Collection

Training the next generation of public leaders

Curated on February 5, 2015July 19, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Thanks to the generous support of the Knight Foundation, this term the Governance Lab Academy – a training program designed to promote civic engagement and innovation – is launching a series of online coaching programs.
Geared to the teams and individuals inside and outside of government planning to undertake a new project or trying to figure out how to make an existing project even more effective and scalable, these programs are designed to help participants working in civic engagement and innovation develop effective projects from idea to implementation.
Convened by leading experts in their fields, coaching programs meet exclusively online once a week for four weeks or every other week for eight weeks. They include frequent and constructive feedback, customized and original learning materials, peer-to-peer support, mentoring by topic experts and individualized coaching from those with policy, technology, and domain expertise.
There is no charge to participants but each program is limited to 8-10 project teams or individuals.
You can see the current roster of programs below and check out the website for more information (including FAQs), to sign up and to suggest a new program.

Citizen Science on the Web, starting the week of March 2, 2015.
Civic Tech for Local Legislatures and Legislators, starting the week of March 2, 2015.
Freedom of Information and FOIA Project Coaching: Breaking Down the Walls and Opening Up Communications, starting the week of March 2, 2015.
Citizen Engagement Projects, starting the week of March 2, 2015.
Tech Procurement Projects: Making the Supply Chain Work, starting the week of March 16, 2015.
Leveraging Crowds in the Public Sector, starting the week of March 23, 2015.
Open Source Technology Practices For Civic Engagement Projects, starting the week of April 6, 2015.
Humanitarian Innovation Project Collaborative, starting the week of April 6, 2015.
Lab Design: Bringing Agility and Empiricism to Public Problems, starting the week of April 6, 2015.
Open Data Data-Driven Decisions for All, starting the week of April 6, 2015.
Data Analytics for Change, dates TBD.
Open Contracting Projects, dates TBD.

Faculty includes:

Brian Behlendorf, Managing Director at Mithril Capital Management and Co-Founder Apache
Alexandra Clare, Founder of Iraq Re:Coded
Brian Forde, Senior Former Advisor to the U.S. CTO, White House Office of Science Technology and Policy
Francois Grey, Coordinator of the Citizen Cyberscience Centre, Geneva
Gavin Hayman, Executive Director of the Open Contracting Partnership
Clay Johnson, CEO of The Department for Better Technology and Former Presidential Innovation Fellow
Benjamin Kallos, New York City Council Member and Chair of the Committee on Governmental Operations of the New York City Council
Karim Lakhani, Lumry Family Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School
Amen Ra Mashariki, Chief Analytics Officer of New York City
Geoff Mulgan, Chief Executive of NESTA
Miriam Nisbet, Former Director of the Office of Government Information Services
Beth Noveck, Founder and CEO of The GovLab
Tiago Peixoto, Open Government Specialist at The World Bank
Arnaud Sahuguet, Chief Technology Officer of The GovLab
Joeri van den Steenhoven, Co-Founder and Chief Research and Development Officer of MaRS Solutions Lab
Stefaan Verhulst, Co-Founder and Chief Research and Development Officer of The GovLab

2015 Edelman Trust Barometer

Curated on February 5, 2015December 13, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

“The 2015 Edelman Trust Barometer shows a global decline in trust over the last year, and the number of countries with trusted institutions has fallen to an all-time low among the informed public.

Among the general population, the trust deficit is even more pronounced, with nearly two-thirds of countries falling into the distruster category.
In the last year, trust has declined for three of the four institutions measured. NGOs continue to be the most trusted institution, but trust in NGOs declined from 66 to 63 percent. Sixty percent of countries now distrust media. Trust in government increased slightly, driven by big gains in India, Russia and Indonesia but government is still distrusted in 19 of the 27 markets surveyed. And trust in business is below 50 percent in half of those markets.

2015 Edelman Trust Barometer – Global Results from Edelman Insights”

Ebola: Call for more sharing of scientific data

Curated on February 5, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Helen Briggs at the BBC: “The devastation left by the Ebola virus in west Africa raises many questions for science, policy and international development. One issue that has yet to receive widespread media attention is the handling of genetic data on the virus. By studying its code, scientists can trace how Ebola leapt across borders, and how, like all viruses, it is constantly evolving and changing.

Yet, researchers have been privately complaining for months about the scarcity of genetic information about the virus that is entering the public domain….

At the heart of the issue is the scientific process. The main way scientists are rewarded for their work is through the quality and number of research papers they publish.
Data is only revealed for scrutiny by the wider scientific community when the research is published, which can be a lengthy process….
Dr Emma Thomson of the MRC-University of Glasgow centre for virus research says all journals publishing papers on Ebola must insist all data is released, as a collaborative approach could save lives.
“At the time of publication is really important – these days most people do it but not always and journals often insist (but not always),” she told me.
“A lot of Ebola sequencing has happened but the data hasn’t always been uploaded.
“It’s an international emergency so people need to get the data out there to allow it to be analysed in different ways by different labs.”
In the old days of the public private race to decode the first human genome, the mood was one of making data accessible to all for the good of science and society.
Genetic science and public attitudes have moved on, but in the case of Ebola, some are saying it may be time for a re think.
As Prof Paul Hunter, Professor of health protection at the University of East Anglia, put it: “It would be tragic if, during a crisis like this, data was not being adequately shared with the public health community.
“The rapid sharing of data could help enable more rapid control of the outbreak.”…(More)”

Innovation Labs: Leveraging Openness for Radical Innovation?

Curated on February 4, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Gryszkiewicz, Lidia and Lykourentzou, Ioanna and Toivonen, Tuukka: “A growing range of public, private and civic organisations, from Unicef through Nesta to Tesco, now run units known as ‘innovation labs’. The hopeful assumption they share is that labs, by building on openness among other features, can generate promising solutions to grand challenges of the future. Despite their seeming proliferation and popularisation, the underlying innovation paradigm embodied by labs has so far received scant academic attention. This is a missed opportunity, because innovation labs are potentially fruitful vehicles for leveraging openness for radical innovation. Indeed, they not only strive to span organisational, sectoral and geographical boundaries by bringing a variety of uncommon actors together to embrace radical ideas and out-of-the box thinking, but they also aim to apply the concept of openness throughout the innovation process, including the experimentation and development phases. While the phenomenon of labs clearly forms part of a broader trend towards openness, it seems to transcend traditional conceptualisations of open innovation (Chesbrough, 2006), open strategy (Whittington et al., 2011), open science (David, 1998) or open government (Janssen et al., 2012). What are innovation labs about, how do they differ from other innovation efforts and how do they embrace openness to create breakthrough innovations? This short exploratory paper is an introduction to a larger empirical study aiming to answer these questions….(More).”

Surveying the citizen science landscape

Curated on February 4, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Andrea Wiggins and Kevin Crowston in First Monday: “Citizen science has seen enormous growth in recent years, in part due to the influence of the Internet, and a corresponding growth in interest. However, the few stand-out examples that have received attention from media and researchers are not representative of the diversity of the field as a whole, and therefore may not be the best models for those seeking to study or start a citizen science project. In this work, we present the results of a survey of citizen science project leaders, identifying sub-groups of project types according to a variety of features related to project design and management, including funding sources, goals, participant activities, data quality processes, and social interaction. These combined features highlight the diversity of citizen science, providing an overview of the breadth of the phenomenon and laying a foundation for comparison between citizen science projects and to other online communities….(More).”

U.S. Public Participation Playbook

Curated on February 4, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

“The U.S. Public Participation Playbook is a resource for government managers to effectively evaluate and build better services through public participation using best practices and performance metrics.
Public participation—where citizens help shape and implement government programs—is a foundation of open, transparent, and engaging government services. From emergency management, town hall discussions and regulatory development to science and education, better engagement with those who use public services can measurably improve those services for everyone.
Developing a U.S. Public Participation Playbook is an open government priority included in both the first and second U.S. Open Government National Action Plans as part of the United States effort to increase public integrity in government programs. This resource reflects the commitment of the government and civic partners to measurably improve participation programs, and is designed using the same inclusive principles that it champions.

How is the playbook structured?

We needed to create a resource that combines best practices and suggested performance metrics for public servants to use to evaluate and build better services — to meet this need, based on discussions with federal managers and stakeholders, we identified five main categories that should be addressed in all programs, whether digital or offline. Within each category we identified 12 unifying plays to start with, each including a checklist to consider, resources and training. We then provide suggested performance metrics for each main category.
This is only the beginning, however, and we hope the plays will quickly expand and enrich. The U.S. Public Participation Playbook was not just designed for a more open government — it was designed collaboratively through a more open government…(More)”

Government for a New Age: Managing Public Services in the 21st Century

Curated on February 2, 2015May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

A new Thinkers50 book by by Michel Khoury and Rabih Abouchakra: “What is the role of government in the modern world? The environment that governments operate in today is hugely complex. Governments face difficult challenges on all sides. Global upheavals and geopolitical shifts, climate change, rapidly evolving technologies and socio-economic demographics, resource constraints, an increasingly diverse constituency and citizens more demanding expectations — these are just some of the forces driving societal changes and transforming the context in which governments operate. Around the world governments are responding to these challenges by shifting the way they think, steer, organize, measure and engage with citizens, and the private and third sector. Until now, though, best practice has remained elusive. Intergovernmental collaboration and sharing of innovative policy making is piecemeal. Government for a New Age brings together the latest thinking on modern government. It sheds light on the current trends in governance practices, operating models, processes and tools that leading governments are embracing. Government for a New Age explores the ways in which governments are changing their value proposition to tackle these pressing concerns and provide some answers to these questions…(More).”

Cultures of Code

Curated on February 2, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Brian Hayes in the American Scientist: “Kim studies parallel algorithms, designed for computers with thousands of processors. Chris builds computer simulations of fluids in motion, such as ocean currents. Dana creates software for visualizing geographic data. These three people have much in common. Computing is an essential part of their professional lives; they all spend time writing, testing, and debugging computer programs. They probably rely on many of the same tools, such as software for editing program text. If you were to look over their shoulders as they worked on their code, you might not be able to tell who was who.
Despite the similarities, however, Kim, Chris, and Dana were trained in different disciplines, and they belong to different intellectual traditions and communities. Kim, the parallel algorithms specialist, is a professor in a university department of computer science. Chris, the fluids modeler, also lives in the academic world, but she is a physicist by training; sometimes she describes herself as a computational scientist (which is not the same thing as a computer scientist). Dana has been programming since junior high school but didn’t study computing in college; at the startup company where he works, his title is software developer.
These factional divisions run deeper than mere specializations. Kim, Chris, and Dana belong to different professional societies, go to different conferences, read different publications; their paths seldom cross. They represent different cultures. The resulting Balkanization of computing seems unwise and unhealthy, a recipe for reinventing wheels and making the same mistake three times over. Calls for unification go back at least 45 years, but the estrangement continues. As a student and admirer of all three fields, I find the standoff deeply frustrating.
Certain areas of computation are going through a period of extraordinary vigor and innovation. Machine learning, data analysis, and programming for the web have all made huge strides. Problems that stumped earlier generations, such as image recognition, finally seem to be yielding to new efforts. The successes have drawn more young people into the field; suddenly, everyone is “learning to code.” I am cheered by (and I cheer for) all these events, but I also want to whisper a question: Will the wave of excitement ever reach other corners of the computing universe?…
What’s the difference between computer science, computational science, and software development?…(More)”

The Royal Statistical Society Data Manifesto

Curated on February 2, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

ePSiplatform: “A Data Manifesto released by the Royal Statistical Society describes ten recommendations that focus on how the next UK government can improve data for policymaking, democracy and for prosperity…..the Society calls for official statistics to be at the heart of policy debate and recommends that the Office for National Statistics and the wider Government Statistical Service be given adequate resources, as well as calling for greater investment in research, science and innovation.

The document shows that the Society is broadly supportive of the open data agenda; in particular the opening up of government data and giving citizens greater access to quality local data.
It calls for greater data sharing between government departments for statistics and research purposes and believes the private sector should be encouraged to share data with researchers for the same purpose. It also calls for an end to pre-release access to official statistics….Download the Data Manifesto in PDF format.”