state & provincial

The Power of Data Analytics to Transform Government

Curated on October 5, 2014August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Hugo Moreno at Forbes: “It’s mind boggling to consider the amount of information governments collect on their citizens. We often just expect them to manage and analyze it in a way that will benefit the general public and facilitate government transparency. However, it can be difficult to organize, manage and extract insights from these large, diverse data sets. According to “Analytics Paves the Way for Better Government,” a Forbes Insights case study sponsored by SAP, government leaders have called for investment in Big Data analytics capabilities to modernize government services and aid their economies. State and federal governments have begun to recognize the benefits of applying analytics. In fact, McKinsey & Co. estimates that by digitizing information, disseminating public data sets and applying analytics to improve decision making, governments around the world can act as catalysts for more than $3 trillion in economic value.
Governor Mike Pence of Indiana understands the importance of data and is keeping it at the center of his long-term vision for improving the management and effectiveness of government programs and making Indiana a leader in data-driven decision making. A year after taking office, he ordered state agencies to collaborate and share data to improve services. Data sharing is not a common practice in states, but the governor recognized that sharing data will lead to a successful enterprise.
Insights from analytics will help Indiana pursue six public policy goals: Increase private sector employment; attract new investment to the state; improve the quality of the state’s workforce; improve the health, safety and well-being of families; increase high school graduation rates; and improve the math and reading skills of elementary students….”

We Want Privacy, but Can’t Stop Sharing

Curated on October 4, 2014May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Kate Murphy in the New York Times: “Well, that’s essentially the state of affairs on the Internet. There is no privacy. If those creepy targeted ads on Google hadn’t tipped you off, then surely Edward J. Snowden’s revelations, or, more recently, Jennifer Lawrence’s nude selfies, made your vulnerability to cybersnooping abundantly clear.

You need only read George Orwell’s “1984” or watch the film “Minority Report” to understand how surveillance is incompatible with a free society. And increasingly, people are coming to understand how their online data might be used against them. You might not get a job, a loan or a date because of an indiscreet tweet or if your address on Google Street View shows your brother-in-law’s clunker in the driveway. But less obvious is the psychic toll of the current data free-for-all.

“With all the focus on the legal aspects of privacy and the impact on global trade there’s been little discussion of why you want privacy and why it’s intrinsically important to you as an individual,” said Adam Joinson, professor of behavior change at the University of the West of England in Bristol, who coined the term “digital crowding” to describe excessive social contact and loss of personal space online.

Perhaps that’s because there is no agreement over what constitutes private information. It varies among cultures, genders and individuals. Moreover, it’s hard to argue for the value of privacy when people eagerly share so much achingly personal information on social media.

But the history of privacy (loosely defined as freedom from being observed) is one of status. Those who are institutionalized for criminal behavior or ill health, children and the impoverished have less privacy than those who are upstanding, healthy, mature and wealthy. Think of crowded tenements versus mansions behind high hedges.

“The implication is that if you don’t have it, you haven’t earned the right or aren’t capable or trustworthy,” said Christena Nippert-Eng, professor of sociology at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago and author of “Islands of Privacy.”

So it’s not surprising that privacy research in both online and offline environments has shown that just the perception, let alone the reality, of being watched results in feelings of low self-esteem, depression and anxiety. Whether observed by a supervisor at work or Facebook friends, people are inclined to conform and demonstrate less individuality and creativity. Their performance of tasks suffers and they have elevated pulse rates and levels of stress hormones.

An analogy in the psychological literature is that privacy is like sleep….”

Uncovering State And Local Gov’s 15 Hidden Successes

Curated on October 2, 2014May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Emily Jarvis at GovLoop: “From garbage trucks to vacant lots, cities and states are often tasked with the thankless job of cleaning up a community’s mess. These are tasks that are often overlooked, but are critical to keeping a community vibrant.
But even in these sometimes thankless jobs, there are real innovations happening. Take Miami-Dade County where they are using hybrid garbage trucks to save the community millions of dollars in fuel every year and make the environment a little cleaner. Or head over to Milwaukee where the city is turning vacant and abandoned lots into urban farms.
There are just two of the fifteen examples, GovLoop uncovered in our new guide, From the State House to the County Clerk – 15 Challenges and Success Stories.
We have broken the challenges into four categories:

Internal Best Practices
Tech Challenges
Health and Safety
Community Engagement and Outreach

Here’s another example, the open data movement has the potential to effect governing and civic engagement at the state and local government levels. But today very few agencies are actively providing open data. In fact, only 46 U.S. cities and counties have open data sites. One of the cities on the leading edge of the open data movement is Fort Worth, Texas.

“When I came into office, that was one of my campaign promises, that we would get Fort Worth into this century on technology and that we would take a hard look at open records requests and requests for data,” Mayor Betsy Price said in an interview with the Star-Telegram. “It goes a lot further to being transparent and letting people participate in their government and see what we are doing. It is the people’s data, and it should be easy to access.”

The website, data.fortworthtexas.gov, offers data and documents such as certificates of occupancy, development permits and residential permits for download in several formats, including Excel and PDF. Not all datasets are available yet — the city said its priority was to put the most-requested data on the portal first. Next up? Crime data, code violations, restaurant ratings and capital projects progress.

City officials’ ultimate goal is to create and adopt a full open data policy. As part of the launch, they are also looking for local software developers and designers who want to help guide the open data initiative. Those interested in participating can sign up online to receive more information….”

Francis Fukuyama’s ‘Political Order and Political Decay’

Curated on September 26, 2014October 9, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book Review by David Runciman of “Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalisation of Democracy”, by Francis Fukuyama in the Financial TImes: “It is not often that a 600-page work of political science ends with a cliffhanger. But the first volume of Francis Fukuyama’s epic two-part account of what makes political societies work, published three years ago, left the big question unanswered. That book took the story of political order from prehistoric times to the dawn of modern democracy in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Fukuyama is still best known as the man who announced in 1989 that the birth of liberal democracy represented the end of history: there were simply no better ideas available. But here he hinted that liberal democracies were not immune to the pattern of stagnation and decay that afflicted all other political societies. They too might need to be replaced by something better. So which was it: are our current political arrangements part of the solution, or part of the problem?
Political Order and Political Decay is his answer. He squares the circle by insisting that democratic institutions are only ever one component of political stability. In the wrong circumstances they can be a destabilising force as well. His core argument is that three building blocks are required for a well-ordered society: you need a strong state, the rule of law and democratic accountability. And you need them all together. The arrival of democracy at the end of the 18th century opened up that possibility but by no means guaranteed it. The mere fact of modernity does not solve anything in the domain of politics (which is why Fukuyama is disdainful of the easy mantra that failing states just need to “modernise”).
The explosive growth in industrial capacity and wealth that the world has experienced in the past 200 years has vastly expanded the range of political possibilities available, for better and for worse (just look at the terrifying gap between the world’s best functioning societies – such as Denmark – and the worst – such as the Democratic Republic of Congo). There are now multiple different ways state capacity, legal systems and forms of government can interact with each other, and in an age of globalisation multiple different ways states can interact with each other as well. Modernity has speeded up the process of political development and it has complicated it. It has just not made it any easier. What matters most of all is getting the sequence right. Democracy doesn’t come first. A strong state does. …”

Redesigning that first encounter with online government

Curated on September 25, 2014August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Nancy Scola in the Washington Post: “Teardowns,” Samuel Hulick calls them, and by that he means his step-by-step dissections of how some of world’s most popular digital services — Gmail, Evernote, Instragram — welcome new users. But the term might give an overly negative sense of what Hulick is up to. The Portland, Ore., user-experience designer highlights both the good and bad in his critiques, and his annotated slideshows, under the banner of UserOnboard, have gained a following among design aficionados.

Now Hulick is partnering with two of those fans, a pair of Code for America fellows, to encourage the public to do the same for, say, the process of applying for food stamps. It’s called CitizenOnboard.
Using the original UserOnboard is like taking a tour through some of the digital sites you know best — but with an especially design-savvy friend by your side pointing out the kinks. “The user experience,” or UX on these sites, “is often tacked on haphazardly,” says Hulick, who launched UserOnboard in December 2013 and who is also the author of the recent book “The Elements of User Onboarding.” What’s he looking for in a good UX, he says, is something non-designers can spot, too. “If you were the Web site, what tone would you take? How would you guide people through your process?”
Hulick reviews what’s working and what’s not, and adds a bit of sass: Gmail pre-populates its inbox with a few welcome messages: “Preloading some emails is a nice way to deal with the ‘cold start’ problem,” Hulick notes. Evernote nudges new users to check out its blog and other apps: “It’s like a restaurant rolling out the dessert cart while I’m still trying to decide if I even want to eat there.” Instagram’s first backdrop is a photo of someone taking a picture: “I’m learning how to Instagram by osmosis!”….
CitizenOnboard’s pitch is to get the public to do that same work. They suggest starting with state food stamp programs. Hulick tackled his. The onboarding for Oregon’s SNAP service is 118 slides long, but that’s because there is much to address. In one step, applications must, using a drop-down menu, identify how those in their family are related to one another. “It took a while to figure out who should be the relation ‘of’ the other,” Hulick notes in his teardown. “In fact, I’m still not 100% sure I got it right.”…”

Proof: How Crowdsourced Election Monitoring Makes a Difference

Curated on September 25, 2014August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Patrick Meier at iRevolution: “My colleagues Catie Bailard & Steven Livingston have just published the results of their empirical study on the impact of citizen-based crowdsourced election monitoring. Readers of iRevolution may recall that my doctoral dissertation analyzed the use of crowdsourcing in repressive environments and specifically during contested elections. This explains my keen interest in the results of my colleagues’ news data-driven study, which suggests that crowdsourcing does have a measurable and positive impact on voter turnout.

Catie and Steven are “interested in digitally enabled collective action initiatives” spearheaded by “nonstate actors, especially in places where the state is incapable of meeting the expectations of democratic governance.” They are particularly interested in measuring the impact of said initiatives. “By leveraging the efficiencies found in small, incremental, digitally enabled contributions (an SMS text, phone call, email or tweet) to a public good (a more transparent election process), crowdsourced elections monitoring constitutes [an] important example of digitally-enabled collective action.” To be sure, “the successful deployment of a crowdsourced elections monitoring initiative can generate information about a specific political process—information that would otherwise be impossible to generate in nations and geographic spaces with limited organizational and administrative capacity.”

To this end, their new study tests for the effects of citizen-based crowdsourced election monitoring efforts on the 2011 Nigerian presidential elections. More specifically, they analyzed close to 30,000 citizen-generated reports of failures, abuses and successes which were publicly crowdsourced and mapped as part of the Reclaim Naija project. Controlling for a number of factors, Catie and Steven find that the number and nature of crowdsourced reports is “significantly correlated with increased voter turnout.”

In conclusion, the authors argue that “digital technologies fundamentally change information environments and, by doing so, alter the opportunities and constraints that the political actors face.” This new study is an important contribution to the literature and should be required reading for anyone interested in digitally-enabled, crowdsourced collective action. Of course, the analysis focuses on “just” one case study, which means that the effects identified in Nigeria may not occur in other crowdsourced, election monitoring efforts. But that’s another reason why this study is important—it will no doubt catalyze future research to determine just how generalizable these initial findings are.”

Announcing New U.S. Open Government Commitments on the Third Anniversary of the Open Government Partnership

Curated on September 24, 2014August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

US White House Fact Sheet: “Three years ago, President Obama joined with the leaders of seven other nations to launch the Open Government Partnership (OGP), an international partnership between governments and civil society to promote transparency, fight corruption, energize civic engagement, and leverage new technologies to open up governments worldwide. The United States and other founding countries pledged to transform the way that governments serve their citizens in the 21^st century. Today, as heads of state of OGP participating countries gather at the UN General Assembly, this partnership has grown from 8 to 65 nations and hundreds of civil society organizations around the world. These countries are embracing the challenge by taking steps in partnership with civil society to increase the ability of citizens to engage their governments, access government data to fuel entrepreneurship and innovation, and promote accountability….
The United States is committed to continuing to lead by example in OGP. Since assuming office, President Obama has prioritized making government more open and accountable and has taken substantial steps to increase citizen participation, collaboration with civil society, and transparency in government. The United States will remain a global leader of international efforts to promote transparency, stem corruption and hold to account those who exploit the public’s trust for private gain. Yesterday, President Obama announced several steps the United States is taking to deepen our support for civil society globally.
Today, to mark the third anniversary of OGP, President Obama is announcing four new and expanded open government initiatives that will advance our efforts through the end of 2015.
1. Promote Open Education to Increase Awareness and Engagement
Open education is the open sharing of digital learning materials, tools, and practices that ensures free access to and legal adoption of learning resources. The United States is committed to open education and will:

Raise open education awareness and identify new partnerships. The U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy will jointly host a workshop on challenges and opportunities in open education internationally with stakeholders from academia, industry, and government.
Pilot new models for using open educational resources to support learning. The State Department will conduct three pilots overseas by December 2015 that use open educational resources to support learning in formal and informal learning contexts. The pilots’ results, including best practices, will be made publicly available for interested educators.
Launch an online skills academy. The Department of Labor (DOL), with cooperation from the Department of Education, will award $25 million through competitive grants to launch an online skills academy in 2015 that will offer open online courses of study, using technology to create high-quality, free, or low-cost pathways to degrees, certificates, and other employer-recognized credentials.

2. Deliver Government Services More Effectively Through Information Technology
The Administration is committed to serving the American people more effectively and efficiently through smarter IT delivery. The newly launched U.S. Digital Service will work to remove barriers to digital service delivery and remake the experience that people and businesses have with their government. To improve delivery of Federal services, information, and benefits, the Administration will:

Expand digital service delivery expertise in government. Throughout 2015, the Administration will continue recruiting top digital talent from the private and public sectors to expand services across the government. These individuals —who have expertise in technology, procurement, human resources, and financing —will serve as digital professionals in a number of capacities in the Federal government, including the new U.S. Digital Service and 18F digital delivery team within the U.S. General Services Administration, as well as within Federal agencies. These teams will take best practices from the public and private sectors and scale them across agencies with a focus on the customer experience.
Build digital services in the open. The Administration will expand its efforts to build digital services in the open. This includes using open and transparent processes intended to better understand user needs, testing pilot digital projects, and designing and developing digital services at scale. In addition, building on the recently published Digital Services Playbook, the Administration will continue to openly publish best practices on collaborative websites that enable the public to suggest improvements.
Adopt an open source software policy. Using and contributing back to open source software can fuel innovation, lower costs, and benefit the public. No later than December 31, 2015, the Administration will work through the Federal agencies to develop an open source software policy that, together with the Digital Services Playbook, will support improved access to custom software code developed for the Federal government.

3. Increase Transparency in Spending
The Administration has made an increasing amount of Federal spending data publicly available and searchable, allowing nationwide stakeholders to perform analysis of Federal spending. The Administration will build on these efforts by committing to:

Improve USAspending.gov. In 2015, the Administration will launch a refreshed USAspending.gov website that will improve the site’s design and user experience, including better enabling users to explore the data using interactive maps and improving the search functionality and application programming interface.
Improve accessibility and reusability of Federal financial data. In 2015, as part of implementation of the DATA Act,[2] the Administration will work to improve the accessibility and reusability of Federal financial data by issuing data element definition standards and standards for exchanging financial data. The Administration, through the Office of Management and Budget, will leverage industry data exchange standards to the extent practicable to maximize the sharing and utilization of Federal financial data.
Explore options for visualization and publication of additional Federal financial data. The Administration, through the Treasury Department, will use small-scale pilots to help explore options for visualizing and publishing Federal financial data from across the government as required by the DATA Act.
Continue to engage stakeholders. The Administration will continue to engage with a broad group of stakeholders to seek input on Federal financial transparency initiatives including DATA Act implementation, by hosting town hall meetings, conducting interactive workshops, and seeking input via open innovation collaboration tools.

4. Use Big Data to Support Greater Openness and Accountability
President Obama has recognized the growing importance of “big data” technologies for our economy and the advancement of public good in areas such as education, energy conservation, and healthcare. The Administration is taking action to ensure responsible uses of big data to promote greater openness and accountability across a range of areas and sectors. As part of the work it is doing in this area, the Administration has committed to:

Enhance sharing of best practices on data privacy for state and local law enforcement. Federal agencies with expertise in law enforcement, privacy, and data practices will seek to enhance collaboration and information sharing about privacy best practices among state and local law enforcement agencies receiving Federal grants.
Ensure privacy protection for big data analyses in health. Big data introduces new opportunities to advance medicine and science, improve health care, and support better public health. To ensure that individual privacy is protected while capitalizing on new technologies and data, the Administration, led by the Department of Health and Human Services, will: (1) consult with stakeholders to assess how Federal laws and regulations can best accommodate big data analyses that promise to advance medical science and reduce health care costs; and (2) develop recommendations for ways to promote and facilitate research through access to data while safeguarding patient privacy and autonomy.
Expand technical expertise in government to stop discrimination. U.S. Government departments and agencies will work to expand their technical expertise to identify outcomes facilitated by big data analytics that may have a discriminatory impact on protected classes. …”

#OpenGovNow: Open Government and how it benefits you

Curated on September 22, 2014August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

#OpenGovNow: “Open Governments are built on two things: information and participation. A government that is open, actively discloses information about what it does with its money and resources in a way that all citizens can understand. Equally important, an Open Government is one that actively involves all citizens to be participants in government decision-making. This two-way relationship between citizens and governments, in which governments and citizens share information with one another and work together, is the foundation of Open Government….

Why should I care?

The water that you drink, the public schools that children go to, the roads that you use every day: governments make those a reality. Governments and what they do affect each and every one of us. How governments operate and how they spend scarce public resources have a direct impact on our everyday lives and the future of our communities. For instance, it is estimated that $9.5 trillion US dollars are spent by governments all over the world through contracts — therefore you have a role to play in making sure that your share in that public money is not lost, stolen, or misused….
The Global Opening Government Survey was conducted as a response to the growing demand to better understand citizens’ views on the current state and the potential impact of openness. Using the innovative “random domain intercept technology,” the survey was based on a brief questionnaire and collected complete responses from over 65,000 web-enabled individuals in the first 61 member countries of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) plus India. The survey methodology, as any other, has its advantages and its limitations. More details about the methodology can be found in the Additional Resources section of this page..

Prizes for Saving: The Social Mobility Case

Curated on September 18, 2014October 9, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Stuart Butler at Brookings: “The American Savings Promotion Act (H.R. 3374), a bipartisan bill passed by the House of Representatives this week (yes, it does sometimes happen) could lift economic mobility in America by boosting savings, especially in lower income neighborhoods. The bill removes legal impediments to banks and thrift institutions offering “prize-linked savings” products (PLS). There’s a companion bill awaiting action in the Senate.
Building personal savings is a critical element in moving up the economic ladder. A cushion of capital can tide a household over a setback, such as unexpected health costs, and help mobility in a positive way, such as moving across town for a better job. Developing the habit of saving, even in a small scale, is connected to other positive behaviors, such as completing college….

All Should Seek Prizes (For Saving)

Prize-linked savings (PLS) accounts aim to entice people into saving more. Unlike traditional savings accounts, which now pay out a fraction of one percent interest, institutions offering PLS pool the interest from all accounts, hold a drawing and distribute the accumulated interest as “prizes”, from a few dollars to a million or more. It appeals to the gambler’s instinct, like a lottery. But unlike a lottery, a “loser” still ends up with a bundle of savings.
PLS accounts have a long history and there are versions in several countries. The United Kingdom has been a leader, establishing national premium bonds in 1957, dubbed “savings with a thrill.” The bonds pay no interest, but each year bond-holders have chances of winning from the equivalent of a few dollars to about $1.5 million. Roughly one-third of Britons own the bonds, with a disproportionate number of modest-income individuals and first-time savers as bondholders.

Moving to Prize-Linked Savings

Some U.S. states have opened the door through state laws that permit credit unions to open PLS accounts. For instance, in 2009 a group of Michigan credit unions established “Save to Win” accounts, with monthly prizes ranging up to thousands of dollars, that successfully attracted non-traditional savers. Federally-charted financial institutions have so far been prevented from offering PLS accounts by unduly wide statutes and regulations, aimed mainly at organized crime. The new bill would curb the impact of those laws and enable PLS accounts to flourish. Let’s hope the Senate follows suit.”