Governance Level: international

What We Should Mean When We Talk About Citizen Engagement

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Eric Gordon in Governing: “…But here’s the problem: The institutional language of engagement has been defined by its measurement. Chief engagement officers in corporations are measuring milliseconds on web pages, and clicks on ads, and not relations among people. This is disproportionately influencing the values of democracy and the responsibility of public institutions to protect them.

Too often, when government talks about engagement, it is talking those things that are measurable, but it is providing mandates to employees imbued with ambiguity. For example, the executive order issued by Mayor Murray in Seattle is a bold directive for the “timely implementation by all City departments of equitable outreach and engagement practices that reaffirm the City’s commitment to inclusive participation.”

This extraordinary mayoral mandate reflects clear democratic values, but it lacks clarity of methods. It reflects a need to use digital technology to enhance process, but it doesn’t explain why. This in no way is meant as a criticism of Seattle’s effort; rather, it is simply meant to illustrate the complexity of engagement in practice. Departments are rewarded for quantifiable efficiency, not relationships. Just because something is called engagement, this fundamental truth won’t change.

Government needs to be much more clear about what it really means when it talks about engagement. In 2015, Living Cities and the Citi Foundation launched the City Accelerator on Public Engagement, which was an effort to source and support effective practices of public engagement in city government. This 18-month project, based on a cohort of five cities throughout the United States, is just now coming to an end. Out of it came several lasting insights, one of which I will share here. City governments are institutions in transition that need to ask why people should care.

After the election, who is going to care about government? How do you get people to care about the services that government provides? How do you get people to care about the health outcomes in their neighborhoods? How do you get people to care about ensuring accessible, high-quality public education?

I want to propose that when government talks about civic engagement, it is really talking about caring. When you care about something, you make a decision to be attentive to that thing. But “caring about” is one end of what I’ll call a spectrum of caring. On the other end, there is “caring for,” when, as described by philosopher Nel Noddings, “what we do depends not upon rules, or at least not wholly on rules — not upon a prior determination of what is fair or equitable — but upon a constellation of conditions that is viewed through both the eyes of the one-caring and the eyes of the cared-for.”

In short, caring-for is relational. When one cares for another, the outcomes of an encounter are not predetermined, but arise through relation….(More)”.

A Practical Guide for Harnessing the Power of Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Rella Kaplowitz at the Chronicle of Philanthropy: “The nonprofit organization Repair the World has one goal: to make public service a defining element of American Jewish life. To achieve its mission, Repair works to involve thousands of young adults every year in meaningful service opportunities — and inspires them to go from being one-time participants to regular volunteers.

How does it do that? In a word: data.

Using a series of surveys and evaluations, Repair learned that once people participate in two volunteer opportunities, they’re more likely to continue volunteering regularly. Repair has used that and other findings to inform its operations and strategy, and to accelerate its work to encourage individuals to make an enduring commitment to public service.

Many purpose-driven organizations like Repair the World are committing more brainpower, time, and money to gathering data, and nonprofit and foundation professionals alike are recognizing the importance of that effort.

And yet there is a difference between just having data and using it well. Recent surveys have found that 94 percent of nonprofit professionals felt they were not using data effectively, and that 75 percent of foundation professionals felt that evaluations conducted by and submitted to grant makers did not provide any meaningful insights.

To remedy this, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation (one of Repair the World’s donors) developed the Data Playbook, a new tool to help more organizations harness the power of data to make smarter decisions, gain insights, and accelerate progress….

In the purpose-driven sector, our work is critically important for shaping lives and strengthening communities. Now is the time for all of us to commit to using the data at our fingertips to advance the broad range of causes we work on — education, health care, leadership development, social-justice work, and much more…

We are in this together. Let’s get started. (More)”

100 Stories: The Impact of Open Access

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Jean-Gabriel Bankier and Promita Chatterji: “It is time to reassess how we talk about the impact of open access. Early thought leaders in the field of scholarly communications sparked our collective imagination with a compelling vision for open access: improving global access to knowledge, advancing science, and providing greater access to education.1 But despite the fact that open access has gained a sizable foothold, discussions about the impact of open access are often still stuck at the level of aspirational or potential benefit. Shouldn’t we be able to gather real examples of positive outcomes to demonstrate the impact of open access? We need to get more concrete. Measurements like

Measurements like altmetrics and download counts provide useful data about usage, but remain largely indicators of early-level interest rather actual outcomes and benefits. There has been considerable research into how open access affects citation counts,2 but beyond that discussion there is still a gap between the hypothetical societal good of open access and the minutiae of usage and interest measurements. This report begins to bridge that gap by presenting a framework, drawn from 100 real stories that describe the impact of open access. Collected by bepress from across 500 institutions and 1400 journals using Digital Commons as their publishing and/or institutional repository platform, these stories present information about actual outcomes, benefits, and impacts.

This report brings to light the wide variety of scholarly and cultural activity that takes place on university campuses and the benefit resulting from greater visibility and access to these materials. We hope that administrators, authors, students, and others will be empowered to articulate and amplify the impact of their own work. We also created the framework to serve as a tool for stakeholders who are interested in advocating for open access on their campus yet lack the specific vocabulary and suitable examples. Whether it is a librarian hoping to make the case for open access with reluctant administrators or faculty, a faculty member who wants to educate students about changing modes of publishing, a funding agency looking for evidence in support of its open access requirement, or students advocating for educational affordability, the framework and stories themselves can be a catalyst for these endeavors. Put more simply, these are 100 stories to answer the question: “why does open access matter?”…(More)”

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The openness buzz in the knowledge economy: Towards taxonomy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Anne Lundgren in “Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy”: “In the networked information and knowledge-based economy and society, the notions of ‘open’ and ‘openness’ are used in a variety of contexts; open source, open access, open economy, open government, open innovation – just to name a few. This paper aims at discussing openness and developing a taxonomy that may be used to analyse the concept of openness. Are there different qualities of openness? How are these qualities interrelated? What analytical tools may be used to understand openness? In this paper four qualities of openness recurrent in literature and debate are explored: accessibility, transparency, participation and sharing. To further analyse openness new institutional theory as interpreted by Williamson (2000) is used, encompassing four different institutional levels; cultural embeddedness, institutional environment, governance structure and resource allocations. At what institutional levels is openness supported and/or constrained? Accessibility as a quality of openness seems to have a particularly strong relation to the other qualities of openness, whereas the notions of sharing and collaborative economics seem to be the most complex and contested quality of openness in the knowledge-based economy. This research contributes to academia, policy and governance, as handling of challenges with regard to openness vs. closure in different contexts, territorial, institutional and/or organizational, demand not only a better understanding of the concept, but also tools for analysis….(More)”

One Crucial Thing Can Help End Violence Against Girls

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Eleanor Goldberg at The Huffington Post: “…There are statistics that demonstrate how many girls are in school, for example. But there’s a glaring lack of information on how many of them have dropped out ― and why ― concluded a new study, “Counting the Invisible Girls,” published this month by Plan International.

Why Data On Women And Girls Is Crucial

Without accurate information about the struggles girls face, such as abuse, child marriage, and dropout rates, governments and nonprofit groups can’t develop programs that cater to the specific needs of underserved girls. As a result, struggling girls across the globe, have little chance of escaping the problems that prevent them from pursuing an education and becoming economically independent.

“If data used for policy-making is incomplete, we have a real challenge. Current data is not telling the full story,” Emily Courey Pryor, senior director of Data2X, said at the Social Good Summit in New York City last month. Data2X is a U.N.-led group that works with data collectors and policymakers to identify gender data issues and to help bring about solutions.

Plan International released its report to coincide with a number of major recent events….

How Data Helps Improve The Lives Of Women And Girls 

While data isn’t a panacea, it has proven in a number of instances to help marginalized groups.

Until last year, it was legal in Guatemala for a girl to marry at age 14 ― despite the numerous health risks associated with the practice. Young brides are more vulnerable to sexual abuse and more likely to face fatal complications related to pregnancy and childbirth than those who marry later.

To urge lawmakers to raise the minimum age of marriage, Plan International partnered with advocates and civil society groups to launch its “Because I am a Girl” initiative. It analyzed traditional Mayan laws and gathered evidence about the prevalence of child marriage and its impact on children’s lives. The group presented the information before Guatemala’s Congress and in August of last year, the minimum age for marriage was raised to 18.

A number of groups are heeding the call to continue to amass better data.

In May, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pledged $80 million over the next three years to gather robust and reliable data.

In September, the U.N. women announced “Making Every Woman and Girl Count,”a public-private partnership that’s working to tackle the data issue. The program was unveiled at the U.N. General Assembly, and is working with the Gates Foundation, Data2X and a number of world leaders…(More)”

Evaluating World Bank Support to Budget Analysis and Transparency

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Linnea Mills and Clay G. Wescott: “BOOST is a new resource launched in 2010 to facilitate improved quality, classification, and access to budget data and promote effective use for improved government decision making, transparency and accountability. Using the Government’s own data from public expenditure accounts held in the Government’s Financial Management Information System, and benefiting from a consistent methodology, the BOOST data platform makes highly granular fiscal data accessible and ready-for-use. National authorities can significantly enhance fiscal transparency by publishing summary data and analysis or by providing open access to the underlying dataset. This paper addresses four research questions: Did BOOST help improve the quality of expenditure analysis available to government decision makers? Did it help to develop capacity in central finance and selected spending agencies to sustain expenditure analysis? Did it help to improve public access to expenditure analysis anddata? Did it help to increase awareness of the opportunities for BOOST and expenditure analysis in Sub-Saharan Africa as well as countries outside this region where BOOST has been used (Georgia, Haiti and Tunisia).

Evidence has been drawn from various sources. Survey questionnaires were sent to all World Bank task team leaders for Gates Trust Fund supported countries. Completed questionnaires were received from 18 predominantly African countries (Annex 4). These 18 countries constitute the majority but not all of the countries implementing BOOST with financial support from the Trust Fund. Information has also been gathered through a BOOST stakeholder questionnaire targeting government officials, civil society representatives and representatives from parliaments at country level, field visits to Kenya, Mozambique and Uganda, interviews with stakeholders at the Bank and at country level, participation at regional conferences on BOOST in South Africa and Senegal, and document review. Interviews covered participants from some countries that did not complete questionnaires, such as Haiti.

The research will help to inform the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the World Bank, the administrator of the trust fund on the achievements of the program, and the value of continuing support. It will inform client country Governments, and non-Government actors interested in improved dissemination and analysis of quality public financial data. The research should also be useful for vendors of similar products like OpenGov; and to international scholars and experts working to better understand public expenditure management in developing countries….(More)”

The challenges and limits of big data algorithms in technocratic governance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Marijn Janssen and George Kuk in Government Information Quarterly: “Big data is driving the use of algorithm in governing mundane but mission-critical tasks. Algorithms seldom operate on their own and their (dis)utilities are dependent on the everyday aspects of data capture, processing and utilization. However, as algorithms become increasingly autonomous and invisible, they become harder for the public to detect and scrutinize their impartiality status. Algorithms can systematically introduce inadvertent bias, reinforce historical discrimination, favor a political orientation or reinforce undesired practices. Yet it is difficult to hold algorithms accountable as they continuously evolve with technologies, systems, data and people, the ebb and flow of policy priorities, and the clashes between new and old institutional logics. Greater openness and transparency do not necessarily improve understanding. In this editorial we argue that through unraveling the imperceptibility, materiality and governmentality of how algorithms work, we can better tackle the inherent challenges in the curatorial practice of data and algorithm. Fruitful avenues for further research on using algorithm to harness the merits and utilities of a computational form of technocratic governance are presented….(More)”

 

Data Ethics: Investing Wisely in Data at Scale

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by David Robinson & Miranda Bogen prepared for the MacArthur and Ford Foundations: ““Data at scale” — digital information collected, stored and used in ways that are newly feasible — opens new avenues for philanthropic investment. At the same time, projects that leverage data at scale create new risks that are not addressed by existing regulatory, legal and best practice frameworks. Data-oriented projects funded by major foundations are a natural proving ground for the ethical principles and controls that should guide the ethical treatment of data in the social sector and beyond.

This project is an initial effort to map the ways that data at scale may pose risks to philanthropic priorities and beneficiaries, for grantmakers at major foundations, and draws from desk research and unstructured interviews with key individuals involved in the grantmaking enterprise at major U.S. foundations. The resulting report was prepared at the joint request of the MacArthur and Ford Foundations.

Grantmakers are exploring data at scale, but currently have poor visibility into its benefits and risks. Rapid technological change, the scarcity of data science expertise, limited training and resources, and a lack of clear guideposts around emergent risks all contribute to this problem.

Funders have important opportunities to invest in, learn from, and innovate around data-intensive projects, in concert with their grantees. Grantmakers should not treat the new ethical risks of data at scale as a barrier to investment, but these risks also must not become a blind spot that threatens the success and effectiveness of philanthropic projects. Those working with data at scale in the philanthropic context have much to learn: throughout our conversations with stakeholders, we heard consistently that grantmakers and grantees lack baseline knowledge on using data at scale, and many said that they are unsure how to make better informed decisions, both about data’s benefits and about its risks. Existing frameworks address many risks introduced by data-intensive grantmaking, but leave some major gaps. In particular, we found that:

  • Some new data-intensive research projects involve meaningful risk to vulnerable populations, but are not covered by existing human subjects regimes, and lack a structured way to consider these risks. In the philanthropic and public sector, human subject review is not always required and program officers, researchers, and implementers do not yet have a shared standard by which to evaluate ethical implications of using public or existing data, which is often exempt from human subjects review.
  • Social sector projects often depend on data that reflects patterns of bias or discrimination against vulnerable groups, and face a challenge of how to avoid reinforcing existing disparities. Automated decisions can absorb and sanitize bias from input data, and responsibly funding or evaluating statistical models in data-intensive projects increasingly demands advanced mathematical literacy which foundations lack.
  • Both data and the capacity to analyze it are being concentrated in the private sector, which could marginalize academic and civil society actors.Some individuals and organizations have begun to call attention to these issues and create their own trainings, guidelines, and policies — but ad hoc solutions can only accomplish so much.

To address these and other challenges, we’ve identified eight key questions that program staff and grantees need to consider in data-intensive work:

  1. For a given project, what data should be collected, and who should have access to it?
  2. How can projects decide when more data will help — and when it won’t?
  3. How can grantmakers best manage the reputational risk of data-oriented projects that may be at a frontier of social acceptability?
  4. When concerns are recognized with respect to a data-intensive grant, how will those concerns get aired and addressed?
  5. How can funders and grantees gain the insight they need in order to critique other institutions’ use of data at scale?
  6. How can the social sector respond to the unique leverage and power that large technology companies are developing through their accumulation of data and data-related expertise?
  7. How should foundations and nonprofits handle their own data?
  8. How can foundations begin to make the needed long term investments in training and capacity?

Newly emergent ethical issues inherent in using data at scale point to the need for both a broader understanding of the possibilities and challenges of using data in the philanthropic context as well as conscientious treatment of data ethics issues. Major foundations can play a meaningful role in building a broader understanding of these possibilities and challenges, and they can set a positive example in creating space for open and candid reflection on these issues. To those ends, we recommend that funders:…(More)”

Living labs: Implementing open innovation in the public sector

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Mila Gascó in Government Information Quarterly: “Public sector innovation is an important issue in the agenda of policymakers and academics but there is a need for a change of perspective, one that promotes a more open model of innovating, which takes advantage of the possibilities offered by collaboration between citizens, entrepreneurs and civil society as well as of new emerging technologies. Living labs are environments that can support public open innovation processes.

This article makes a practical contribution to understand the role of living labs as intermediaries of public open innovation. The analysis focuses on the dynamics of these innovation intermediaries, their outcomes, and their main challenges. In particular, it adopts a qualitative approach (fourteen semi-structured interviews and one focus group were conducted) in order to analyze two living labs: Citilab in the city of Cornellà and the network of fab athenaeums (public fab labs) in the city of Barcelona, both in Spain. After a thorough analysis of the attributes of these living labs, the article concludes that 1) living labs provide the opportunity for public agencies to meet with private sector organizations and thus function as innovation intermediaries, 2) implementing an open innovation perspective is considered more important than obtaining specific innovation results, and 3) scalability and sustainability are the main problems living labs encounter as open innovation intermediaries….(More)”

Europe Should Promote Data for Social Good

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Daniel Castro at Center for Data Innovation: “Changing demographics in Europe are creating enormous challenges for the European Union (EU) and its member states. The population is getting older, putting strain on the healthcare and welfare systems. Many young people are struggling to find work as economies recover from the 2008 financial crisis. Europe is facing a swell in immigration, increasingly from war-torn Syria, and governments are finding it difficult to integrate refugees and other migrants into society.These pressures have already propelled permanent changes to the EU. This summer, a slim majority of British voters chose to leave the Union, and many of those in favor of Brexit cited immigration as a motive for their vote.

Europe needs to find solutions to these challenges. Fortunately, advances in data-driven innovation that have helped businesses boost performance can also create significant social benefits. They can support EU policy priorities for social protection and inclusion by better informing policy and program design, improving service delivery, and spurring social innovations. While some governments, nonprofit organizations, universities, and companies are using data-driven insights and technologies to support disadvantaged populations, including unemployed workers, young people, older adults, and migrants, progress has been uneven across the EU due to resource constraints, digital inequality, and restrictive data regulations. renewed European commitment to using data for social good is needed to address these challenges.

This report examines how the EU, member-states, and the private sector are using data to support social inclusion and protection. Examples include programs for employment and labor-market inclusion, youth employment and education, care for older adults, and social services for migrants and refugees. It also identifies the barriers that prevent European countries from fully capitalizing on opportunities to use data for social good. Finally, it proposes a number of actions policymakers in the EU should take to enable the public and private sectors to more effectively tackle the social challenges of a changing Europe through data-driven innovation. Policymakers should:

  • Support the collection and use of relevant, timely data on the populations they seek to better serve;
  • Participate in and fund cross-sector collaboration with data experts to make better use of data collected by governments and non-profit organizations working on social issues;
  • Focus government research funding on data analysis of social inequalities and require grant applicants to submit plans for data use and sharing;
  • Establish appropriate consent and sharing exemptions in data protection regulations for social science research; and
  • Revise EU regulations to accommodate social-service organizations and their institutional partners in exploring innovative uses of data….(More)”
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