international

To Secure Knowledge: Social Science Partnerships for the Common Good

Curated on September 17, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Social Science Research Council: “For decades, the social sciences have generated knowledge vital to guiding public policy, informing business, and understanding and improving the human condition. But today, the social sciences face serious threats. From dwindling federal funding to public mistrust in institutions to widespread skepticism about data, the infrastructure supporting the social sciences is shifting in ways that threaten to undercut research and knowledge production.

How can we secure social knowledge for future generations?

This question has guided the Social Science Research Council’s Task Force. Following eighteen months of consultation with key players as well as internal deliberation, we have identified both long-term developments and present threats that have created challenges for the social sciences, but also created unique opportunities. And we have generated recommendations to address these issues.

Our core finding focuses on the urgent need for new partnerships and collaborations among several key players: the federal government, academic institutions, donor organizations, and the private sector. Several decades ago, these institutions had clear zones of responsibility in producing social knowledge, with the federal government constituting the largest portion of funding for basic research. Today, private companies represent an increasingly large share not just of research and funding, but also the production of data that informs the social sciences, from smart phone usage to social media patterns.

In addition, today’s social scientists face unprecedented demands for accountability, speedy publication, and generation of novel results. These pressures have emerged from the fragmented institutional foundation that undergirds research. That foundation needs a redesign in order for the social sciences to continue helping our communities address problems ranging from income inequality to education reform.

To build a better future, we identify five areas of action: Funding, Data, Ethics, Research Quality, and Research Training. In each area, our recommendations range from enlarging corporate-academic pilot programs to improving social science training in digital literacy.

A consistent theme is that none of the measures, if taken unilaterally, can generate optimal outcomes. Instead, we have issued a call to forge a new research compact to harness the potential of the social sciences for improving human lives. That compact depends on partnerships, and we urge the key players in the construction of social science knowledge—including universities, government, foundations, and corporations—to act swiftly. With the right realignments, the security of social knowledge lies within our reach….(More)”

Citizen Innovations

Curated on September 10, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Introduction by Jean-Claude Ruano-Borbalan and Bertrand Bocquet of Special Issue of Technology and Innovation (French) : “The last half century has seen considerable development of institutional interfaces participating in the “great standardization” of science and innovation systems. The limitations of this model appeared for many economic, political or cultural reasons. Strong developments appear within the context of a deliberative democracy that impacts scientific and technical institutions and production, and therefore the nature and the policies of innovation. The question about this part of a “technical democracy”
is whether there will be a long-term movement. We dedicate this issue to citizen participatory innovations, more or less related to technical and scientific questions. It highlights various scales and focal points of “social and citizen innovation”, domains based on examples of ongoing transformations…. (More)

Table of Contents:

How Smart Should a City Be? Toronto Is Finding Out

Curated on September 9, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Laura Bliss at CityLab: “A data-driven “neighborhood of the future” masterminded by a Google corporate sibling, the Quayside project could be a milestone in digital-age city-building. But after a year of scandal in Silicon Valley, questions about privacy and security remain…

Quayside was billed as “the world’s first neighborhood built from the internet up,” according to Sidewalk Labs’ vision plan, which won the RFP to develop this waterfront parcel. The startup’s pitch married “digital infrastructure” with an utopian promise: to make life easier, cheaper, and happier for Torontonians.

Everything from pedestrian traffic and energy use to the fill-height of a public trash bin and the occupancy of an apartment building could be counted, geo-tagged, and put to use by a wifi-connected “digital layer” undergirding the neighborhood’s physical elements. It would sense movement, gather data, and send information back to a centralized map of the neighborhood. “With heightened ability to measure the neighborhood comes better ways to manage it,” stated the winning document. “Sidewalk expects Quayside to become the most measurable community in the world.”

“Smart cities are largely an invention of the private sector—an effort to create a market within government,” Wylie wrote in Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper in December 2017. “The business opportunities are clear. The risks inherent to residents, less so.” A month later, at a Toronto City Council meeting, Wylie gave a deputation asking officials to “ensure that the data and data infrastructure of this project are the property of the city of Toronto and its residents.”

In this case, the unwary Trojans would be Waterfront Toronto, the nonprofit corporation appointed by three levels of Canadian government to own, manage, and build on the Port Lands, 800 largely undeveloped acres between downtown and Lake Ontario. When Waterfront Toronto gave Sidewalk Labs a green light for Quayside in October, the startup committed $50 million to a one-year consultation, which was recently extended by several months. The plan is to submit a final “Master Innovation and Development Plan” by the end of this year.

The political origins of transparency reform: insights from the Italian case

Curated on September 9, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Fabrizio Di Mascio, Alessandro Natalini and Federica Cacciatore: This research contributes to the expanding literature on the determinants of government transparency. It uncovers the dynamics of transparency in the Italian case, which shows an interesting reform trajectory: until the late 1980s no transparency provisions existed; since then, provisions have dramatically increased under the impulse of changing patterns of political competition.

The analysis of the Italian case highlights that electoral uncertainty for incumbents is a double-edged sword for institutional reform: on the one hand, it incentivizes the adoption of ever-growing transparency provisions; on the other, it jeopardizes the implementation capacity of public agencies by leading to severe administrative burdens….(More)”.

Keeping Democracy Alive in Cities

Curated on September 4, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Myung J. Lee at the Stanford Social Innovation Review: “It seems everywhere I go these days, people are talking and writing and podcasting about America’s lack of trust—how people don’t trust government and don’t trust each other. President Trump discourages us from trusting anything, especially the media. Even nonprofit organizations, which comprise the heart of civil society, are not exempt: A recent study found that trust in NGOsdropped by nine percent between 2017 and 2018. This fundamental lack of trust is eroding the shared public space where progress and even governance can happen, putting democracy at risk.

How did we get here? Perhaps it’s because Americans have taken our democratic way of life for granted. Perhaps it’s because people’s individual and collective beliefs are more polarized—and more out in the open—than ever before. Perhaps we’ve stopped believing we can solve problems together.

There are, however, opportunities to rebuild and fortify our sense of trust. This is especially true at the local level, where citizens can engage directly with elected leaders, nonprofit organizations, and each other.

As French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville observed in Democracy in America, “Municipal institutions constitute the strength of free nations. Town meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they bring it within the people’s reach; they teach men how to use and how to enjoy it.” Through town halls and other means, cities are where citizens, elected leaders, and nonprofit organizations can most easily connect and work together to improve their communities.

Research shows that, while trust in government is low everywhere, it is highest in local government. This is likely because people can see that their votes influence issues they care about, and they can directly interact with their mayors and city council members. Unlike with members of Congress, citizens can form real relationships with local leaders through events like “walks with the mayor” and neighborhood cleanups. Some mayors do even more to connect with their constituents. In Detroit, for example, Mayor Michael Duggan meets with residents in their homes to help them solve problems and answer questions in person. Many mayors also join in neighborhood projects. San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, for example, participates in a different community cleanup almost every week. Engaged citizens who participate in these activities are more likely to feel that their participation in democratic society is valuable and effective.

The role of nonprofit and community-based organizations, then, is partly to sustain democracy by being the bridge between city governments and citizens, helping them work together to solve concrete problems. It’s hard and important work. Time and again, this kind of relationship- and trust-building through action creates ripple effects that grow over time.

In my work with Cities of Service, which helps mayors and other city leaders effectively engage their citizens to solve problems, I’ve learned that local government works better when it is open to the ideas and talents of citizens. Citizen collaboration can take many forms, including defining and prioritizing problems, generating solutions, and volunteering time, creativity, and expertise to set positive change in motion. Citizens can leverage their own deep expertise about what’s best for their families and communities to deliver better services and solve public problems….(More)”.

Understanding Data Use: Building M&E Systems that Empower Users

Curated on September 1, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Susan Stout, Vinisha Bhatia, and Paige Kirby: “We know that Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) aims to support accountability and learning, in order to drive better outcomes…The paper, Understanding Data Use: Building M&E Systems that Empower Users, emphasizes how critical it is for decision makers to consider users’ decision space – from the institutional all the way to technical levels – in achieving data uptake.

Specifically, we call on smart mapping of this decision space – what do intended M&E users need, and what institutional factors shape those needs? With this understanding, we can better anticipate what types of data are most useful, and invest in systems to support data-driven decision making and better outcomes.

Mapping decision space is essential to understanding M&E data use. And as we’ve explored before, the development community has the opportunity to unlock existing resources to access more and better data that fits the needs of development actors to meet the SDGs….(More)”.

Why Proven Solutions Struggle to Scale Up

Curated on August 28, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Kriss Deiglmeier & Amanda Greco at Stanford Social Innovation Review: “…As we applied the innovation continuum to the cases we studied, we identified barriers to scale that often trap social innovations in a stagnation chasm before they achieve diffusion and scaling.

Three barriers in particular repeatedly block social innovations from reaching their broadest impact: inadequate funds for growth, the fragmented nature of the social innovation ecosystem, and talent gaps. If we are serious about propelling proven social innovations to achieve widespread impact, we must find solutions that overcome each of these barriers. The rest of the article will explore in more detail each of these three barriers in turn.

1. Inadequate Funding

Social innovators face a convoluted and often elusive path to mobilize the resources needed to amplify the impact of their work. Of the strategies for scale in Mulgan’s typology, some are very capital intensive, others less so. Yet even the advocacy and network approaches to scaling social impact require resources. It takes time, funding, and expertise to navigate the relationships and complex interdependencies that are critical to success. Some ventures may benefit from earned revenue streams that provide funds for growth, but earned revenue isn’t guaranteed in the social innovation space, especially for innovations that operate where markets fail to meet needs and serve people with no ability to pay. Thus, external funding is usually needed in order to scale impact, whether from donors or from investors depending on the legal structure and financial prospects of the venture….

2. A Fragmented Ecosystem

One sector toiling in isolation or digging into an adversarial approach cannot achieve breakthrough scale on its own. Instead, engaging and coordinating actions across various actors from the private, nonprofit, and public sectors is critical. In the case of microfinance, for example, the innovation garnered interest from government and business when nonprofits like Grameen Bank had demonstrated success in providing financial services to formerly unbanked people.

Following the pioneering role of nonprofits to establish proof of concept, commercial banks entered the market, with mixed social outcomes, given the pressure they faced for profitability. As the microfinance industry matured, governments created a legal and regulatory environment that encouraged transparency, market entry, and competition. The cumulative efforts and engagement across the nonprofit, private, and public sectors were critical to scaling microfinance as we know it today and will continue to refine the approach for better social outcomes in the future…

3. The Talent Gap

To drive social innovations in a world of rapid change, organizations need talented leaders supported by effective teams. The insufficient funding and fragmented ecosystem require highly adept people to shepherd social innovations through the long journey to widespread social impact. Unfortunately, attracting and retaining people to navigate these complexities is a challenge…(More)”.

How to Prevent Winner-Takes-All Democracy

Curated on August 28, 2018May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Kaushik Basu at Project Syndicate: “Democracy is in crisis. Fake news – and fake allegations of fake news – now plagues civil discourse, and political parties have proved increasingly willing to use xenophobia and other malign strategies to win elections. At the same time, revisionist powers like Vladimir Putin’s Russia have been stepping up their efforts to interfere in elections across the West. Rarely has the United States witnessed such brazen attacks on its political system; and rarely has the world seen such lows during peacetime….

How can all of this be happening in democracies, and what can be done about it?

On the first question, one hypothesis is that new digital technologies are changing the structural incentives for corporations, political parties, and other major institutions. Consider the case of corporations. The wealth of proprietary data on consumer preferences and behavior is producing such massive returns to scale that a few giants are monopolizing markets. In other words, markets are increasingly geared toward a winner-take-all game: multiple corporations can compete, but to the victor go the spoils.1

Electoral democracy is drifting in the same direction. The benefits of winning an election have become so large that political parties will stoop to new lows to clinch a victory. And, as with corporations, they can do so with the help of data on electoral preferences and behavior, and with new strategies to target key constituencies.

This poses a dilemma for well-meaning democratic parties and politicians. If a “bad” party is willing to foment hate and racism to bolster its chances of winning, what is a “good” party to do? If it sticks to its principles, it could end up ceding victory to the “bad” party, which will do even more harm once it is in office. A “good” party may thus try to forestall that outcome by taking a step down the moral ladder, precipitating a race to the bottom. This is the problem with any winner-takes-all game. When second place confers no benefits, the cost of showing unilateral restraint can grow intolerably high.

But this problem is not as hopeless as it appears. In light of today’s crisis of democracy, we would do well to revisit Václav Havel’s seminal 1978 essay “The Power of the Powerless.” First published as samizdat that was smuggled out of Czechoslovakia, the essay makes a simple but compelling argument. Dictatorships and other seemingly omnipotent forms of authoritarianism may look like large, top-down structures, but in the final analysis, they are merely the outcome of ordinary individuals’ beliefs and choices. Havel did not have the tools of modern economic theory to demonstrate his argument formally. In my new book The Republic of Beliefs, I show that the essence of his argument can be given formal structure using elementary game theory. This, in turn, shows that ordinary individuals have moral options that may be unavailable to the big institutional players….(More)”.

Citizen science, public policy

Curated on August 26, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Christi J. Guerrini, Mary A. Majumder, Meaganne J. Lewellyn, and Amy L. McGuire in Science: “Citizen science initiatives that support collaborations between researchers and the public are flourishing. As a result of this enhanced role of the public, citizen science demonstrates more diversity and flexibility than traditional science and can encompass efforts that have no institutional affiliation, are funded entirely by participants, or continuously or suddenly change their scientific aims.

But these structural differences have regulatory implications that could undermine the integrity, safety, or participatory goals of particular citizen science projects. Thus far, citizen science appears to be addressing regulatory gaps and mismatches through voluntary actions of thoughtful and well-intentioned practitioners.

But as citizen science continues to surge in popularity and increasingly engage divergent interests, vulnerable populations, and sensitive data, it is important to consider the long-term effectiveness of these private actions and whether public policies should be adjusted to complement or improve on them. Here, we focus on three policy domains that are relevant to most citizen science projects: intellectual property (IP), scientific integrity, and participant protections….(More)”.

How Taiwan’s online democracy may show future of humans and machines

Curated on August 9, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Shuyang Lin at the Sydney Morning Herald: “Taiwanese citizens have spent the past 30 years prototyping future democracy since the lift of martial law in 1987. Public participation in Taiwan has been developed in several formats, from face-to-face to deliberation over the internet. This trajectory coincides with the advancement of technology, and as new tools arrived, democracy evolved.

The launch of vTaiwan (v for virtual, vote, voice and verb), an experiment that prototypes an open consultation process for the civil society, showed that by using technology creatively humanity can facilitate deep and fair conversations, form collective consensus, and deliver solutions we can all live with.

It is a prototype that helps us envision what future democracy could look like….

Decision-making is not an easy task, especially when it has to do with a larger group of people. Group decision-making could take several protocols, such as mandate, to decide and take questions; advise, to listen before decisions; consent, to decide if no one objects; and consensus, to decide if everyone agrees. So there is a pressing need for us to be able to collaborate together in a large scale decision-making process to update outdated standards and regulations.

The future of human knowledge is on the web. Technology can help us to learn, communicate, and make better decisions faster with larger scale. The internet could be the facilitation and AI could be the catalyst. It is extremely important to be aware that decision-making is not a one-off interaction. The most important direction of decision-making technology development is to have it allow humans to be engaged in the process anytime and also have an invitation to request and submit changes.

Humans have started working with computers, and we will continue to work with them. They will help us in the decision-making process and some will even make decisions for us; the actors in collaboration don’t necessarily need to be just humans. While it is up to us to decide what and when to opt in or opt out, we should work together with computers in a transparent, collaborative and inclusive space.

Where shall we go as a society? What do we want from technology? As Audrey Tang, Digital Minister without Portfolio of Taiwan, puts it: “Deliberation — listening to each other deeply, thinking together and working out something that we can all live with — is magical.”…(More)”.