What does it mean to be intelligent? What does it mean to be a friend? Socialbots and Their Friends: Digital Media and the Automation of Sociality is one of the first academic collections to critically consider the socialbot and tackle these pressing questions….(More)”