Book Review by Chi Onwurah: “In the 1990s and 2000s, tech cynics would often quote Robert Solow’s 1987 quip, ‘You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.’ Now that value chains have been disintermediated and dependent business models trashed, it is less common to hear that. However it would still be appropriate to say ‘You can see the digital age everywhere but in Government.’ Certainly in a recent Policy Exchange report, the Prime Minister’s former digital advisor Rohan Silva did his best to portray the public sector as a digitally backward captured client of ICT oligarchs now being reluctantly dragged into the 21st Century.That makes the timing of Digital Government @ Work by Ian McLoughlin, Rob Wilson, and Mike Martin all the more fortuitous. The book seeks to give the reader a broad evidence-based understanding of what digital Government can be, what it is, and the challenges it faces. It is largely successful. Steve Halliday, President of Society of Information Technology Management describes the book as ‘a rigorous and thought-provoking analysis of the history and the future of digital government,’ and I would agree with that analysis. Despite lengthy definitional discussions and dense referencing, the book is also very readable and what is more, should be read….
The social informatics perspective of the book means its outlook is neither entirely technology-driven – whatever the problem the right system can solve it – nor purely qualitative, but combines understanding of the technology and its social and organisational impact with an analysis of the interdependencies at play in the context of public service delivery. These are illustrated by detailed case studies from Children’s Services, the National Programme for Local e-Government (FAME) and telecare, which highlight failings in current approaches to what they call ‘technology enactment’ as well as the – possibly systemic – challenges to real organisational and service innovation….
Most important is the recognition that technology only empowers when we feel ownership of it, not controlled by it. If digital government is to be about empowering and improving that critical relationship at the frontline, then the ‘street bureaucrats’ the book refers to, as well as the citizen-user and the IT manager, must all be involved in an on-going co-production of the service. Rather than traditional integration we must ‘seek alternative means of coordination such as through federation and federability.’ If this is achieved, we may look to ‘digital government maturity characterised by partnership working across a mixed economy of public, private and third sectors and supported by an infrastructure of federated information and identity management systems and shared service environments’….”
Experts rank the top 10 global trends
Pew Research: “A new report from the World Economic Forum ranks the 10 most important global trends, based on a poll of 1,592 leaders from academia, business, government, and non-profits. Here are some data points that compare and contrast the public’s views around the world with the trends identified by the experts….
7. A lack of values in leadership – Between 2007 and 2012, confidence in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) national governments declined from 45% to 40% on average, making it difficult for national authorities to mobilize support for necessary reforms, according to a recent report by the OECD. In the U.S., public trust in government has fallen substantially since 1958 and is near an all-time low.…
9. The growing importance of megacities – Life is increasingly lived in the world’s urban centers. According to the United Nations Population Division, more than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas. However, not all of the world’s regions are equally urban. Africa, for example, is predicted to reach 50 percent urbanization by 2035.
10. The rapid spread of misinformation online – One-third (30%) of the world’s youth have been active online for at least five years, according to the International Telecommunication Union. Social networking has also spread around the world. In 19 of 21 countries, about three-in-ten or more of those polled use sites such as Facebook, according to our survey last year.”
New Visions in Citizen Science
New Report by Anne Bowser and Lea Shanley for the Commons Lab within Science and Technology Innovation Program, Woodrow Wilson Center, with the support of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation: “Citizen science is one form of open innovation, a paradigm where organizations solicit the efforts of external contributors with unique perspectives who generate new knowledge and technology, or otherwise bolster organizational resources. Recent executive branch policies encourage and support open innovation in the federal government. The President’s 2009 Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government charged agencies with taking specific action to support transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Similarly, the Obama Administration’s 2013 Memorandum on Open Data Policy—Managing Information as an Asset instructs agencies to support these principles by sharing government data sets. The Preview Report for the Second Open Government National Action Plan, released October 31, 2013, specifically states that the United States will commit to “harness the ingenuity of the public by enabling, accelerating, and scaling the use of open innovation methods such as incentive prizes, crowdsourcing, and citizen science within the Federal Government.”
This report showcases seventeen case studies that offer a mosaic view of federally-sponsored citizen science and open innovation projects, from in-the-field data collection to online games for collective problem-solving. Its goal is not to provide line-by-line instructions for agencies attempting to create or expand projects of their own; each agency has a unique mission with distinct challenges that inform project designs. Rather, it offers a sampling of different models that support public contribution, potential challenges, and positive impacts that projects can have on scientific literacy, research, management, and public policy.
Some case studies represent traditional but well-executed projects that illustrate how citizen science functions at its best, by contributing to robust scientific research. Other projects, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s International Space Apps Challenge, evolve from these traditional models, demonstrating how open innovation can address agency-specific challenges in new and compelling ways. Through this progression, the evolution of citizen science begins to take shape, and the full possibilities of open innovation begin to emerge.”
Platform enables business to track local and state legislation, and predict the outcome
Springwise: “We’ve already seen platforms such as Tweetminster use social media to keep citizens up-to-date with the latest goings on in the British Parliament. Now FiscalNote is providing businesses in the US with the tools to track the bills and legislature that affects their industry, as well offering insights into their potential results.
For small businesses, it can be difficult to keep on top of all the goings-on in Congress, never mind individual state and county rulings that may affect their operations. In what it calls the Political Genome Project, FiscalNote aims to keep tabs on any changes to the law across the 50 states. After users have selected their chosen industries, the site delivers only the news relevant to them, presented in an easy-to-understand way on the user dashboard. Mobile notifications also keep businesses informed of changes as they’re fought on the floor. Infographic-style analytics show the progress of each piece of legislation, and the probability of each outcome is worked out with complex algorithms that take in previous results and historical data.
FiscalNote helps small businesses to make smarter decisions by gaining greater insight into the workings of national and local politics related to their industry, keeping them informed of changes they might have otherwise missed. How else can companies stay on top of the latest news from their particular sector?
Website: www.fiscalnote.com”
Open Government Guide
Open Government Partnership: “We were proud to unveil the new Open Government Guide… The Guide—with its accompanying web site—has been developed to support this action planning in three ways :
- It gives readers an overview of what open government means across a range of topics, to help countries identify core ‘cross-cutting issues’ (like conflict of interest management, and public contracting) and to select amongst ‘focused’ issues (like land, police, and extractive industries).
- For each topic, it also provides a “deep dive”, outlining potential commitments tagged as basic, intermediate, advanced and innovative.
- It links to other resources – over 330 case studies and country examples, and external resources on standards .
To read the Guide go to OpenGovGuide.com. You can also use the Report Builder function and create a custom download tailored to your own country or to the officials and other audiences in the local planning process.
Anyone seeking governance reforms, from inside or outside government, faces political as well as logistical challenges, so the Guide is also intended to serve as a way to frame the sometimes difficult conversations about the steps to make reform a reality and show examples from other countries
The OGP process includes four “cohorts” of countries. The largest group are currently drafting their first action plans, and another cohort are already at work on their second plans. The Open Government Guide can help any group seeking to promote reform.
While the Guide is quite comprehensive, it is also a living document. We will continue to add more detailed topic areas. A new section is currently in development on the security sector, drafted by the Open Society Foundation’s Justice Initiative and including recommendations on transparency and accountability of military spending and on surveillance, drawing on the new International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance and the Global Principles on National Security and the Right to Information (The Tswhane Principles). To preview and comment on this document, please watch for the draft version at www.opengovguide.com/news. “
Privacy in the 21st Century: From the “Dark Ages” to “Enlightenment”?
Paper by P. Kitsos and A. Yannoukakou in the International Journal of E-Politics (IJEP): “The events of 9/11 along with the bombarding in Madrid and London forced governments to resort to new structures of privacy safeguarding and electronic surveillance under the common denominator of terrorism and transnational crime fighting. Legislation as US PATRIOT Act and EU Data Retention Directive altered fundamentally the collection, processing and sharing methods of personal data, while it granted increased powers to police and law enforcement authorities concerning their jurisdiction in obtaining and processing personal information to an excessive degree. As an aftermath of the resulted opacity and the public outcry, a shift is recorded during the last years towards a more open governance by the implementation of open data and cloud computing practices in order to enhance transparency and accountability from the side of governments, restore the trust between the State and the citizens, and amplify the citizens’ participation to the decision-making procedures. However, privacy and personal data protection are major issues in all occasions and, thus, must be safeguarded without sacrificing national security and public interest on one hand, but without crossing the thin line between protection and infringement on the other. Where this delicate balance stands, is the focal point of this paper trying to demonstrate that it is better to be cautious with open practices than hostage of clandestine practices.”
White House Unveils Big Data Projects, Round Two
Information Week: “The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and Networking and Information Technology R&D program (NITRD) on Tuesday introduced a slew of new big-data collaboration projects aimed at stimulating private-sector interest in federal data. The initiatives, announced at the White House-sponsored “Data to Knowledge to Action” event, are targeted at fields as varied as medical research, geointelligence, economics, and linguistics.
The new projects are a continuation of the Obama Administration’s Big Data Initiative, announced in March 2012, when the first round of big-data projects was presented.
Thomas Kalil, OSTP’s deputy director for technology and innovation, said that “dozens of new partnerships — more than 90 organizations,” are pursuing these new collaborative projects, including many of the best-known American technology, pharmaceutical, and research companies.
Among the initiatives, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and NASA have set up the NASA Earth eXchange, or NEX, a collaborative network to provide space-based data about our planet to researchers in Earth science. AWS will host much of NASA’s Earth-observation data as an AWS Public Data Set, making it possible, for instance, to crowdsource research projects.
An estimated 4.4 million jobs are being created between now and 2015 to support big-data projects. Employers, educational institutions, and government agencies are working to build the educational infrastructure to provide students with the skills they need to fill those jobs.
To help train new workers, IBM, for instance, has created a new assessment tool that gives university students feedback on their readiness for number-crunching careers in both the public and private sector. Eight universities that have a big data and analytics curriculum — Fordham, George Washington, Illinois Institute of Technology, University of Massachusetts-Boston, Northwestern, Ohio State, Southern Methodist, and the University of Virginia — will receive the assessment tool.
OSTP is organizing an initiative to create a “weather service” for pandemics, Kalil said, a way to use big data to identify and predict pandemics as early as possible in order to plan and prepare for — and hopefully mitigate — their effects.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), meanwhile, is undertaking its ” Big Data to Knowledge” (BD2K) initiative to develop a range of standards, tools, software, and other approaches to make use of massive amounts of data being generated by the health and medical research community….”
See also:
November 12, 2013 – Fact Sheet: Progress by Federal Agencies: Data to Knowledge to Action
November 12, 2013 – Fact Sheet: New Announcements: Data to Knowledge to Action
November 12, 2013 – Press Release: Data to Knowledge to Action Event
How to Promote Civic Engagement in Public Issues
Utne: “With collaborative consumption, access is valued above ownership and “mine” becomes “ours,” allowing everyone’s needs to be met with minimal waste. Sharing is Good (New Society Publishers, 2013) by Beth Buczynski is your roadmap to this new and exciting economic paradigm. In this excerpt from chapter six, “What to Share,” learn how to create civic engagement in your community and find solutions to public issues.
“Participatory government is the idea that all members of a population should be able to make meaningful contributions to decision-making. For too long, we’ve been content to vote, or not, hoping that elected officials will actually keep their promise to act in the best interest of the people. The power of the Internet now makes it much easier for all levels of government to become transparent, sharing data and engaging the public in a dialogue that leads to more creative and efficient solutions. Here are a few resources that promote civic engagement in one’s own governance.
Neighborland—People who live and work in a neighborhood know what services, infrastructure, and businesses their community needs, whether it’s a local grocery store, cafe with WiFi, bike lanes, or a recreational center. Neighborland offers residents a friendly and engaging tool to voice their needs and connect with like-minded people to make change happen.
ParticipatoryBudgeting—The Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP) is a non-profit organization that helps communities decide how to spend public money, primarily in the United States and Canada. This organization works directly with governments and non-profits to develop participatory budgeting processes in which local people directly decide how to spend part of a public budget. It’s their goal to include those who are normally left out of these types of discussions and decisions, namely the public! PBP offers many different opportunities for participation, from joining or starting a participatory budget movement in your own town, to volunteering, jobs, and internships. This isn’t a typical collaborative consumption service, but rather an invaluable resource for people who would like to see more transparency and community involvement when local government spends public monies.
OpenGovernment—A free, open-source public resource website for government transparency and civic engagement at the state and local levels. The site is a non-partisan joint project of two 501(c)3 non-profit organizations: the Participatory Politics Foundation and the Sunlight Foundation; OpenGovernment is independent from any government entity, candidate, or political party. The ultimate mission of OpenGovernment is to ensure that all three branches (executive, legislative, and judicial) at every level of US government (federal, state, city, local) comply with the principles of open government data.
YourView—YourView aspires to give Australians a stronger democratic voice. It has the unique ambition to present what people really think about major public issues—and giving that collective wisdom a role in the national political discourse.”
Talent Wants to Be Free. Why We Should Learn to Love Leaks, Raids, and Free Riding
New book by Orly Lobel (Yale University Press): “This timely book challenges conventional business wisdom about competition, secrecy, motivation, and creativity. Orly Lobel, an internationally acclaimed expert in the law and economics of human capital, warns that a set of counterproductive mentalities are stifling innovation in many regions and companies. Lobel asks how innovators, entrepreneurs, research teams, and every one of us who experiences the occasional spark of creativity can triumph in today’s innovation ecosystems. In every industry and every market, battles to recruit, retain, train, energize, and motivate the best people are fierce. From Facebook to Google, Coca-Cola to Intel, JetBlue to Mattel, Lobel uncovers specific factors that produce winners or losers in the talent wars. Combining original behavioral experiments with sharp observations of contemporary battles over ideas, secrets, and skill, Lobel identifies motivation, relationships, and mobility as the most important ingredients for successful innovation. Yet many companies embrace a control mentality—relying more on patents, copyright, branding, espionage, and aggressive restrictions of their own talent and secrets than on creative energies that are waiting to be unleashed. Lobel presents a set of positive changes in corporate strategies, industry norms, regional policies, and national laws that will incentivize talent flow, creativity, and growth. This vital and exciting reading reveals why everyone wins when talent is set free.”
Index: Trust in Institutions
The Living Library Index – inspired by the Harper’s Index – provides important statistics and highlights global trends in governance innovation. This installment focuses on trust in institutions and was originally published in 2013.
Trust in Government
- How many of the global public feel that their governments listen to them: 17%
- How much of the global population trusts in institutions: almost half
- The number of Americans who trust institutions: less than half
- How many people globally believe that business leaders and government officials will tell the truth when confronted with a difficult issue: Less than one-fifth
- The average level of confidence amongst citizens in 25 OECD countries:
- In national government: 40%, down from 45% in 2007
- In financial institutions: 43%
- In public services such as local police and healthcare: 72% and 71% respectively
Executive Government
- How many Americans trust the government in Washington to do what is right “just about always or most of the time” in September 2013: 19%
- Those who trust the “men and women … who either hold or are running for public office”: 46%
- Number of Americans who express a great deal or fair amount of trust in:
- Local government: 71%
- State government: 62%
- Federal government: 52%
- How many Americans trust in the ability of “the American people” to make judgments about political issues facing the country: 61%, declining every year since 2009
- Those who have trust and confidence in the federal government’s ability to handle international problems: 49%
- Number of Americans who feel “angry” at the federal government: 3 in 10, all-time high since first surveyed in 1997
Congress
- Percentage of Americans who say “the political system can work fine, it’s the members of Congress that are the problem” in October 2013: 58%
- Following the government shutdown, number of Americans who stated that Congress would work better if nearly every member was replaced next year: nearly half
- Those who think that even an entire overhaul of Congress would not make much difference: 4 in 10
- Those who think that “most members of Congress have good intentions, it’s the political system that is broken” in October 2013: 32%
Trust in Media
- Global trust in media (traditional, social, hybrid, owned, online search): 57% and rising
- The percentage of Americans who say they have “a great deal or fair amount of trust and confidence in the mass media”: 44% – the lowest level since first surveyed in 1997
- How many Americans see the mass media as too liberal: 46%
- As too conservative: 13%
- As “just about right”: 37%
- The number of Americans who see the press as fulfilling the role of political watchdog and believe press criticism of political leaders keeps them from doing things that should not be done: 68%
- The proportion of Americans who have “only a little/not at all” level of trust in Facebook to protect privacy and personal information: three in four
- In Google: 68%
- In their cell phone provider: 63%
Trust in Industry
- Global trust in business: 58%
- How much of the global public trusts financial institutions: 50%
- Proportion of the global public who consider themselves informed about the banking scandals: more than half
- Of those, how many Americans report they now trust banks less: almost half
- Number of respondents globally who say they trust tech companies to do what’s right: 77%, most trusted industry
- Number of consumers across eight markets who were “confident” or “somewhat confident” that the tech sector can provide long-term solutions to meet the world’s toughest challenges: 76%
Sources
- Edelman, “Edelman Trust Barometer 2013: Annual Global Study,” 2013.
- Gallup Poll, “In U.S., Political Trust in “American People” at New Low,” September 27, 2013.
- Gallup Poll, “Fewer Americans Than Ever Trust Gov’t to Handle Problems,” September 13, 2013.
- Gallup Poll, “Americans’ Trust in Government Generally Down This Year,” September 26, 2013.
- Gallup Poll, “In U.S., Trust in Media Recovers Slightly From All-Time Low,” September 19, 2013.
- Maassen, Paul, and Vasani, Dolar, “Only 17% of the population feel their governments listens to them,” The Guardian, October 31, 2013.
- OECD, “Government at a Glance 2013,” OECD Publishing, 2013 (Preliminary).
- Pedersen, Pete. “In Tech We Trust,” Edelman, January 25, 2013.
- Pew Research Center, “Trust in Government Nears Record Low, But Most Federal Agencies Are Viewed Favorably,” October 18, 2013.
- Pew Research Center, “Views of Government: Key Data Points,” October 22, 2013.
- Pew Research Center, “Amid Criticism, Support for Media’s ‘Watchdog’ Role Stands Out,” August 8, 2013.
- USA Today/Princeton Survey Research Poll, “Poll: Nearly half say replace everyone in Congress,” October 21, 2013.
- Reason Rupe Public Opinion Survey, “September 2013 Topline Results,” September 2013.