The Perils of Experimentation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Michael A. Livermore: “More than eighty years after Justice Brandeis coined the phrase “laboratories of democracy,” the concept of policy experimentation retains its currency as a leading justification for decentralized governance. This Article examines the downsides of experimentation, and in particular the potential for decentralization to lead to the production of information that exacerbates public choice failures. Standard accounts of experimentation and policy learning focus on information concerning the social welfare effects of alternative policies. But learning can also occur along a political dimension as information about ideological preferences, campaign techniques, and electoral incentives is revealed. Both types of information can be put to use in the policy arena by a host of individual and institutional actors that have a wide range of motives, from public-spirited concern for the general welfare to a desire to maximize personal financial returns. In this complex environment, there is no guarantee that the information that is generated by experimentation will lead to social benefits. This Article applies this insight to prior models of federalism developed in the legal and political science literature to show that decentralization can lead to the over-production of socially harmful information. As a consequence, policy makers undertaking a decentralization calculation should seek a level of decentralization that best balances the costs and benefits of information production. To illustrate the legal and policy implications of the arguments developed here, this Article examines two contemporary environmental rulemakings of substantial political, legal, and economic significance: a rule to define the jurisdictional reach of the Clean Water Act; and a rule to limit greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity generating sector….(More)”.

 

Foundation Transparency: Game Over?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Brad Smith at Glass Pockets (Foundation Center): “The tranquil world of America’s foundations is about to be shaken, but if you read the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s (CEP) new study — Sharing What Matters, Foundation Transparency — you would never know it.

Don’t get me wrong. That study, like everything CEP produces, is carefully researched, insightful and thoroughly professional. But it misses the single biggest change in foundation transparency in decades: the imminent release by the Internal Revenue Service of foundation 990-PF (and 990) tax returns as machine-readable open data.

Clara Miller, President of the Heron Foundation, writes eloquently in her manifesto, Building a Foundation for the 21St Century: “…the private foundation model was designed to be protective and separate, much like a terrarium.”

Terrariums, of course, are highly “curated” environments over which their creators have complete control. The CEP study, proves that point, to the extent that much of the study consists of interviews with foundation leaders and reviews of their websites as if transparency were a kind of optional endeavor in which foundations may choose to participate, if at all, and to what degree.

To be fair, CEP also interviewed the grantees of various foundations (sometimes referred to as “partners”), which helps convey the reality that foundations have stakeholders beyond their four walls. However, the terrarium metaphor is about to become far more relevant as the release of 990 tax returns as open data will literally make it possible for anyone to look right through those glass walls to the curated foundation world within.

What Is Open Data?

It is safe to say that most foundation leaders and a fair majority of their staff do not understand what open data really is. Open data is free, yes, but more importantly it is digital and machine-readable. This means it can be consumed in enormous volumes at lightning speed, directly by computers.

Once consumed, open data can be tagged, sorted, indexed and searched using statistical methods to make obvious comparisons while discovering previously undetected correlations. Anyone with a computer, some coding skills and a hard drive or cloud storage can access open data. In today’s world, a lot of people meet those requirements, and they are free to do whatever they please with your information once it is, as open data enthusiasts like to say, “in the wild.”

What is the Internal Revenue Service Releasing?

Thanks to the Aspen Institute’s leadership of a joint effort – funded by foundations and including Foundation Center, GuideStar, the National Center for Charitable Statistics, the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies, and others – the IRS has started to make some 1,000,000 Form 990s and 40,000 Form 990PF available as machine-readable open data.

Previously, all Form 990s had been released as image (TIFF) files, essentially a picture, making it both time-consuming and expensive to extract useful data from them. Credit where credit is due; a kick in the butt in the form of a lawsuit from open data crusader Carl Malamud helped speed the process along.

The current test phase includes only those tax returns that were digitally filed by nonprofits and community foundations (990s) and private foundations (990PFs). Over time, the IRS will phase in a mandatory digital filing requirement for all Form 990s, and the intent is to release them all as open data. In other words, that which is born digital will be opened up to the public in digital form. Because of variations in the 990 forms, getting the information from them into a database will still require some technical expertise, but will be far more feasible and faster than ever before.

The Good

The work of organizations like Foundation Center– who have built expensive infrastructure in order to turn years of 990 tax returns into information that can be used by nonprofits looking for funding, researchers trying to understand the role of foundations and foundations, themselves, seeking to benchmark themselves against peers—will be transformed.

Work will shift away from the mechanics of capturing and processing the data to higher level analysis and visualization to stimulate the generation and sharing of new insights and knowledge. This will fuel greater collaboration between peer organizations, innovation, the merging of previous disparate bodies of data, better philanthropy, and a stronger social sector… (more)

 

These Online Platforms Make Direct Democracy Possible

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Tom Ladendorf in InTheseTimes: “….Around the world, organizations from political parties to cooperatives are experimenting with new modes of direct democracy made possible by the internet.

“The world has gone through extraordinary technological innovation,” says Agustín Frizzera of Argentina’s Net Party. “But governments and political institutions haven’t innovated enough.”

The founders of the four-year-old party have also built an online platform, DemocracyOS, that lets users discuss and vote on proposals being considered by their legislators.

Anyone can adopt the technology, but the Net Party uses it to let Buenos Aires residents debate City Council measures. A 2013 thread, for example, concerned a plan to require bars and restaurants to make bathrooms free and open to the public.

“I recognize the need for freely available facilities, but it is the state who should be offering this service,” reads the top comment, voted most helpful by users. Others argued that private bathrooms open the door to discrimination. Ultimately, 56.9 percent of participants supported the proposal, while 35.3 percent voted against and 7.8 percent abstained….

A U.S. company called PlaceAVote, launched in 2014, takes what it calls a more pragmatic approach. According to cofounder Job Melton, PlaceAVote’s goal is to “work within the system we have now and fix it from the inside out” instead of attempting the unlikely feat of building a third U.S. party.

Like the Net Party and its brethren, PlaceAVote offers an online tool that lets voters participate in decision making. Right now, the technology is in public beta at PlaceAVote.com, allowing users nationwide to weigh in on legislation before Congress….

But digital democracy has applications that extend beyond electoral politics. A wide range of groups are using web-based decision-making tools internally. The Mexican government, for example, has used DemocracyOS to gather citizen feedback on a data-protection law, and Brazilian civil society organizations are using it to encourage engagement with federal and municipal policy-making.

Another direct-democracy tool in wide use is Loomio, developed by a cooperative in New Zealand. Ben Knight, one of Loomio’s cofounders, sums up his experience with Occupy as one of “seeing massive potential of collective decision making, and then realizing how difficult it could be in person.” After failing to find an online tool to facilitate the process, the Loomio team created a platform that enables online discussion with a personal element: Votes are by name and voters can choose to “disagree” with or even “block” proposals. Provo, Utah, uses Loomio for public consultation, and a number of political parties use Loomio for local decision making, including the Brazilian Pirate Party, several regional U.K. Green Party chapters and Spain’s Podemos. Podemos has enthusiastically embraced digital-democracy tools for everything from its selection of European Parliament candidates to the creation of its party platform….(More)”

How innovation agencies work

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Kirsten Bound and Alex Glennie at NESTA: “This report considers how governments can get better at designing and running innovation agencies, drawing on examples from around the world.

Key findings

  • There is no single model for a ‘successful’ innovation agency.  Although there is much to learn from other countries about best practice in institution and programme design, attempts to directly replicate organisational models that operate in very different contexts are likely to fail.
  • There are a variety of roles that innovation agencies can play. From our case studies, we have identified a number of different approaches that an innovation agency might take, depending on the specific nature of a country’s innovation system, the priorities of policymakers, and available resources.
  • Innovation agencies need a clear mission, but an ability to adapt and experiment. Working towards many different objectives at once or constantly changing strategic direction can make it difficult for an innovation agency to deliver impactful innovation support for businesses. However, a long-term vision of what success looks like should not prevent innovation agencies from experimenting with new approaches, and responding to new needs and opportunities.
  • Innovation agencies should be assessed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Evaluations tend to focus on the financial return they generate, but our research suggests that more effort needs to be put into assessing some of the more qualitative aspects of their role, including the quality of their management, their ability to take (and learn from) strategic risks, and the skill with which they design and implement their programmes.
  • Governments should be both ambitious and realistic about what they expect an innovation agency to achieve. An innovation agency’s role will inevitably be affected by shifts in government priorities. Understanding how innovation agencies shape (and are shaped by) the broader political environment around innovation is a necessary part of ensuring that they are able to deliver on their potential.

Governments around the world are looking for ways to nurture innovative businesses, as a way of solving some of their most urgent economic and societal challenges. Many seek to do this by setting up national innovation agencies: institutions that provide financial and other support to catalyse or drive private sector innovation. Yet we still know relatively little about the range of approaches that these agencies take, what programmes and instruments are likely to work best in a given context, and how to assess their long-term impact.

We have been investigating these questions by studying a diverse group selection of innovation agencies in ten different countries. Our aim has been to improve understanding of the range of existing institutional models and to learn more about their design, evolution and effectiveness. In doing so, we have developed a broad framework to help policymakers think about the set of choices and options they face in the design and management of an innovation agency….(More)”

An App to Save Syria’s Lost Generation? What Technology Can and Can’t Do

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Mark Latonero in Foreign Affairs: ” In January this year, when the refugee and migrant crisis in Europe had hit its peak—more than a million had crossed into Europe over the course of 2015—the U.S. State Department and Google hosted a forum of over 100 technology experts. The goal was to “bridge the education gap for Syrian refugee children.” Speaking to the group assembled at Stanford University, Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced a $1.7 million prize “to develop a smartphone app that can help Syrian children learn how to read and improve their wellbeing.” The competition, known as EduApp4Syria, is being run by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) and is supported by the Australian government and the French mobile company Orange.

Less than a month later, a group called Techfugees brought together over 100 technologists for a daylong brainstorm in New York City focused exclusively on education solutions. “We are facing the largest refugee crisis since World War II,” said U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power to open the conference. “It is a twenty-first-century crisis and we need a twenty-first-century solution.” Among the more promising, according to Power, were apps that enable “refugees to access critical services,” new “web platforms connecting refugees with one another,” and “education programs that teach refugees how to code.”

For example, the nonprofit PeaceGeeks created the Services Advisor app for the UN Refugee Agency, which maps the location of shelters, food distribution centers, and financial services in Jordan….(More)”

Scientists Are Just as Confused About the Ethics of Big-Data Research as You

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Sarah Zhang at Wired: “When a rogue researcher last week released 70,000 OkCupid profiles, complete with usernames and sexual preferences, people were pissed. When Facebook researchers manipulated stories appearing in Newsfeeds for a mood contagion study in 2014, people were really pissed. OkCupid filed a copyright claim to take down the dataset; the journal that published Facebook’s study issued an “expression of concern.” Outrage has a way of shaping ethical boundaries. We learn from mistakes.

Shockingly, though, the researchers behind both of those big data blowups never anticipated public outrage. (The OkCupid research does not seem to have gone through any kind of ethical review process, and a Cornell ethics review board approved the Facebook experiment.) And that shows just how untested the ethics of this new field of research is. Unlike medical research, which has been shaped by decades of clinical trials, the risks—and rewards—of analyzing big, semi-public databases are just beginning to become clear.

And the patchwork of review boards responsible for overseeing those risks are only slowly inching into the 21st century. Under the Common Rule in the US, federally funded research has to go through ethical review. Rather than one unified system though, every single university has its own institutional review board, or IRB. Most IRB members are researchers at the university, most often in the biomedical sciences. Few are professional ethicists.

Even fewer have computer science or security expertise, which may be necessary to protect participants in this new kind of research. “The IRB may make very different decisions based on who is on the board, what university it is, and what they’re feeling that day,” says Kelsey Finch, policy counsel at the Future of Privacy Forum. There are hundreds of these IRBs in the US—and they’re grappling with research ethics in the digital age largely on their own….

Or maybe other institutions, like the open science repositories asking researchers to share data, should be picking up the slack on ethical issues. “Someone needs to provide oversight, but the optimal body is unlikely to be an IRB, which usually lacks subject matter expertise in de-identification and re-identification techniques,” Michelle Meyer, a bioethicist at Mount Sinai, writes in an email.

Even among Internet researchers familiar with the power of big data, attitudes vary. When Katie Shilton, an information technology research at the University of Maryland, interviewed 20 online data researchers, she found “significant disagreement” over issues like the ethics of ignoring Terms of Service and obtaining informed consent. Surprisingly, the researchers also said that ethical review boards had never challenged the ethics of their work—but peer reviewers and colleagues had. Various groups like theAssociation of Internet Researchers and the Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis have issued guidelines, but the people who actually have power—those on institutional review boards–are only just catching up.

Outside of academia, companies like Microsoft have started to institute their own ethical review processes. In December, Finch at the Future of Privacy Forum organized a workshop called Beyond IRBs to consider processes for ethical review outside of federally funded research. After all, modern tech companies like Facebook, OkCupid, Snapchat, Netflix sit atop a trove of data 20th century social scientists could have only dreamed up.

Of course, companies experiment on us all the time, whether it’s websites A/B testing headlines or grocery stores changing the configuration of their checkout line. But as these companies hire more data scientists out of PhD programs, academics are seeing an opportunity to bridge the divide and use that data to contribute to public knowledge. Maybe updated ethical guidelines can be forged out of those collaborations. Or it just might be a mess for a while….(More)”

Twelve principles for open innovation 2.0

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Martin Curley in Nature: “A new mode of innovation is emerging that blurs the lines between universities, industry, governments and communities. It exploits disruptive technologies — such as cloud computing, the Internet of Things and big data — to solve societal challenges sustainably and profitably, and more quickly and ably than before. It is called open innovation 2.0 (ref. 1).

 The promise is sustainable, intelligent living: innovations drive economic growth and improve quality of life while reducing environmental impact and resource use. For example, a dynamic congestion-charging system can adjust traffic flow and offer incentives to use park-and-ride schemes, guided by real-time traffic levels and air quality. Car-to-car communication could manage traffic to minimize transit times and emissions and eliminate road deaths from collisions. Smart electricity grids lower costs, integrate renewable energies and balance loads. Health-care monitoring enables early interventions, improving life quality and reducing care costs.

Such innovations are being tested in ‘living labs’ in hundreds of cities. In Dublin, for example, the city council has partnered with my company, the technology firm Intel (of which I am a vice-president), to install a pilot network of sensors to improve flood management by measuring local rain fall and river levels, and detecting blocked drains. Eindhoven in the Netherlands is working with electronics firm Philips and others to develop intelligent street lighting. Communications-technology firm Ericsson, the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, IBM and others are collaborating to test self-driving buses in Kista, Sweden.

Yet many institutions and companies remain unaware of this radical shift. They often confuse invention and innovation. Invention is the creation of a technology or method. Innovation concerns the use of that technology or method to create value. The agile approaches needed for open innovation 2.0 conflict with the ‘command and control’ organizations of the industrial age (see ‘How innovation modes have evolved’). Institutional or societal cultures can inhibit user and citizen involvement. Intellectual-property (IP) models may inhibit collaboration. Government funders can stifle the emergence of ideas by requiring that detailed descriptions of proposed work are specified before research can begin. Measures of success, such as citations, discount innovation and impact. Policymaking lags behind the market place….

Keys to collaborative innovation

  1. Purpose. Efforts and intellects aligned through commitment rather than compliance deliver an impact greater than the sum of their parts. A great example is former US President John F. Kennedy’s vision of putting a man on the Moon. Articulating a shared value that can be created is important. A win–win scenario is more sustainable than a win–lose outcome.
  2. Partner. The ‘quadruple helix’ of government, industry, academia and citizens joining forces aligns goals, amplifies resources, attenuates risk and accelerates progress. A collaboration between Intel, University College London, Imperial College London and Innovate UK’s Future Cities Catapult is working in the Intel Collaborative Research Institute to improve people’s well-being in cities, for example to enable reduction of air pollution.
  3. Platform. An environment for collaboration is a basic requirement. Platforms should be integrated and modular, allowing a plug-and-play approach. They must be open to ensure low barriers to use, catalysing the evolution of a community. Challenges in security, standards, trust and privacy need to be addressed. For example, the Open Connectivity Foundation is securing interoperability for the Internet of Things.
  4. Possibilities. Returns may not come from a product but from the business model that enabled it, a better process or a new user experience. Strategic tools are available, such as industrial designer Larry Keeley’s breakdown of innovations into ten types in four categories: finance, process, offerings and delivery.
  5. Plan. Adoption and scale should be the focus of innovation efforts, not product creation. Around 20% of value is created when an innovation is established; more than 80% comes when it is widely adopted7. Focus on the ‘four Us’: utility (value to the user); usability; user experience; and ubiquity (designing in network effects).
  6. Pyramid. Enable users to drive innovation. They inspired two-thirds of innovations in semiconductors and printed circuit boards, for example. Lego Ideas encourages children and others to submit product proposals — submitters must get 10,000 supporters for their idea to be reviewed. Successful inventors get 1% of royalties.
  7. Problem. Most innovations come from a stated need. Ethnographic research with users, customers or the environment can identify problems and support brainstorming of solutions. Create a road map to ensure the shortest path to a solution.
  8. Prototype. Solutions need to be tested and improved through rapid experimentation with users and citizens. Prototyping shows how applicable a solution is, reduces the risks of failures and can reveal pain points. ‘Hackathons’, where developers come together to rapidly try things, are increasingly common.
  9. Pilot. Projects need to be implemented in the real world on small scales first. The Intel Collaborative Research Institute runs research projects in London’s parks, neighbourhoods and schools. Barcelona’s Laboratori — which involves the quadruple helix — is pioneering open ‘living lab’ methods in the city to boost culture, knowledge, creativity and innovation.
  10. Product. Prototypes need to be converted into viable commercial products or services through scaling up and new infrastructure globally. Cloud computing allows even small start-ups to scale with volume, velocity and resilience.
  11. Product service systems. Organizations need to move from just delivering products to also delivering related services that improve sustainability as well as profitability. Rolls-Royce sells ‘power by the hour’ — hours of flight time rather than jet engines — enabled by advanced telemetry. The ultimate goal of open innovation 2.0 is a circular or performance economy, focused on services and reuse rather than consumption and waste.
  12. Process. Innovation is a team sport. Organizations, ecosystems and communities should measure, manage and improve their innovation processes to deliver results that are predictable, probable and profitable. Agile methods supported by automation shorten the time from idea to implementation….(More)”

Crowdsourcing corruption in India’s maternal health services

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
Joan Okitoi-Heisig at DW Akademie: “…The Mera Swasthya Meri Aawaz (MSMA) project is the first of its kind in India to track illicit maternal fees demanded in government hospitals located in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

MSMA (“My Health, My Voice”) is part of SAHAYOG, a non-governmental umbrella organization that helped launch the project. MSMA uses an Ushahidi platform to map and collect data on unofficial fees that plague India’ ostensibly “free” maternal health services. It is one of the many projects showcased in DW Akademie’s recently launched Digital Innovation Library. SAHAYOG works closely with grassroots organizations to promote gender equality and women’s health issues from a human rights perspective…

SAYAHOG sees women’s maternal health as a human rights issue. Key to the MSMA project is exposing government facilities that extort bribes from among the poorest and most vulnerable in society.

Sandhya and her colleagues are convinced that promoting transparency and accountability through the data collected can empower the women. If they’re aware of their entitlements, she says, they can demand their rights and in the process hold leaders accountable.

“Information is power,” Sandhya explains. Without this information, she says, “they aren’t in a position to demand what is rightly theirs.”

Health care providers hold a certain degree of power when entrusted with taking care of expectant mothers. Many give into bribes for fear of being otherwise neglected or abused.

With the MSMA project, however, poor rural women have technology that is easy to use and accessible on their mobile phones, and that empowers them to make complaints and report bribes for services that are supposed to be free.

MSMA is an innovative data-driven platform that combines a toll free number, an interactive voice response system (IVRS) and a website that contains accessible reports. In addition to enabling poor women to air their frustrations anonymously, the project aggregates actionable data which can then be used by the NGO as well as the government to work towards improving the situation for mothers in India….(More)”

Citizen Generated Data In Practice

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

DataShift: “No-one can communicate the importance of citizen-generated data better than those who are actually working with it. At DataShift, we want to highlight the civil society organisations who have told us about the tangible results they have achieved through innovative approaches to harnessing data from citizens.

Each essay profiles the objectives, challenges and targets of an organisation using data generated by citizens to achieve their goals. We hope that the essays in this collection can help more people feel more confident about asking questions of the data that affects their lives, and taking a hands-on approach to creating it. (More)”

ESSAYS

VOZDATA

People and collaborative technology are helping to redefine Argentina’s fourthestate

SCIENCE FOR CHANGE KOSOVO (SFCK)

Collaborative citizen science to tackleKosovo’s air pollution problem and simultaneously engage with a politically disenfranchised generation of young people

The Biggest Hope for Ending Corruption Is Open Public Contracting

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Gavin Hayman at the Huffington Post: “This week the British Prime Minister David Cameron is hosting an international anti-corruption summit. The scourge of anonymous shell companies and hidden identities rightly seizes the public’s imagination. We can all picture the suitcases of cash and tropical islands involved. As well as acting on offshore and onshore money laundering havens, world leaders at the summit should also be asking themselves where all this money is being stolen from in the first place.

The answer is mostly from public contracting: government spending through private companies to deliver works, goods and services to citizens. It is technical, dull and universally obscure. But it is the single biggest item of spending by government – amounting to a staggering $9,500,000,000,000 each year. This concentration of money, government discretion, and secrecy makes public contracting so vulnerable to corruption. Data on prosecutions tracked by the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention shows that roughly 60% of bribes were paid to win public contracts.

Corruption in contracting deprives ordinary people of vital goods and services, and sometimes even kills: I was one of many Londoners moved by Ai Wei Wei’s installation that memorialised the names of thousands of children killed in China’s Sichuan earthquake in 2008. Their supposed earthquake-proof schools collapsed on them like tofu.

Beyond corruption, inefficiency and mismanagement of public contracts cost countries billions. Governments just don’t seem to know what they are buying, when, from whom, and whether they got a good price.

This problem can be fixed. But it will require a set of innovations best described as open contracting: using accessible open data and better engagement so that citizens, government and business can follow the money in government contracts from planning to tendering to performance and closure. The coordination required can be hard work but it is achievable: any country can make substantial progress on open contracting with some political leadership. My organisation supports an open data standard and a free global helpdesk to assist governments, civil society, and business in this transition….(More)”