Public Brainpower: Civil Society and Natural Resource Management

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Indra Øverland: ” …examines how civil society, public debate and freedom of speech affect natural resource governance. Drawing on the theories of Robert Dahl, Jurgen Habermas and Robert Putnam, the book introduces the concept of ‘public brainpower’, proposing that good institutions require: fertile public debate involving many and varied contributors to provide a broad base for conceiving new institutions; checks and balances on existing institutions; and the continuous dynamic evolution of institutions as the needs of society change.

The book explores the strength of these ideas through case studies of 18 oil and gas-producing countries: Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Canada, Colombia, Egypt, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Libya, Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Qatar, Russia, Saudi, UAE, UK and Venezuela. The concluding chapter includes 10 tenets on how states can maximize their public brainpower, and a ranking of 33 resource-rich countries and the degree to which they succeed in doing so.

The Introduction and the chapters ‘Norway: Public Debate and the Management of Petroleum Resources and Revenues’, ‘Kazakhstan: Civil Society and Natural-Resource Policy in Kazakhstan’, and ‘Russia: Public Debate and the Petroleum Sector’ of this book are available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com….(More)”.

Out of the Syrian crisis, a data revolution takes shape

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Amy Maxmen in Nature: “…Whenever war, hurricanes or other disasters ravage part of the globe, one of the biggest problems for aid organizations is a lack of reliable data. People die because front-line responders don’t have the information they need to act efficiently. Doctors and epidemiologists plod along with paper surveys and rigid databases in crisis situations, watching with envy as tech companies expertly mine big data for comparatively mundane purposes.

Three years ago, one frustrated first-responder decided to do something about it. The result is an innovative piece of software called the Dharma Platform, which almost anyone can use to rapidly collect information and share, analyse and visualize it so that they can act quickly. And although public-health veterans tend to be sceptical of technological fixes, Dharma is winning fans. MSF and other organizations now use it in 22 countries. And so far, the Rise Fund, a ‘global impact fund’ whose board boasts U2 lead singer Bono, has invested US$14.3 million in the company behind it.

“I think Dharma is special because it has been developed by people who have worked in these chaotic situations,” says Jeremy Farrar, director of biomedical-funding charity the Wellcome Trust in London, “and it’s been road-tested and improved in the midst of reality.”

Now, the ultimate trial is in Syria: Salim, whose name has been changed in this story to protect him, started entering patient records into the Dharma Platform in March, and he is looking at health trends even as he shares his data securely with MSF staff in Amman.

It’s too soon to say that Dharma has transformed his hospital. And some aid organizations and governments may be reluctant to adopt it. But Aziz, who has deployed Dharma in Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Turkey, is confident that it will usher in a wave of platforms that accelerate evidence-based responses in emergencies, or even in health care generally. “This is like the first version of the iPhone or Yahoo! Messenger,” he says. “Maybe something better will come along, but this is the direction we’re going in.”…(More)”

Does protest really work in cosy democracies?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Steve Crawshaw at LSE Impact Blog: “…If it is possible for peaceful crowds to force the collapse of the Berlin Wall or to unseat a Mubarak, how easy it should it be for protesters to persuade a democratically elected leader to retreat from “mere” bad policy? In truth, not easy at all. Two million marched in the UK against the Iraq War in 2003 – and it made not a blind bit of difference with Tony Blair’s determination to proceed with a war that the UN Secretary-General described as illegal. Blair was re-elected, two years later.

After the inauguration of Donald Trump in January 2017, millions took part in the series of Women’s Marches in the United States and around the world. It seemed – it was – a powerful defining moment. And yet, at least in the short-term, those remarkable protests were water off the presidential duck’s back. His response was mockery. In some respects, Trump could afford to mock. A man who has received 63 million votes is in a stronger position than the unelected leader who has to threaten or use violence to stay in power.

And yet.

One thing that protest in an authoritarian and a democratic context have in common is that the impact of protest – including delayed impact – remains uncertain, both for those who protest and those who are protested against.

Vaclav Havel argued that it was worth “living in truth” – speaking truth to power – even without any certainty of outcome. “Those that say individuals are not capable of changing anything are only looking for excuses.” In that context, what is perhaps most unacceptable is to mock those who take risks, and seek change. Lord Charles Powell, former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, for example explained to the umbrella protesters in Hong Kong in 2013 that they were foolish and naive. They should, he told them, learn to live with the “small black cloud” of anti-democratic pressures from Beijing. The protesters failed to heed Powell’s complacent message. In the words of Joshua Wong, on his way back to jail earlier in 2017: “You can lock up our bodies, but not our minds.”

Scepticism and failure are linked, as the Egyptian activist Asmaa Mahfouz made clear in a powerful video which helped trigger the uprising in 2011. The 26-year-old declared: ‘”Whoever says it is not worth it because there will only be a handful or people, I want to tell him, “You are the reason for this.” Sitting at home and just watching us on the news or Facebook leads to our humiliation.’ The video went viral. Millions went out. The rest was history.

Even in a democracy, that same it-can’t-be-done logic sucks us in more often, perhaps, than we realize….(More)”.

Growing the artificial intelligence industry in the UK

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Summary from an independent review, carried out by Professor Dame Wendy Hall and Jérôme Pesenti: “Increased use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) can bring major social and economic benefits to the UK. With AI, computers can analyse and learn from information at higher accuracy and speed than humans can. AI offers massive gains in efficiency and performance to most or all industry sectors, from drug discovery to logistics. AI is software that can be integrated into existing processes, improving them, scaling them, and reducing their costs, by making or suggesting more accurate decisions through better use of information.

It has been estimated that AI could add an additional USD $814 billion (£630bn) to the UK economy by 2035, increasing the annual growth rate of GVA from 2.5 to 3.9%.

Our vision is for the UK to become the best place in the world for businesses developing and deploying AI to start, grow and thrive, to realise all the benefits the technology offers….

Key factors have combined to increase the capability of AI in recent years, in particular:

  • New and larger volumes of data
  • Supply of experts with the specific high level skills
  • Availability of increasingly powerful computing capacity. The barriers to achieving performance have fallen significantly, and continue to fall.

To continue developing and applying AI, the UK will need to increase ease of access to data in a wider range of sectors. This Review recommends:

  • Development of data trusts, to improve trust and ease around sharing data
  • Making more research data machine readable
  • Supporting text and data mining as a standard and essential tool for research.

Skilled experts are needed to develop AI, and they are in short supply. To develop more AI, the UK will need a larger workforce with deep AI expertise, and more development of lower level skills to work with AI. …

Increasing uptake of AI means increasing demand as well as supply through a better understanding of what AI can do and where it could be applied. This review recommends:

  • An AI Council to promote growth and coordination in the sector
  • Guidance on how to explain decisions and processes enabled by AI
  • Support for export and inward investment
  • Guidance on successfully applying AI to drive improvements in industry
  • A programme to support public sector use of AI
  • Funded challenges around data held by public organisations.

Our work has indicated that action in these areas could deliver a step-change improvement in growth of UK AI. This report makes the 18 recommendations listed in full below, which describe how Government, industry and academia should work together to keep the UK among the world leaders in AI…(More)”

Growing government innovation labs: an insider’s guide

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by UNDP and Futurgov: “Effective and inspirational labs exist in many highly developed countries. In Western Europe, MindLab (Denmark) and The Behavioural Insights Team (UK) push their governments to re-imagine public services. In Asia, the Innovation Bureau in Seoul, South Korea, co-designs better services with citizens.

However, this guide is aimed towards those working in the development context. The authors believe their collective experience of running labs in Eurasia, Asia and the Middle East is directly transferrable to other regions who face similar challenges, for example, moving from poverty to inequality, or from a recent history of democratisation towards more open government.

This report does not offer a “how-to” of innovation techniques — there are plenty of guides out there. Instead, we give the real story of how government innovation labs develop in regions like ours: organic and people-driven, often operating under the radar until safe to emerge. We share a truthful  examination of the twists and turns of seeding, starting up and scaling labs, covering the challenges we faced and our failures, as much as our successes. …(More)”.

Open data is shaking up civic life in eastern Europe

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Anna Sienicka in the Financial Times: “I often imagine how different the world would look if citizens and social activists were able to fully understand and use data, and new technologies. Unfortunately, the entry point to this world is often inaccessible for most civil society groups…

The concept of open data has revolutionised thinking about citizens’ participation in civic life. Since the fall of communism, citizens across central and eastern Europe have been fighting for more transparent and responsive governments, and to improve collaboration between civil society and the public sector. When an institution makes its data public, it is a sign that it is committed to being transparent and accountable. A few cities have opened up data about budget spending, for example, but these remain the exception rather than the rule. Open data provides citizens with a tool to directly engage in civic life. For example, they can analyse public expenses to check how their taxes are used, track their MP’s votes or monitor the legislative process….

One of the successful projects in Ukraine is the Open School app, which provides reviews and ratings of secondary schools based on indicators such as the number of pupils who go on to university, school subject specialisations and accessibility. It allows students and parents to make informed decisions about their educational path… Another example comes from the Serbian city of Pancevo, where a maths teacher and a tax inspector have worked together to help people navigate the tax system. The idea is simple: the more people know about taxes, the less likely they are to unconsciously violate the law. Open Taxes is a free, web-based, interactive guide to key national and local taxes…(More)”

Better Data for Better Policy: Accessing New Data Sources for Statistics Through Data Collaboratives

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Medium Blog by Stefaan Verhulst: “We live in an increasingly quantified world, one where data is driving key business decisions. Data is claimed to be the new competitive advantage. Yet, paradoxically, even as our reliance on data increases and the call for agile, data-driven policy making becomes more pronounced, many Statistical Offices are confronted with shrinking budgets and an increased demand to adjust their practices to a data age. If Statistical Offices fail to find new ways to deliver “evidence of tomorrow”, by leveraging new data sources, this could mean that public policy may be formed without access to the full range of available and relevant intelligence — as most business leaders have. At worst, a thinning evidence base and lack of rigorous data foundation could lead to errors and more “fake news,” with possibly harmful public policy implications.

While my talk was focused on the key ways data can inform and ultimately transform the full policy cycle (see full presentation here), a key premise I examined was the need to access, utilize and find insight in the vast reams of data and data expertise that exist in private hands through the creation of new kinds of public and private partnerships or “data collaboratives” to establish more agile and data-driven policy making.

Screen Shot 2017-10-20 at 5.18.23 AM

Applied to statistics, such approaches have already shown promise in a number of settings and countries. Eurostat itself has, for instance, experimented together with Statistics Belgium, with leveraging call detail records provided by Proximus to document population density. Statistics Netherlands (CBS) recently launched a Center for Big Data Statistics (CBDS)in partnership with companies like Dell-EMC and Microsoft. Other National Statistics Offices (NSOs) are considering using scanner data for monitoring consumer prices (Austria); leveraging smart meter data (Canada); or using telecom data for complementing transportation statistics (Belgium). We are now living undeniably in an era of data. Much of this data is held by private corporations. The key task is thus to find a way of utilizing this data for the greater public good.

Value Proposition — and Challenges

There are several reasons to believe that public policy making and official statistics could indeed benefit from access to privately collected and held data. Among the value propositions:

  • Using private data can increase the scope and breadth and thus insights offered by available evidence for policymakers;
  • Using private data can increase the quality and credibility of existing data sets (for instance, by complementing or validating them);
  • Private data can increase the timeliness and thus relevance of often-outdated information held by statistical agencies (social media streams, for example, can provide real-time insights into public behavior); and
  • Private data can lower costs and increase other efficiencies (for example, through more sophisticated analytical methods) for statistical organizations….(More)”.

“Nudge units” – where they came from and what they can do

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Zeina Afif at the Worldbank: “You could say that the first one began in 2009, when the US government recruited Cass Sunstein to head The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) to streamline regulations. In 2010, the UK established the first Behavioural Insights Unit (BIT) on a trial basis, under the Cabinet Office. Other countries followed suit, including the US, Australia, Canada, Netherlands, and Germany. Shortly after, countries such as India, Indonesia, Peru, Singapore, and many others started exploring the application of behavioral insights to their policies and programs. International institutions such as the World Bank, UN agencies, OECD, and EU have also established behavioral insights units to support their programs. And just this month, the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland launched its own Behavioral Economics Unit.

The Future
As eMBeD, the behavioral science unit at the World Bank, continues to support governments across the globe in the implementation of their units, here are some common questions we often get asked.

What are the models for a Behavioral Insights Unit in Government?
As of today, over a dozen countries have integrated behavioral insights with their operations. While there is not one model to prescribe, the setup varies from centralized or decentralized to networked….

In some countries, the units were first established at the ministerial level. One example is MineduLab in Peru, which was set up with eMBeD’s help. The unit works as an innovation lab, testing rigorous and leading research in education and behavioral science to address issues such as teacher absenteeism and motivation, parents’ engagement, and student performance….

What should be the structure of the team?
Most units start with two to four full-time staff. Profiles include policy advisors, social psychologists, experimental economists, and behavioral scientists. Experience in the public sector is essential to navigate the government and build support. It is also important to have staff familiar with designing and running experiments. Other important skills include psychology, social psychology, anthropology, design thinking, and marketing. While these skills are not always readily available in the public sector, it is important to note that all behavioral insights units partnered with academics and experts in the field.

The U.S. team, originally called the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team, is staffed mostly by seconded academic faculty, researchers, and other departmental staff. MineduLab in Peru partnered with leading experts, including the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), Fortalecimiento de la Gestión de la Educación (FORGE), Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), and the World Bank….(More)”

A Brief History of Living Labs: From Scattered Initiatives to Global Movement

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Seppo Leminen, Veli-Pekka Niitamo, and Mika Westerlund presented at the Open Living Labs Day Conference: “This paper analyses the emergence of living labs based on a literature review and interviews with early living labs experts. Our study makes a contribution to the growing literature of living labs by analysing the emergence of living labs from the perspectives of (i) early living lab pioneers, (ii) early living lab activities in Europe and especially Nokia Corporation, (iii) framework programs of the European Union supporting the development of living labs, (iv) emergence of national living lab networks, and (v) emergence of the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL). Moreover, the paper highlights major events in the emergence of living lab movement and labels three consecutive phases of the global living lab movement as (i) toward a new paradigm, (ii) practical experiences, and (iii) professional living labs….(More)”.

Open Space: The Global Effort for Open Access to Environmental Satellite Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Mariel Borowitz: “Key to understanding and addressing climate change is continuous and precise monitoring of environmental conditions. Satellites play an important role in collecting climate data, offering comprehensive global coverage that can’t be matched by in situ observation. And yet, as Mariel Borowitz shows in this book, much satellite data is not freely available but restricted; this remains true despite the data-sharing advocacy of international organizations and a global open data movement. Borowitz examines policies governing the sharing of environmental satellite data, offering a model of data-sharing policy development and applying it in case studies from the United States, Europe, and Japan—countries responsible for nearly half of the unclassified government Earth observation satellites.

Borowitz develops a model that centers on the government agency as the primary actor while taking into account the roles of such outside actors as other government officials and non-governmental actors, as well as the economic, security, and normative attributes of the data itself. The case studies include the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), and the United States Geological Survey (USGS); the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT); and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA). Finally, she considers the policy implications of her findings for the future and provides recommendations on how to increase global sharing of satellite data….(More)”.