Imagining Regulation Differently: Co-creating for Engagement

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Morag McDermont, Tim Cole, Janet Newman and Angela Piccini: “There is an urgent need to rethink relationships between systems of government and those who are ‘governed’. This book explores ways of rethinking those relationships by bringing communities normally excluded from decision-making to centre stage to experiment with new methods of regulating for engagement.

Using original, co-produced research, it innovatively shows how we can better use a ‘bottom-up’ approach to design regulatory regimes that recognise the capabilities of communities at the margins and powerfully support the knowledge, passions and creativity of citizens. The authors provide essential guidance for all those working on co-produced research to make impactful change…(More)”.

Facial Recognition Software requires Checks and Balances

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

David Eaves,  and Naeha Rashid in Policy Options: “A few weeks ago, members of the Nexus traveller identification program were notified that Canadian Border Services is upgrading its automated system, from iris scanners to facial recognition technology. This is meant to simplify identification and increase efficiency without compromising security. But it also raises profound questions concerning how we discuss and develop public policies around such technology – questions that may not be receiving sufficiently open debate in the rush toward promised greater security.

Analogous to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) program Global Entry, Nexus is a joint Canada-US border control system designed for low-risk, pre-approved travellers. Nexus does provide a public good, and there are valid reasons to improve surveillance at airports. Even before 9/11, border surveillance was an accepted annoyance and since then, checkpoint operations have become more vigilant and complex in response to the public demand for safety.

Nexus is one of the first North America government-sponsored services to adopt facial recognition, and as such it could be a pilot program that other services will follow. Left unchecked, the technology will likely become ubiquitous at North American border crossings within the next decade, and it will probably be adopted by governments to solve domestic policy challenges.

Facial recognition software is imperfect and has documented bias, but it will continue to improve and become superior to humans in identifying individuals. Given this, questions arise such as, what policies guide the use of this technology? What policies should inform future government use? In our headlong rush toward enhanced security, we risk replicating the justification the used by the private sector in an attempt to balance effectiveness, efficiency and privacy.

One key question involves citizens’ capacity to consent. Previously, Nexus members submitted to fingerprint and retinal scans – biometric markers that are relatively unique and enable government to verify identity at the border. Facial recognition technology uses visual data and seeks, analyzes, and stores identifying facial information in a database, which is then used to compare with new images and video….(More)”.

Tesco Grocery 1.0, a large-scale dataset of grocery purchases in London

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Luca Maria Aiello, Daniele Quercia, Rossano Schifanella & Lucia Del Prete: “We present the Tesco Grocery 1.0 dataset: a record of 420 M food items purchased by 1.6 M fidelity card owners who shopped at the 411 Tesco stores in Greater London over the course of the entire year of 2015, aggregated at the level of census areas to preserve anonymity. For each area, we report the number of transactions and nutritional properties of the typical food item bought including the average caloric intake and the composition of nutrients.

The set of global trade international numbers (barcodes) for each food type is also included. To establish data validity we: i) compare food purchase volumes to population from census to assess representativeness, and ii) match nutrient and energy intake to official statistics of food-related illnesses to appraise the extent to which the dataset is ecologically valid. Given its unprecedented scale and geographic granularity, the data can be used to link food purchases to a number of geographically-salient indicators, which enables studies on health outcomes, cultural aspects, and economic factors….(More)”.

The Economic Impact of Open Data: Opportunities for value creation in Europe

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release: “The European Data Portal publishes its study “The Economic Impact of Open Data: Opportunities for value creation in Europe”. It researches the value created by open data in Europe. It is the second study by the European Data Portal, following the 2015 report. The open data market size is estimated at €184 billion and forecast to reach between €199.51 and €334.21 billion in 2025. The report additionally considers how this market size is distributed along different sectors and how many people are employed due to open data. The efficiency gains from open data, such as potential lives saved, time saved, environmental benefits, and improvement of language services, as well as associated potential costs savings are explored and quantified where possible. Finally, the report also considers examples and insights from open data re-use in organisations. The key findings of the report are summarised below:

  1. The specification and implementation of high-value datasets as part of the new Open Data Directive is a promising opportunity to address quality & quantity demands of open data.
  2. Addressing quality & quantity demands is important, yet not enough to reach the full potential of open data.
  3. Open data re-users have to be aware and capable of understanding and leveraging the potential.
  4. Open data value creation is part of the wider challenge of skill and process transformation: a lengthy process whose change and impact are not always easy to observe and measure.
  5. Sector-specific initiatives and collaboration in and across private and public sector foster value creation.
  6. Combining open data with personal, shared, or crowdsourced data is vital for the realisation of further growth of the open data market.
  7. For different challenges, we must explore and improve multiple approaches of data re-use that are ethical, sustainable, and fit-for-purpose….(More)”.

Experts say privately held data available in the European Union should be used better and more

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

European Commission: “Data can solve problems from traffic jams to disaster relief, but European countries are not yet using this data to its full potential, experts say in a report released today. More secure and regular data sharing across the EU could help public administrations use private sector data for the public good.

In order to increase Business-to-Government (B2G) data sharing, the experts advise to make data sharing in the EU easier by taking policy, legal and investment measures in three main areas:

  1. Governance of B2G data sharing across the EU: such as putting in place national governance structures, setting up a recognised function (‘data stewards’) in public and private organisations, and exploring the creation of a cross-EU regulatory framework.
  2. Transparency, citizen engagement and ethics: such as making B2G data sharing more citizen-centric, developing ethical guidelines, and investing in training and education.
  3. Operational models, structures and technical tools: such as creating incentives for companies to share data, carrying out studies on the benefits of B2G data sharing, and providing support to develop the technical infrastructure through the Horizon Europe and Digital Europe programmes.

They also revised the principles on private sector data sharing in B2G contexts and included new principles on accountability and on fair and ethical data use, which should guide B2G data sharing for the public interest. Examples of successful B2G data sharing partnerships in the EU include an open forest data system in Finland to help manage the ecosystem, mapping of EU fishing activities using ship tracking data, and genome sequencing data of breast cancer patients to identify new personalised treatments. …

The High-Level Expert Group on Business-to-Government Data Sharing was set up in autumn 2018 and includes members from a broad range of interests and sectors. The recommendations presented today in its final report feed into the European strategy for data and can be used as input for other possible future Commission initiatives on Business-to-Government data sharing….(More)”.

Novel forms of governance with high levels of civic self-reliance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Thesis by Hiska Ubels: “Enduring depopulation and ageing have affected the liveability of many of the smaller villages in the more peripheral rural municipalities of the Netherlands. Combined with a general climate of austerity and structural public budget cuts, this has led to the search of both communities and local governments for solutions in which citizens take and obtain more responsibilities and higher levels of local autonomy in dealing with local liveability challenges.

This PhD-thesis explores how novel forms of governance with high levels of civic self-reliance can be understood from the perspectives of the involved residents, local governments and the supposed beneficiaries. It also discusses the dynamics, potentials and limitations that come to the fore. To achieve this, firstly, it focusses on the development of role shifts of responsibilities and decision-making power between local governments and citizens in experimental governance initiatives over time and the main factors that enhance and obstruct higher levels of civic autonomy. Then it investigates the influence of government involvement on a civic initiatives’ organisation structure and governance process, and by doing so on the key conditions of its civic self-steering capacity. In addition, it examines how novel governance forms with citizens in the lead are experienced by the community members to whose community liveability they are supposed to contribute. Lastly, it explores the reasons why citizens do not engage in such initiatives….(More)”.

How to Put the Data Subject's Sovereignty into Practice. Ethical Considerations and Governance Perspectives

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst


Paper by Peter Dabrock: “Ethical considerations and governance approaches of AI are at a crossroads. Either one tries to convey the impression that one can bring back a status quo ante of our given “onlife”-era, or one accepts to get responsibly involved in a digital world in which informational self-determination can no longer be safeguarded and fostered through the old fashioned data protection principles of informed consent, purpose limitation and data economy. The main focus of the talk is on how under the given conditions of AI and machine learning, data sovereignty (interpreted as controllability [not control (!)] of the data subject over the use of her data throughout the entire data processing cycle) can be strengthened without hindering innovation dynamics of digital economy and social cohesion of fully digitized societies. In order to put this approach into practice the talk combines a presentation of the concept of data sovereignty put forward by the German Ethics Council with recent research trends in effectively applying the AI ethics principles of explainability and enforceability…(More)”.

Digital democracy: Is the future of civic engagement online?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Gianluca Sgueo: “Digital innovation is radically transforming democratic decision-making. Public administrations are experimenting with mobile applications(apps) to provide citizens with real-time information, using online platforms to crowdsource ideas, and testing algorithms to engage communities in day today administration. The key question is what technology breakthrough means for governance systems created long before digital disruption. On the one hand, policy-makers are hoping that technology can be used to legitimise the public sector, re-engage citizens in politics and combat civic apathy. Scholars, on the other hand, point out that, if the digitalisation of democracy is left unquestioned, the danger is that the building blocks of democracy itself will be eroded.

This briefing examines three key global trends that are driving the on-going digitalisation of democratic decision-making. First are demographic patterns. These highlight growing global inequalities. Ten years from now, in the West the differentials of power among social groups will be on the rise, whereas in Eastern countries democratic freedoms will be at risk of further decline.

Second, a more urbanised global population will make cities ideal settings for innovative approaches to democratic decision-making. Current instances of digital democracy being used at local level include blockchain technology for voting and online crowdsourcing platforms.

Third, technological advancements will cut the costs of civic mobilisation and pose new challenges for democratic systems. Going forward, democratic decision-makers will be required to bridge digital literacy gaps, secure public structures from hacking, and to protect citizens’ privacy….(More)”.

Transparent Lobbying and Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Šárka Laboutková, Vít Šimral and Petr Vymětal: “This book deals with the current, as yet unsolved, problem of transparency of lobbying. In the current theories and prevalent models that deal with lobbying activities, there is no reflection of the degree of transparency of lobbying, mainly due to the unclear distinction between corruption, lobbying in general, and transparent lobbying. This book provides a perspective on transparency in lobbying in a comprehensive and structured manner. It delivers an interdisciplinary approach to the topic and creates a methodology for assessing the transparency of lobbying, its role in the democratization process and a methodology for evaluating the main consequences of transparency. The new approach is applied to assess lobbying regulations in the countries of Central Eastern Europe and shows a method for how lobbying in other regions of the world may also be assessed….(More)”.

Nudge and the European Union

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Chapter by Alberto Alemanno: “Europe has largely been absent from the US-dominated debate surrounding the introduction of nudge-type interventions in policy-making. Yet the European Union and some of its Member States are exploring the possibility of informing their policy action with behavioural insights. While a great deal of academic attention is currently been paid to the philosophical, ethical and other abstract implications of behavioural-informed regulation, such as those concerning autonomy, dignity and moral development, this chapter charts and systematizes the incipient European Nudge discourse.

Besides a few isolated initiatives displaying some behavioural considerations (e.g. consumer rights, revised tobacco products directive, sporadic behavioural remedies in competition law), the EU – similarly to its own Member States – has not yet shown a general commitment to systematically integrate behavioural insights into policy-making. Given the potential of this innovative regulatory approach to attain effective, low-cost and choice-preserving policies, such a stance seems surprising, especially when measured against growing citizen mistrust towards EU policy action. At a time in which some EU countries are calling for a repatriation of powers and the European Commission promises to redefine – in the framework of its Better Regulation agenda – the relationships between the Union and its citizens, nudging might provide a promising way forward. In the aftermath of the Brexit vote, this promise has not only been shared by the 27 remaining Member State but also represents one of their major priorities . Yet with promises come challenges too.

The chapter proceeds as follows. Section 2 sets the scene by discussing the growing appeal of nudging among policymakers within and across Europe. Section 3 introduces the notion of behavioural policymaking and contrasts it with that of nudging. Section 4 describes the early and rather timid attempts at integrating behavioural insights into EU policymaking and identifies some domestic experiences. Section 5 discusses the institutional and methodological efforts undertaken by the EU and some of its member states to embrace behavioural policymaking. In turn, section 6 discusses the major difficulties of integrating behavioural insights into EU policymaking and offers some concluding remarks….(More)”