Book by Mallory Compton and Edited by Paul ‘t Hart: “With so much media and political criticism of their shortcomings and failures, it is easy to overlook the fact that many governments work pretty well much of the time. Great Policy Successes turns the spotlight on instances of public policy that are remarkably successful. It develops a framework for identifying and assessing policy successes, paying attention not just to their programmatic outcomes but also to the quality of the processes by which policies are designed and delivered, the level of support and legitimacy they attain, and the extent to which successful performance endures over time. The bulk of the book is then devoted to 15 detailed case studies of striking policy successes from around the world, including Singapore’s public health system, Copenhagen and Melbourne’s rise from stilted backwaters to the highly liveable and dynamic urban centres they are today, Brazil’s Bolsa Familia poverty relief scheme, the US’s GI Bill, and Germany’s breakthrough labour market reforms of the 2000s. Each case is set in context, its main actors are introduced, key events and decisions are described, the assessment framework is applied to gauge the nature and level of its success, key contributing factors to success are identified, and potential lessons and future challenges are identified. Purposefully avoiding the kind of heavy theorizing that characterizes many accounts of public policy processes, each case is written in an accessible and narrative style ideally suited for classroom use in conjunction with mainstream textbooks on public policy design, implementation, and evaluation….(More)”.
The Innovation Barometer
About: “Demographic changes. Climate crisis. Cybercrime. Budget deficits. Diminishing political legitimacy. From a global perspective there is no shortage of complex problems facing the public sector. The need for innovative solutions is evident, but a systematic knowledge base for necessary public sector innovations is hard to come by.
Private sector companies have been the subject of internationally comparable statistics on innovation for nearly three decades, giving private companies, scholars and public sector decision-makers essential guidance for business development, research and policymaking.
For the public sector, however, anecdotes and opinions have been substitutes for statistical data on innovation. That is why, in 2015, the Danish National Centre for Public Sector Innovation, in association with Statistics Denmark, began separating myth from reality. The result was the Innovation Barometer, the world’s first official statistics on public sector innovation. The statistic is based on a nationwide web-based survey addressed to managers of public sector workplaces of all kinds – kindergartens, schools, hospitals, police stations ect.
While the findings were both surprising and useful, additional insight from national comparisons was missing. But not for long. By 2018 Norway, Sweden, Iceland and Finland had all conducted one or more national surveys, utilising similar methodologies and definitions, though adapted somewhat to better serve national agendas. Their ongoing efforts have also contributed to methodological adjustments, improving the original survey design.
Currently a large variety of people and organisations use Nordic Innovation Barometer data, applying them for their own purposes, e.g. inspiration, policymaking, strategizing, HR development, teaching, research and consultancy services. Or for legitimising certain decisions and criticising others. In short, the Nordic Innovation Barometers are being put to use as the public good they were intended to be, also in ways the developers and adaptors did not foresee.
On behalf of the remarkably innovative Nordic public sectors we are pleased to present the first website containing cross-Nordic comparisons. Although this website does not tell us everything that we would like to know about public sector innovation, it does provide a sorely needed systematic foundation for developing new solutions….(More)”.
Goodhart’s Law: Are Academic Metrics Being Gamed?
Essay by Michael Fire: “…We attained the following five key insights from our study:
First, these results support Goodhart’s Law as it relates to academic publishing; that is, traditional measures (e.g., number of papers, number of citations, h-index, and impact factor) have become targets, and are no longer true measures importance/impact. By making papers shorter and collaborating with more authors, researchers are able to produce more papers in the same amount of time. Moreover, the majority of changes in papers’ structure are correlated with papers that receive higher numbers of citations. Authors can use longer titles and abstracts, or use question or exclamation marks in titles, to make their papers more appealing for readers and increase citations, i.e. academic clickbait. These results support our hypothesis that academic papers have evolved in order to score a bullseye on target metrics.
Second, it is clear that citation number has become a target for some researchers. We observe a general increasing trend for researchers to cite their previous work in their new studies, with some authors self citing dozens, or even hundreds, of times. Moreover, a huge quantity of papers – over 72% of all papers and 25% of all papers with at least 5 references – have no citations at all after 5 years. Clearly, a signficant amount of resources is spent on papers with limited impact, which may indicate that researchers are publishing more papers of poorer quality to boost their total number of publications. Additionally, we noted that different decades have very different paper citation distributions. Consequently, comparing citation records of researchers who published papers in different time periods can be challenging.
Third, we observed an exponential growth in the number of new researchers who publish papers, likely due to career pressures. …(More)”.
GovChain
Introduction to Report by Tom Rodden: “This report addresses the most discussed digital technologies of the last few years. There has been considerable debate about the potential benefits and threats that arise from the use of Distributed Ledger Technologies. What is clear from these debates is that blockchain is an important technology that has the potential to transform a range of sectors. The importance of Distributed Ledger Technology was identified and discussed in a 2016 report produced by Sir Mark Walport, the UK Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser at the time.
The report provided recommendations for the use of blockchain to meet national needs, and to ensure the UK’s competitiveness in the global arena. The report outlined the need for a broad response that spanned the public and private sector, whilst also recognising the need for leadership in the development and deployment of blockchain technologies.
This report provides an update and reflection on the use of blockchain technologies by Governments and Public Sector bodies around the world. Much has happened since 2016 and this report provides a reminder of the importance of Distributed Ledger Technologies for the public sector, and the various orientations of blockchains adopted across the globe. The team have mapped the various regulatory and policy responses to blockchain, and cryptocurrencies more broadly. This mapping not only reveals a varying degree of friendliness towards blockchain, it also highlights the challenges involved in implementing Distributed Ledger Technology systems in the public sector.
Distributed Ledger Technologies are an important technology for the public sector, albeit there exists a number of policy implications. If we are to show leadership in the use of blockchain and its application it is imperative that we are aware of both its benefits and limitations; and the issues that need to be addressed to ensure we gain value from the use of Distributed Ledger Technologies. This report captures the public sector experiences of blockchain technologies across the globe, and also documents the issues raised and the various responses. This is a hugely informative and useful document for those who seek to make use of blockchains in the public sector….(More)”.
The Algorithmic Divide and Equality in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Paper by Peter Yu: “In the age of artificial intelligence, highly sophisticated algorithms have been deployed to detect patterns, optimize solutions, facilitate self-learning, and foster improvements in technological products and services. Notwithstanding these tremendous benefits, algorithms and intelligent machines do not provide equal benefits to all. Just as the digital divide has separated those with access to the Internet, information technology, and digital content from those without, an emerging and ever-widening algorithmic divide now threatens to take away the many political, social, economic, cultural, educational, and career opportunities provided by machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Although policymakers, commentators, and the mass media have paid growing attention to algorithmic bias and the shortcomings of machine learning and artificial intelligence, the algorithmic divide has yet to attract much policy and scholarly attention. To fill this lacuna, this article draws on the digital divide literature to systematically analyze this new inequitable gap between the technology haves and have-nots. Utilizing the analytical framework that the Author developed in the early 2000s, the article discusses the five attributes of the algorithmic divide: awareness, access, affordability, availability, and adaptability.
This article then turns to three major problems precipitated by an emerging and fast-expanding algorithmic divide: (1) algorithmic deprivation; (2) algorithmic discrimination; and (3) algorithmic distortion. While the first two problems affect primarily those on the unfortunate side of the algorithmic divide, the latter impacts individuals on both sides of the divide. This article concludes by proposing seven nonexhaustive clusters of remedial actions to help bridge this emerging and ever-widening algorithmic divide. Combining law, communications policy, ethical principles, institutional mechanisms, and business practices, the article fashions a holistic response to help foster equality in the age of artificial intelligence….(More)”.
The Extended Corporate Mind: When Corporations Use AI to Break the Law
Paper by Mihailis Diamantis: “Algorithms may soon replace employees as the leading cause of corporate harm. For centuries, the law has defined corporate misconduct — anything from civil discrimination to criminal insider trading — in terms of employee misconduct. Today, however, breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and big data allow automated systems to make many corporate decisions, e.g., who gets a loan or what stocks to buy. These technologies introduce valuable efficiencies, but they do not remove (or even always reduce) the incidence of corporate harm. Unless the law adapts, corporations will become increasingly immune to civil and criminal liability as they transfer responsibility from employees to algorithms.
This Article is the first to tackle the full extent of the growing doctrinal gap left by algorithmic corporate misconduct. To hold corporations accountable, the law must sometimes treat them as if they “know” information stored on their servers and “intend” decisions reached by their automated systems. Cognitive science and the philosophy of mind offer a path forward. The “extended mind thesis” complicates traditional views about the physical boundaries of the mind. The thesis states that the mind encompasses any system that sufficiently assists thought, e.g. by facilitating recall or enhancing decision-making. For natural people, the thesis implies that minds can extend beyond the brain to include external cognitive aids, like rolodexes and calculators. This Article adapts the thesis to corporate law. It motivates and proposes a doctrinal framework for extending the corporate mind to the algorithms that are increasingly integral to corporate thought. The law needs such an innovation if it is to hold future corporations to account for their most serious harms….(More)”.
Cyber Influence and Cognitive Threats
Open Access book by Vladlena Benson and John Mcalaney: “In the wake of fresh allegations that personal data of Facebook users have been illegally used to influence the outcome of the US general election and the Brexit vote, the debate over manipulation of social big data continues to gain more momentum. Cyber Influence and Cognitive Threats addresses various emerging challenges in response to cyber security, examining cognitive applications in decision making, behaviour and basic human interaction. The book examines the role of psychology in cybersecurity by addressing each factor involved in the process: hackers, targets, cybersecurity practitioners, and the wider social context in which these groups operate.
Cyber Influence and Cognitive Threats covers a variety of topics including information systems, psychology, sociology, human resources, leadership, strategy, innovation, law, finance and others….(More)”.
Using a design approach to create collaborative governance
Paper by John Bryson, Barbara Crosby and Danbi Seo: “In complex, shared-power settings, policymakers, administrators and other kinds of decision makers increasingly must engage in collaborative inter-organisational efforts to effectively address challenging public issues. These collaborations must be governed effectively if they are to achieve their public purposes. A design approach to the governance of collaborations can help, especially if it explicitly focuses on the design and use of formal and informal settings for dialogue and deliberation (forums), decision making (arenas) and resolution of residual disputes (courts). The success of a design approach will depend on many things, but especially on leaders and leadership and careful attention to the design and use of forums, arenas and courts and the effective use of power. The argument is illustrated by examining the emergence and governance of a collaboration designed to cope with the fragmented policy field of minority business support….(More)”.
Next generation disaster data infrastructure
Report by the IRDR Working Group on DATA and the CODATA Task Group on Linked Open Data for Global Disaster Risk Research: “Based on the targets of the Sendai Framework, this white paper proposes the next generation of disaster data infrastructure, which includes both novel and the most essential information systems and services that a country or a region can depend on to successfully gather, process and display disaster data to reduce the impact of natural hazards.
Fundamental requirements of disaster data infrastructure include (1) effective multi-source big disaster data collection (2) efficient big disaster data fusion, exchange and query (3) strict big disaster data quality control and standard construction (4) real time big data analysis and decision making and (5) user-friendly big data visualization.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: first, several future scenarios of disaster management are developed based on existing disaster management systems and communication technology. Second, fundamental requirements of next generation disaster data infrastructure inspired by the proposed scenarios are discussed. Following that, research questions and issues are highlighted. Finally, policy recommendations and conclusions are provided at the end of the paper….(More)”.
How Nontraditional Innovation is Rejuvenating Public Housing
Blog by Jamal Gauthier: “The crisis of affordable public housing can be felt across America on a large scale. Many poor and impoverished families that reside in public housing projects are consistently unable to pay rent for their dwellings while dealing with a host of other social complications that make living in public housing even more difficult. Creating affordable public housing involves the use of innovative processes that reduce construction cost and maximize livable square footage so that rents can remain affordable. Through the rising popularity of nontraditional approaches to innovation, many organizations tasked with addressing these difficult housing challenges are adopting such methods to uncover previously unthought of solutions.
The concept of crowdsourcing especially is paving the way for federal agencies (such as HUD), nonprofits, and private housing companies alike to gain new perspectives and approaches to complex public housing topics from unlikely and/or underutilized sources. Crowdsourcing proponents and stakeholders hope to add fresh ideas and new insights to the shared pool of public knowledge, augmenting innovation and productivity in the current public housing landscape.
The federal government could particularly benefit from these nontraditional forms of innovation by implementing these practices into standard government processes. The struggling affordable public housing system in America, for example, points to a glaring flaw in standard government process that makes applying the best ideas for real-world implementation by the government virtually impossible….(More)”.