Democracy Reinvented: Participatory Budgeting and Civic Innovation in America

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Hollie Russon Gilman: “Democracy Reinvented is the first comprehensive academic treatment of participatory budgeting in the United States, situating it within a broader trend of civic technology and innovation. This global phenomenon, which has been called “revolutionary civics in action” by the New York Times, started in Brazil in 1989 but came to America only in 2009.  Participatory budgeting empowers citizens to identify community needs, work with elected officials to craft budget proposals, and vote on how to spend public funds.

Democracy Reinvented places participatory budgeting within the larger discussion of the health of U.S. democracy and focuses on the enabling political and institutional conditions.  Author and former White House policy adviser Hollie Russon Gilman presents theoretical insights, in-depth case studies, and interviews to offer a compelling alternative to the current citizen disaffection and mistrust of government. She offers policy recommendations on how to tap online tools and other technological and civic innovations to promote more inclusive governance.

While most literature tends to focus on institutional changes without solutions, this book suggests practical ways to empower citizens to become change agents. Democracy Reinvented also includes a discussion on the challenges and opportunities that come with using digital tools to re-engage citizens in governance….(More)”

Digital Weberianism: Towards a reconceptualization of bureaucratic social order in the digital age

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Working Paper by Chris Muellerleile & Susan Robertson: “The social infrastructures that the global economy relies upon are becoming dependent on digital code, big data, and algorithms. At the same time the digital is also changing the very nature of economic and social institutions. In this paper we attempt to make sense of the relationships between the emergence of digitalism, and transformations in both capitalism, and the ways that capitalism is regulated by digitized social relations. We speculate that the logic, rationalities, and techniques of Max Weber’s bureau, a foundational concept in his theory of modernity, helps explain the purported efficiency, objectivity, and rationality of digital technologies. We argue that digital rationality constitutes a common thread of social infrastructure that is increasingly overdetermining the nature of sociality. We employ the example of the smart city and the digitizing university to expose some of the contradictions of digital order, and we end by questioning what digital order might mean after the end of modernity….(More)”

The Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Axel Bruns, Gunn Enli, Eli Skogerbo, Anders Olof Larsson, Christian Christensen: “Social media are now widely used for political protests, campaigns, and communication in developed and developing nations, but available research has not yet paid sufficient attention to experiences beyond the US and UK. This collection tackles this imbalance head-on, compiling cutting-edge research across six continents to provide a comprehensive, global, up-to-date review of recent political uses of social media.

Drawing together empirical analyses of the use of social media by political movements and in national and regional elections and referenda, The Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics presents studies ranging from Anonymous and the Arab Spring to the Greek Aganaktismenoi, and from South Korean presidential elections to the Scottish independence referendum. The book is framed by a selection of keystone theoretical contributions, evaluating and updating existing frameworks for the social media age….(More)”

What Citizens Can Teach Civil Servants About Open Government

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

 and  in Governing: “An open government is one that is transparent, participatory and collaborative. But moving from traditional government operating behind closed doors to more open institutions, where civil servants work together with citizens to create policies and solve problems, demands new skills and sensibilities.

As more and more American public-sector leaders embrace the concept of openness as a positive force for governmental effectiveness, they would do well to look toward Brazil’s largest city, where an unusual experiment was just launched: an effort to use a variation on crowdsourcing to retrain Sao Paulo’s 150,000 civil servants. It’s described as the world’s largest open-government training program.

The program, known as Agents of Open Government – part of a wider city initiative called “Sao Paulo Aberta” (Open Sao Paulo) — aims to teach through peer-to-peer learning, where government employees learn from citizens. Twenty-four citizen-led courses that began last month are aimed not only at government employees and elected community representatives but also at social activists and the general population.

Sao Paolo is betting on the radical notion that learning can happen outside of formal civil-service training colleges. This initiative reflects a growing global trend toward recognizing that institutions can become smarter — more effective and efficient — by making use of the skills and experience of those outside of government.

Officials hope to have 25,000 participants over the course of the coming year. To encourage public employees’ participation, city workers who attend the courses gain credits in the municipal evaluation system that allow them to get pay raises….(More)”

To reduce economic inequality, do we need better democracy?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Matt Leighninger at Public Agenda: “When people have a say in the decisions that affect their lives, they will be better off economically as well as politically.

This idea has intrigued community development experts, foundation executives, public officials and academic researchers for many years. It has also animated some of the work people and governments are undertaking to address inequality, both in the United States and (especially) in the Global South.

But can a participatory democracy lead to greater economic opportunity? We are just beginning to amass evidence that this idea is true, understand how and why it works, and figure out how to make it happen better and faster.

Over the last two decades we have witnessed a quiet revolution in how governments and other institutions engage the public. Public officials, technologists, engagement practitioners, community organizers and other leaders have developed hundreds of projects, processes, tools and apps that boost engagement.

While they differ in many ways, these strategies and resources have one common thread: they treat citizens like adults rather than the clients (or children) of the state. They give people chances to connect, learn, deliberate, make recommendations, vote on budget or policy decisions, take action to solve public problems or all of the above. The principles behind these practices embody and enable greater political equality.

This wave of experimentation has produced inspiring outcomes in cities all over the world, but it has been particularly productive in Brazil and other parts of the Global South, where engagement has been built into the way that many cities operate. In these places, it is increasingly clear that when people have a legitimate voice in the institutions that govern their communities, and when they have support through various kinds of social and political networks, their economic fortunes improve.

The best-documented cases come from cities in Brazil, where Participatory Budgeting and other forms of engagement have been built into a much more robust “civic infrastructure” than we have in most American cities. In other words, people in these places have a wider variety of ways to participate on a broader range of issues and decisions. Their chances for engagement include online opportunities as well as face-to-face meetings. Many are social events as much as political ones: people participate because they get to see their neighbors and feel like they are part of a community, in addition to being able to weigh in on a public decision.

In these cities, the gap between rich and poor has narrowed, much more so than in similar cities without vibrant local democracies. In addition, governments are more likely to complete planned projects; public finances are better managed and less prone to corruption; people exhibit increased trust in public institutions and are more likely to pay their taxes; public expenditures are more likely to benefit low-income people; public health outcomes, such as the rate of infant mortality, have improved; and poverty has been reduced.

The connection between democratic innovation and greater economic equity raises many questions ripe for research:….(More)”

Open Data Index 2015

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Open Knowledge: “….This year’s Index showed impressive gains from non-OECD countries with Taiwan topping the Index and Colombia and Uruguay breaking into the top ten at four and seven respectively. Overall, the Index evaluated 122 places and 1586 datasets and determined that only 9%, or 156 datasets, were both technically and legally open.

The Index ranks countries based on the availability and accessibility of data in thirteen key categories, including government spending, election results, procurement, and pollution levels. Over the summer, we held a public consultation, which saw contributions from individuals within the open data community as well as from key civil society organisations across an array of sectors. As a result of this consultation, we expanded the 2015 Index to include public procurement data, water quality data, land ownership data and weather data; we also decided to removed transport timetables due to the difficulties faced when comparing transport system data globally.

Open Knowledge International began to systematically track the release of open data by national governments in 2013 with the objective of measuring if governments were releasing the key datasets of high social and democratic value as open data. That enables us to better understand the current state of play and in turn work with civil society actors to address the gaps in data release. Over the course of the last three years, the Global Open Data Index has become more than just a benchmark – we noticed that governments began to use the Index as a reference to inform their open data priorities and civil society actors began to use the Index advocacy tool to encourage governments to improve their performance in releasing key datasets.

Furthermore, indices such as the Global Open Data Index are not without their challenges. The Index measures the technical and legal openness of datasets deemed to be of critical democratic and social value – it does not measure the openness of a given government. It should be clear that the release of a few key datasets is not a sufficient measure of the openness of a government. The blurring of lines between open data and open government is nothing new and has been hotly debated by civil society groups and transparency organisations since the sharp rise in popularity of open data policies over the last decade. …Index at http://index.okfn.org/”

Five Studies: How Behavioral Science Can Help in International Development

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

 in Pacific Standard: “In 2012, there were 896 million people around the world—12.7 percent of the global population—living on less than two dollars a day. The World Food Programestimates that 795 million people worldwide don’t have enough food to “lead a healthy life”; 25 percent of people living in Sub-Saharan Africa are undernourished. Over three million children die every year thanks to poor nutrition, and hunger is the leading cause of death worldwide. In 2012, just three preventable diseases (pneumonia, diarrhea, and malaria) killed 4,600 children every day.

Last month, the World Bank announced the launch of the Global Insights Initiative (GINI). The initiative, which follows in the footsteps of so-called “nudge units” in the United Kingdom and United States, is the Bank’s effort to incorporate insights from the field of behavioral science into the design of international development programs; too often, those programs failed to account for how people behave in the real world. Development policy, according to the Bank’s 2015 World Development Report, is overdue for a “redesign based on careful consideration of human factors.” Researchers have applauded the announcement, but it raises an interesting question: What can nudges really accomplish in the face of the developing world’s overwhelming poverty and health-care deficits?

In fact, researchers have found that instituting small program changes, informed by a better understanding of people’s motivations and limitations, can have big effects on everything from savings rates to vaccination rates to risky sexual behavior. Here are five studies that demonstrate the benefits of bringing empirical social science into the developing world….(More)”

State of the Commons

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Creative Commons: “Creative Commoners have known all along that collaboration, sharing, and cooperation are a driving force for human evolution. And so for many it will come as no surprise that in 2015 we achieved a tremendous milestone: over 1.1 billion CC licensed photos, videos, audio tracks, educational materials, research articles, and more have now been contributed to the shared global commons…..

Whether it’s open education, open data, science, research, music, video, photography, or public policy, we are putting sharing and collaboration at the heart of the Web. In doing so, we are much closer to realizing our vision: unlocking the full potential of the Internet to drive a new era of development, growth, and productivity.

I am proud to share with you our 2015 State of the Commons report, our best effort to measure the immeasurable scope of the commons by looking at the CC licensed content, along with content marked as public domain, that comprise the slice of the commons powered by CC tools. We are proud to be a leader in the commons movement, and we hope you will join us as we celebrate all we have accomplished together this year. ….Report at https://stateof.creativecommons.org/2015/”

Smart Urbanism: Utopian vision or false dawn?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Simon Marvin, Andrés Luque-Ayala, and Colin McFarlane: “Smart Urbanism (SU) – the rebuilding of cities through the integration of digital technologies with buildings, neighbourhoods, networked infrastructures and people – is being represented as a unique emerging ‘solution’ to the majority of problems faced by cities today. SU discourses, enacted by technology companies, national governments and supranational agencies alike, claim a supremacy of urban digital technologies for managing and controlling infrastructures, achieving greater effectiveness in managing service demand and reducing carbon emissions, developing greater social interaction and community networks, providing new services around health and social care etc. Smart urbanism is being represented as the response to almost every facet of the contemporary urban question.

This book explores this common conception of the problematic of smart urbanism and critically address what new capabilities are being created by whom and with what exclusions; how these are being developed – and contested; where is this happening both within and between cities; and, with what sorts of social and material consequences. The aim of the book is to identify and convene a currently fragmented and disconnected group of researchers, commentators, developers and users from both within and outside the mainstream SU discourse, including several of those that adopt a more critical perspective, to assess ‘what’ problems of the city smartness can address

The volume provides the first internationally comparative assessment of SU in cities of the global north and south, critically evaluates whether current visions of SU are able to achieve their potential; and then identifies alternative trajectories for SU that hold radical promise for reshaping cities….(More)”

The ‘data revolution’ will be open

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Martin Tisne at Devex: “There is a huge amount of talk about a “data revolution.” The phrase emerged in the years preceding this September’s announcement of the Sustainable Development Goals, and has recently been strongly reaffirmed by the launch of a Global Partnership on Sustainable Development Data.

The importance of data in measuring, assessing and verifying the new SDGs has been powerfully made and usually includes a mention of the data needing to be “open.” However, the role of “open” has not been clearly articulated. Fundamentally, the discussion focuses on the role of data (statistics, for example) in decision-making, and not on the benefits of that data being open to the public. Until this case is made, difficult decisions to make data open will go by the wayside.

Much of the debate justly focuses on why data matters for decision-making. Knowing how many boys and girls are in primary and secondary schools, how good their education is, and the number of teachers in their schools, are examples of relevant data used in shaping education delivery, and perhaps policy. Likewise, new satellite and cellphone data can help us prevent and understand the causes of death by HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.

Proponents of the data revolution make powerful points, such as that 1 in 3 births go unregistered. If you are uncounted, you will be ignored. If you don’t have an identity, you do not exist.

Yet as important as this information is, I still can’t help but think: Do we change the course of history with the mere existence of more data or because people access it, mobilize and press for change?

We need an equally eloquent narrative for why open data matters and what it means.

To my thinking, we need the data to be open because we need to hold governments accountable for their promises under the SDGs, in order to incentivize action. The data needs to be available, accessible and comparable to enable journalists and civil society to prod, push and test the validity of these promises. After all, what good are the goals if governments do not deliver, beginning with the funding to implement? We will need to know what financial resources, both public and private, will be put to work and what budget allocations governments will make in their draft budgets. We need to have those debates in the open, not in smoke-filled rooms.

Second, the data needs to be open in order to be verified, quality-checked and improved. …(More)”