A Data-driven Approach to Assess the Potential of Smart Cities: The Case of Open Data for Brussels Capital Region

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Miguel Angel Gomez Zotano and Hugues Bersini in Energy Procedia: “The success of smart city projects is intrinsically related to the existence of large volumes of data that could be processed to achieve their objectives. For this purpose, the plethora of data stored by public administrations becomes an incredibly rich source of insight and information due to its volume and diversity. However, it was only with the Open Government Movement when governments have been concerned with the need to open their data to citizens and businesses. Thus, with the emergence of open data portals, these myriad of data enables the development of new business models. The achievement of the benefits sought by making this data available triggers new challenges to cope with the diversity of sources involved. The business potential could be jeopardized by the scarcity of relevant data in the different blocks and domains that makes a city and by the lack of a common approach to data publication, in terms of format, content, etc.

This paper introduces a holistic approach that relies on the Smart City Ontology as the cornerstone to standardise and structure data. This approach, which is proposed to be an analytical tool to assess the potential of data in a given smart city, analyses three main aspects: availability of data, the criteria that data should fulfil to be considered eligible and the model used to structure and organise data. The approach has been applied to the case of Brussels Capital Region, which first results are presented and discussed in this paper. The main conclusion that has been obtained is that, besides its commitment with open data and smart cities, Brussels is not mature enough to fully exploit the real intelligence that smart cities could provide. This maturity would be achieved in the following years with the implementation of the new Brussels’ Smart City Strategy…(More)”.

DoGood: Examining gamification, civic engagement, and collective intelligence

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Rehm, Sebastian, Foth, Marcus, & Mitchell, Peta: “The mobile internet provides new and easier ways for people to organise themselves, raise issues, take action, and interact with their city. However, lack of information or motivation often prevents citizens from regularly contributing to the common good. In this paper, we present DoGood, a mobile app that aims at motivating citizens to join civic activities in their local community. Our study asks to what extent gamification can motivate users to participate in civic activities. The term civic activity is not yet well defined, so we collect activities citizens consider to be civic in order to work towards a broadly accepted definition of the term. The DoGood app uses gamified elements that we studied in order to gauge their role in encouraging citizens to submit and promote their civic activities as well as to join the activities of others. DoGood was implemented and deployed to citizens in a five-week-long user study. The app succeeded in motivating most of its users to do more civic activities, and its gamified elements were well received….(More)”.

Towards an experimental culture in government: reflections on and from practice

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

 Jesper Christiansen et al at Nesta: “…we share some initial reflections from this work with the hope of prompting a useful discussion about how to articulate the value of experimentation as well as what to consider when strategically planning and doing experiments in government contexts.

Reflection 1: Experimentation as a way of accelerating learning and exploring “the room of the non-obvious”

Governments need to increase their pace and agility in learning about which ideas have the highest potential value-creation and make people’s lives the rationale of governing.

Experimental approaches accelerate learning by systematically testing assumptions and identifying knowledge gaps. What is there to be known about the problem and the function, fit and probability of a suggested solution? Experimentation helps fill these gaps without allocating too much time or resource, and helps governments accelerate the exploration of new potential solution spaces.

This approach is often a key contribution of government policy labs and public sector innovation teams. Units like Lab para la Ciudad in Mexico City, Alberta Co-Lab in Canada, Behavioural insights and Design Unit in Singapore, MindLab in Denmark and Policy Lab in the UK are specifically set up to promote, develop and/or embed experimental approaches and accelerate user-centred learning in different levels of government.

In addition, creating a culture of experimentation extends the policy options available by creating a political environment to test non-linear approaches to wicked problems. In our training, we often distinguish between “the room of the obvious” and the “room of the non-obvious”. By designing portfolios of experiments that include – by deliberate design – the testing of at least some non-linear, non-obvious solutions, government officials can move beyond the automatic mode of many policy interventions and explore the “room of the non-obvious” in a safe-to-fail context (think barbers to prevent suicides or dental insurance to prevent deforestation).

Reflection 2: Experimentation as a way of turning uncertainty into risk

In everyday language, uncertainty and risk are two notions that are often used interchangeably; yet they are very different concepts. Take, for example, the implementation of a solution. Risk is articulated in terms of the probability that the solution will generate a certain outcome. It is measurable (e.g. based on existing data there is X per cent chance of success, or X per cent chance of failure) and qualitative risk factors can be developed and described.

Uncertainty, on the other hand, is a situation where there is a lack of probabilities. There is no prior data on how the solution might perform; future outcomes are not known, and can therefore not be measured. The chance of success can be 0 per cent, 100 per cent, or anything in between (see table below).

There is often talk of the need for government to become more of a ‘risk taker’, or to become better at ‘managing risk’. But as Marco Steinberg, founder of strategic design practice Snowcone & Haystack, recently reminded us, risk-management – where probabilities are known – is actually something that governments do quite well. Issues arise when governments’ legacies can’t shape current solutions: when governments have to deal with the uncertainty of complex challenges by adapting or creating entirely new service systems to fit the needs of our time.

For example, when transforming a health system to fit the needs of our time, little can be known about the probabilities in terms of what might work when establishing a new practice. Or when transforming a social care system to accommodate the lives of vulnerable families, entirely new concepts for solutions need to be explored. “If you don’t have a map showing the way, you have to write one yourself,” as Sam Rye puts it in his inspirational example on the use of experimental cards at The Labs Wananga….

Reflection 3: Experimentation as a way to reframe failure and KPIs

Reflection 4: Experimentation on a continuum between exploration and validation

Reflection 5: Experimentation as cultural change…(More)”.

Tactical Data Engagement guide

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

and  at the Sunlight Foundation: “United States cities face a critical challenge when it comes to fulfilling the potential of open data: that of moving beyond the mere provision of access to data toward the active facilitation of stakeholder use of data in ways that bring about community impact. Sunlight has been researching innovative projects and strategies that have helped cities tackle this challenge head on. Today we’re excited to share a guide for our new approach to open data in U.S. cities–an approach we’re calling “Tactical Data Engagement,” designed to drive community impact by connecting the dots between open data, public stakeholders, and collaborative action.

Access is critical but we have more work to do

Many city leaders have realized that open data is a valuable innovation to bring to city hall, and have invoked the promise of a new kind of relationship between government and the people: one where government works with the public in new collaborative ways. City mayors, managers, council members, and other leaders are making commitments to this idea in the US, with over 60 US cities having adopted open data reforms since 2006, nearly 20 in 2016 alone–many with the help of the Sunlight team as part of our support of the What Works Cities initiative. While cities are building the public policy infrastructure for open data, they are also making technical advancements as municipal IT and innovation departments build or procure new open data portals and release more and more government datasets proactively online….

However, … these developments alone are not enough. Portals and policies are critical infrastructure for the data-driven open government needed in the 21st century; but there has been and continues to be a disconnect between the rhetoric and promise of open data when compared to what it has meant in terms of practical reform. Let us be clear: the promise of open data is not about data on a website. The promise is for a new kind of relationship between government and the governed, one that brings about collaborative opportunities for impact. While many reforms have been successful in building an infrastructure of access, many have fallen short in leveraging that infrastructure for empowering residents and driving community change.

Announcing Tactical Data Engagement

In order to formulate an approach to help cities go further with their open data programs, Sunlight has been conducting an extensive review of the relevant literature on open data impact, and of the literature on approaches to community stakeholder engagement and co-creation (both civic-tech or open-data driven as well as more traditional)….

The result so far is our “Tactical Data Engagement” Guide (still in beta) designed to address what we see as the the most critical challenge currently facing the open data movement: helping city open data programs build on a new infrastructure of access to facilitate the collaborative use of open data to empower residents and create tangible community impact…(More)”

Can Technology Save Democracy?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Adele Peters in Fast Company: “On March 11, in a state parliament election in West Australia, 24 candidates made only one campaign promise: If they won, they promised to vote on every bill according to the wishes of their constituents, as determined via an app called Flux. (While the votes are still being tallied, it looks unlikely that any will win.)

Flux’s app is one of a handful of new platforms that aim to use technology to let people participate directly in politics, at scale. All are premised on the fact that–around the world–representative democracy isn’t working well. But technology could potentially help end corruption and lobbying, allow people to delegate votes to trusted friends rather than politicians, and empower experts in a field to meaningfully impact policy.

Does Democracy Work?

In 2015, shortly after Donald Trump announced that he was running for president, polls found that only 19% of Americans trusted the government “always” or “most of the time.” (The survey has not been repeated, but presumably, the numbers have not improved.) Only 11% approved of Congress.

Those numbers are historic lows; in 1958, when a poll first asked the question, 73% of Americans said that they could trust the government most of the time. The results can be partisan–people are less likely to trust the government when the opposing party is in power, and Republicans are less likely to trust government, in general, than Democrats. But the overall message is clear. Most people don’t think democracy is working in its current form….

The problems may stem from our form of government. “The problem, fundamentally, is representative democracy,” says Nathan Spataro, cofounder of both the Flux political party in Australia and XO.1, the startup making the software that powers the Flux app. “It is not that your politicians are corrupt, it’s that the politicians are corrupt because of the system. You don’t have to look far to watch how politicians start their career, and how then the system fundamentally changes them by the time they get to the end of it.”

Liquid Democracy

True direct democracy, in which every member of a society votes on everything, could eliminate the problem of lobbying, but has rarely existed. In ancient Athens, assemblies made up of all the citizens gathered to make decisions (women and slaves were not allowed to be citizens). In some Swiss cantons, citizens can participate directly in local government. In both cases, though, issues facing voters were relatively simple and limited in scope. While direct democracy might be the ideal–a government that’s literally by the people and for the people–it’s hard to scale up. In a large society with complex issues, it isn’t possible for even the most dedicated individual to keep up with every possible item that requires a vote–or have an informed opinion about them.

Representative democracy, which ideally solves that problem, also struggles with size. “One of the key problems of the U.S. political system is that it runs into scaling limits,” says Bryan Ford, a computer scientist who leads the Decentralized/Distributed Systems lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.

Sixteen years ago, Ford began thinking about what he calls delegative democracy, now also known as liquid democracy. “The whole idea of delegative democracy is to try to create a representative system that responds to the needs of individuals but also scales,” he says. “In some sense, delegative or liquid democracy is an approximation to the completely impractical idea of fully participatory, direct democracy.”

It works like this: Rather than asking citizens to vote on every issue, it gives each person the power to vote or to appoint a delegate to vote for them. Unlike a typical representative, that delegate could be changed at any time depending on the issue….(More)”.

Analytics Tools Could Be the Key to Effective Message-Driven Nudging

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

 in Government Technology: “Appealing to the nuances of the human mind has been a feature of effective governance for as long as governance has existed, appearing prominently in the prescriptions of every great political theorist from Plato to Machiavelli. The most recent and informed iteration of this practice is nudging: leveraging insights about how humans think from behavioral science to create initiatives that encourage desirable behaviors.

Public officials nudge in many ways. Some seek to modify people’s behavior by changing the environments in which they make decisions, for instance moving vegetables to the front of a grocery store to promote healthy eating. Others try to make desirable behaviors easier, like streamlining a city website to make it simpler to sign up for a service. Still others use prompts like email reminders of a deadline to receive a free checkup to nudge people to act wisely by providing useful information.

Thus far, examples of the third type of nudging — direct messaging that prompts behavior — have been decidedly low tech. Typical initiatives have included sending behaviorally informed letters to residents who have not complied with a city code or mailing out postcard reminders to renew license plates. Governments have been attracted to these initiatives for their low cost and proven effectiveness.

While these low-tech nudges should certainly continue, cities’ recent adoption of tools that can mine and analyze data instantaneously has the potential to greatly increase the scope and effectiveness of message-driven nudging.

For one, using Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems, cities can provide residents with real-time information so that they may make better-informed decisions. For example, cities could connect traffic sensors to messaging systems and send subscribers text messages at times of high congestion, encouraging them to take public transportation. This real-time information, paired with other nudges, could increase transit use, easing traffic and bettering the environment…
Instantaneous data-mining tools may also prove useful for nudging citizens in real time, at the moments they are most likely to partake in detrimental behavior. Tools like machine learning can analyze users’ behavior and determine if they are likely to make a suboptimal choice, like leaving the website for a city service without enrolling. Using clickstream data, the site could determine if a user is likely to leave and deliver a nudge, for example sending a message explaining that most residents enroll in the service. This strategy provides another layer of nudging, catching residents who may have been influenced by an initial nudge — like a reminder to sign up for a service or streamlined website — but may need an extra prod to follow through….(More)”

Big data helps Belfort, France, allocate buses on routes according to demand

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

 in Digital Trends: “As modern cities smarten up, the priority for many will be transportation. Belfort, a mid-sized French industrial city of 50,000, serves as proof of concept for improved urban transportation that does not require the time and expense of covering the city with sensors and cameras.

Working with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and GFI Informatique, the Board of Public Transportation of Belfort overhauled bus service management of the city’s 100-plus buses. The project entailed a combination of ID cards, GPS-equipped card readers on buses, and big data analysis. The collected data was used to measure bus speed from stop to stop, passenger flow to observe when and where people got on and off, and bus route density. From start to finish, the proof of concept project took four weeks.

Using the TCS Intelligent Urban Exchange system, operations managers were able to detect when and where about 20 percent of all bus passengers boarded and got off on each city bus route. Utilizing big data and artificial intelligence the city’s urban planners were able to use that data analysis to make cost-effective adjustments including the allocation of additional buses on routes and during times of greater passenger demand. They were also able to cut back on buses for minimally used routes and stops. In addition, the system provided feedback on the effect of city construction projects on bus service….

Going forward, continued data analysis will help the city budget wisely for infrastructure changes and new equipment purchases. The goal is to put the money where the needs are greatest rather than just spending and then waiting to see if usage justified the expense. The push for smarter cities has to be not just about improved services, but also smart resource allocation — in the Belfort project, the use of big data showed how to do both….(More)”

Mapatón CDMX

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

HBS Case Study by Mitchell Weiss and Maria Fernanda Miguel: “There were probably 30,000 public buses, minibuses, and vans in Mexico City. Though, in 2015, no one knew for certain since no comprehensive schedule existed. This was why el Laboratorio para la Ciudad (or LabCDMX) had spawned an effort to generate a map of the labyrinth system that provided an estimated 14 million rides a day. Gabriella Gómez-Mont, the Lab’s founder and director, had led her team in a project to crowd-source the routes from volunteer riders in what came to be known as Mapatón CDMX. After four pilots and a two-week “mapping marathon” later, she wondered exactly what to make of the lab’s fiftieth experiment? Was Mapatón successful?

Learning objective:

LabCDMX and their crowdsourced bus mapping project provides the setting to explore risk taking and experimentation in public settings. The case is designed to focus students most acutely on questions of can government take more risk and how? This is a key question for public entreprenuers. In class, students are encouraged to think both about the obstacles for risk taking and the tactics that elected leaders and innovation champions can take to surmount those obstacles. Students consider whether experimentation is one of those potential skills and, if so, how best and rigorously those experiments must be run. How willing must government be to admit failure if experiments don’t pan out? What can give them that leeway? How, tactically, can governments run these kinds of experiments? Is using off-the-shelf technology for quick, but imperfect beta services a productive strategy for securing buy-in and for learning? The case is adaptable for exploring big company settings, too. Mexico City’s municipal government is a giant organization, with 300,000 public workers. What is the role of an innovation office and it’s handful of employees in that context? How does it gain credibility with the rest of the organization? How do experiments help – or hurt – in that effort?…(More)”.

Just Change: How to Collaborate for Lasting Impact

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Tynesia Boyea-Robinson: “… is a collection of stories and case studies to evolve the way we think about and approach systemic causes of inequities facing low-income communities, particularly communities of color. The book successfully addresses:

  • Cross-sector collaboration as a requirement for sustainable social change;
  • Moving away from siloed programs with single-focused solutions to building systems and infrastructures that improve inequities at the population-level; and
  • Reframing how to think about and measure success in order to achieve scale and impact.

Read about leaders across the country who have successfully created sustainable, long-lasting solutions to address key root causes of inequities in their communities:

  • How the Detroit Corridor Initiative, Cincinnati, and Minneapolis-St Paul used shared results for successful cross-sector partnerships
  • How Nexus Community Partners in Minneapolis changed how they collaborate with the community they’re serving towards a more authentic community engagement
  • How Best Start for Kids in Seattle/King County effectively used cross-sector partnerships
  • How Camden City in New Jersey partnered with Campbell’s Soup for better health outcomes

Discover tested tools and strategies to implement change in your own communities, such as:

  • How the Model Behavior, Align Resources, Catalyze Change (MAC) framework harnesses intrinsic motivation for behavior change
  • How the Data Inventory helps you figure out what data needs to be collected and how to get it
  • Four components of creating effective shared results that will drive your cross-sector partnership towards success…(More)”.

Data and the City: New report on how public data is fostering civic engagement in urban regions

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Jonathan Gray and Danny Lämmerhirt: “…demonstrates how public data infrastructures create new kinds of relationships and public spaces between public institutions, civil society groups, and citizens.

In contrast to more supply-oriented ideas around opening (government) data, we argue that data infrastructures are not a mere “raw” resource that can be exploited. Instead they are best conceived as a lively network or ecosystem in which publics creatively use city data to engage with urban institutions.

We intend to spark imagination and conversation about the role that public data infrastructures may play in civic life – not just as neutral instruments for creating knowledge, but also as devices to organise publics and evidence around urban issues; creating shared spaces for public participation and deliberation around official processes and institutions; and securing progress around major social, economic and environmental challenges that cities face.

Our report describes six case studies from cities around the world to demonstrate civil society’s vast action repertoire to engage with urban data infrastructures. One case study demonstrates how a British civil society organisation gathered budget data through freedom of information requests from municipal government. This information was fed into an open database and made accessible to finance experts and scholars in order to allow them to run a “public debt audit”. This audit enabled government officials and the larger public to debate the extent of public debt in British cities and to uncover how a lack of public scrutiny increased profits of financial institutes while putting a strain on the public purse….

In detail, civic actors can engage with data infrastructures to:

  • Identify spaces for intervention. Having cadastral data at hand helped civic actors to identify vacant publicly-owned land, to highlight possibilities for re-using it and to foster community building in neighbourhoods around its re-use.
  • Open spaces for accountability. Using government’s own accounting measurements may provide civil society with evaluation criteria for the effectiveness of public sector programs. Civil society actors may develop a ‘common ground’ or ‘common language’ for engaging with institutions around the issues that they care about.
  • Enable scrutiny of official processes, institutional mechanisms and their effects. By opening public loan data, civil society was able to identify how decentralised fiscal audit mechanisms may have negative effects on public debt.
  • Change the way an issue is framed or perceived. By using aggregated, anonymized data about home addresses of inmates, scholars could shift focus from crime location to the origin of an offender – which helped to address social re-entry programs more effectively.
  • Mobilise community engagement and civic activism. Including facilitating the assembly and organisation of publics around issues….

You can find the full report here.”