Global

Budgets for the People

Curated on March 11, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paolo Spada and Hollie Russon Gilman on Brazil’s Democratic Innovations in Foreign Affairs: “At a time of record low trust in public institutions, thousands of new channels for citizen involvement in government are opening across the world. They go further than electoral participation; they increase citizens’ ability to monitor, regulate, and, in some cases, directly affect political decision-making.Labeled by scholars as democratic innovations, these efforts strengthen existing democratic institutions and promote participation in politics that exceeds infrequent voting. Participatory budgeting (PB) is a standout within the realm of democratic innovations, allowing citizens direct control over portions of government spending. Thirteen Brazilian cities introduced PB programs in 1989. By 2001, there were more than 100 cities implementing PB in Brazil, and in 2015, there are thousands of cities adopting variants of the process worldwide.
Brazilian best practices were instrumental in showcasing the potential of PB to the world. A 2008 World Bank study showed that implementing the process for ten years reduced poverty and improved access to clean water. Recent research has also shown that municipal governments that adopt PB receive an increase in public spending for services such as sanitation and health care. Scholars have also found that PB leads to an eight percent increase in the number of civil society organizations within a given Brazilian municipality, highlighting how this democratic innovation promotes citizen engagement, efficacy, voice, transparency, accountability, and lower levels of corruption. On a global scale, the spread of PB could help build trust among a citizenry that craves more participatory, transparent, and accountable institutions….(More)”

Collective Intelligence or Group Think?

Curated on March 6, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper analyzing “Engaging Participation Patterns in World without Oil” by Nassim JafariNaimi and Eric M. Meyers: “This article presents an analysis of participation patterns in an Alternate Reality Game, World Without Oil. This game aims to bring people together in an online environment to reflect on how an oil crisis might affect their lives and communities as a way to both counter such a crisis and to build collective intelligence about responding to it. We present a series of participation profiles based on a quantitative analysis of 1554 contributions to the game narrative made by 322 players. We further qualitatively analyze a sample of these contributions. We outline the dominant themes, the majority of which engage the global oil crisis for its effects on commute options and present micro-sustainability solutions in response. We further draw on the quantitative and qualitative analysis of this space to discuss how the design of the game, specifically its framing of the problem, feedback mechanism, and absence of subject-matter expertise, counter its aim of generating collective intelligence, making it conducive to groupthink….(More)”

Crowdsourcing America’s cybersecurity is an idea so crazy it might just work

Curated on March 4, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Dominic Basulto at the Washington Post: “One idea that’s starting to bubble up from Silicon Valley is the concept of crowdsourcing cybersecurity. As Silicon Valley venture capitalist Robert R. Ackerman, Jr. has pointed out, due to “the interconnectedness of our society in cyberspace,” cyber networks are best viewed as an asset that we all have a shared responsibility to protect. Push on that concept hard enough and you can see how many of the core ideas from Silicon Valley – crowdsourcing, open source software, social networking, and the creative commons – can all be applied to cybersecurity.

Silicon Valley venture capitalists are already starting to fund companies that describe themselves as crowdsourcing cybersecurity. For example, take Synack, a “crowd security intelligence” company that received $7.5 million in funding from Kleiner Perkins (one of Silicon Valley’s heavyweight venture capital firms), Allegis Ventures, and Google Ventures in 2014. Synack’s two founders are ex-NSA employees, and they are using that experience to inform an entirely new type of business model. Synack recruits and vets a global network of “white hat hackers,” and then offers their services to companies worried about their cyber networks. For a fee, these hackers are able to find and repair any security risks.

So how would crowdsourced national cybersecurity work in practice?

For one, there would be free and transparent sharing of computer code used to detect cyber threats between the government and private sector. In December, the U.S. Army Research Lab added a bit of free source code, a “network forensic analysis network” known as Dshell, to the mega-popular code sharing site GitHub. Already, there have been 100 downloads and more than 2,000 unique visitors. The goal, says William Glodek of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, is for this shared code to “help facilitate the transition of knowledge and understanding to our partners in academia and industry who face the same problems.”

This open sourcing of cyber defense would be enhanced with a scaled-up program of recruiting “white hat hackers” to become officially part of the government’s cybersecurity efforts. Popular annual events such as the DEF CON hacking conference could be used to recruit talented cyber sleuths to work alongside the government.

There have already been examples of communities where people facing a common cyber threat gather together to share intelligence. Perhaps the best-known example is the Conficker Working Group, a security coalition that was formed in late 2008 to share intelligence about malicious Conficker malware. Another example is the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, which was created by presidential mandate in 1998 to share intelligence about cyber threats to the nation’s financial system.

Of course, there are some drawbacks to this crowdsourcing idea. For one, such a collaborative approach to cybersecurity might open the door to government cyber defenses being infiltrated by the enemy. Ackerman makes the point that you never really know who’s contributing to any community. Even on a site such as Github, it’s theoretically possible that an ISIS hacker or someone like Edward Snowden could download the code, reverse engineer it, and then use it to insert “Trojan Horses” intended for military targets into the code…. (More)

Netpolitik: What the Emergence of Networks Means for Diplomacy and Statecraft

Curated on March 2, 2015July 18, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Charlie Firestone and Leshuo Dong at the Aspen Journal of Ideas: “…The network is emerging as a dominant form of organization for our age of complexity. This is supported by technological and economic trends. Furthermore, enemies are networks, players are networks, even governments are becoming networks. It makes sense to understand network principles and apply them for use in the world of diplomacy. Accordingly, governments, organizations and individuals should heed these recommendations:

Understand and apply two-way communications and network principles to all forms of diplomacy with the aim of earning the sympathy, empathy and where applicable, the loyalty of future generations. This is a mindset shift for governments, diplomats and citizens around the world.
This means engaging the world’s populations to communicate with each other. That will entail physical connections to the global common medium, an ability to have what you send be received by others in the form you send it, end to end, and literacy in the communications methods of the day. The world’s population should have a meaningful right to connect.
Of course, if there is to be a global communications network, it needs to be safe, so governments remain in the role of protector of the environment needed for users to trust in their networks. States have a role to protect against cyberwar, cybercrimes, and loss of a person’s identity, i.e., security and privacy online. But these protections cannot be a screen for illegitimate governmental controls over or unwarranted surveillance of its citizens. Nor can governments be expected to shoulder that burden alone. Everyone will need to practice a basic level of Net hygiene and literacy as an element of their digital citizenship.

As networks proliferate, principles of netpolitik will emerge. Governments, businesses, non-governmental organizations, and every citizen would be well advised to be thinking in these terms in the years ahead….(More).”

Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies

Curated on March 2, 2015August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Forthcoming book: “In Why Information Grows, rising star César Hidalgo offers a radical interpretation of global economicsWhile economists often turn to measures like GDP or per-capita income, César Hidalgo turns to information theory to explain the success or failure of a country’s economic performance. Through a radical rethinking of what the economy is, Hidalgo shows that natural constraints in our ability to accumulate knowledge, knowhow and information explain the evolution of social and economic complexity. This is a rare tour de force, linking economics, sociology, physics, biology and information theory, to explain the evolution of social and economic systems as a consequence of the physical embodiment of information in a world where knowledge is quite literally power.
César Hidalgo leads the Macro Connections group at the MIT Media Lab. A trained statistical physicist and an expert on Networks and Complex Systems, he also has extensive experience in the field of economic development and has pioneered research on how big data impacts economic decision-making….(More)”

Pantheon: A Dataset for the Study of Global Cultural Production

Curated on February 26, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Amy Zhao Yu, Shahar Ronen, Kevin Hu, Tiffany Lu, and César A. Hidalgo: “We present the Pantheon 1.0 dataset: a manually curated dataset of individuals that have transcended linguistic, temporal, and geographic boundaries. The Pantheon 1.0 dataset includes the 11,341 biographies present in more than 25 languages in Wikipedia and is enriched with: (i) manually curated demographic information (place of birth, date of birth, and gender), (ii) a cultural domain classification categorizing each biography at three levels of aggregation (i.e. Arts/Fine Arts/Painting), and (iii) measures of global visibility (fame) including the number of languages in which a biography is present in Wikipedia, the monthly page-views received by a biography (2008-2013), and a global visibility metric we name the Historical Popularity Index (HPI). We validate our measures of global visibility (HPI and Wikipedia language editions) using external measures of accomplishment in several cultural domains: Tennis, Swimming, Car Racing, and Chess. In all of these cases we find that measures of accomplishments and fame (HPI) correlate with an R2≥50, suggesting that measures of global fame are appropriate proxies for measures of accomplishment….(More)“

The Metrics Myth

Curated on February 26, 2015August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Jed Emerson at BlendedValue: “…Simply because our present, dominant approaches to assessing metrics fall short of our task—How can one measure the full value of a life saved or possible future changed? What, ultimately, is the real impact and value created through the allocation of our capital?—we persist because we know two things:
First, we know we are on a Hero’s Journey of inquiry and innovation. Too often we forget the present system of tracking financial performance (the basis upon which trillions of dollars flow through global capital markets and the foundation upon which too many of us build our lives) is the outcome of over sixty years of development, refinement and debate. In the U.S., GAAP and FASB (the fundamental building blocks of mainstream business and finance) were not created until after World War II; and it was not until the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 that business and many nonprofits began tracking and assessing environmental metrics on a consistent basis. And while social metrics have always been a part of the parlance of government and philanthropic funding, many foundations and social investors have not sought to weave performance assessment into their process of allocating funds until recent decades. It is for these reasons I am quite comfortable with the reality that those creating the metrics and evaluation frameworks of tomorrow will need another twenty years to build what is not yet ours, for I know it will come in good time.
Second, we are creating Total Portfolio Reporting frameworks to track the returns of unified investing strategies (capable of reflecting the aggregate performance of philanthropic, social and environmental value creation) because we know it can be done—and indeed, we see the metrics mist clearing by the year.
As initiatives such as

The Principles for Responsible Investing’s Integrated Reporting work,

the recently re-organized SROI Network,

the Sustainable Accounting Standards Board,

B-Lab’s B-Analytics framework,

CapRock’s iPar system,

the ANDE Metrics Working Group

and a variety of grassroots initiatives coming together around various sets of common reporting for assessing community impact,we find one can create a balance between our aspirations for a better world and the challenges of demarcating our progress toward that goal.
In the end, I hate the whole metrics debate.
It is repetitive, mind numbing and distracting from the critical task of fighting the forces presently destroying our societies and planet. Each time some ignorant (not stupid, mind you, and yet, not fully aware of what they do not know; they are quite rightly, ignorant) newcomer enters the discussion, we’re all expected to re-group and re-define concepts and issues well documented and explored in the past. The continual, mindless reminders that not everything that counts can be counted leave me frustrated and even angry at some who for reasons beyond me don’t seem to understand that such now trite insights were the very starting place of this journey well more than 25 years ago and that, indeed, as newcomers they are as far behind the current exploration as we are from our goal.
Yet, we make progress despite our doubts and complications.
We advance the practice of both impact investing and performance measurement one step forward and two steps back as the current “knowledge” of the crowd actually pulls us backward to previous thinking and practice. And we know the appropriate application of metrics bring meaning and insight just as they demonstrate the limitations of such efforts….(More)”

Data-Driven Development Pathways for Progress

Curated on February 24, 2015August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Report from the World Economic Forum: “Data is the lifeblood of sustainable development and holds tremendous potential for transformative positive change particularly for lower- and middle-income countries. Yet despite the promise of a “Data Revolution”, progress is not a certainty. Lack of clarity on privacy and ethical issues, asymmetric power dynamics and an array of entangled societal and commercial risks threaten to hinder progress.
Written by the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Data-Driven Development, this report serves to clarify how big data can be leveraged to address the challenges of sustainable development. Providing a blueprint for balancing competing tensions, areas of focus include: addressing the data deficit of the Global South, establishing resilient governance and strengthening capacities at the community and individual level. (PDF)”

Beyond Transparency

Curated on February 22, 2015August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Hildy Gottlieb on “How “opening up” can help organizations achieve their missions” in Stanford Social Innovation Review : “…For the past two years, Creating the Future, a social change research and development laboratory, has been experimenting to find the answer to that question. In the process, we have learned that when organizations are more open in their work, it can improve both the work itself and the results in the communities they serve.
In December 2012, Creating the Future’s board voted to open all its board and strategy meetings (including meetings for branding, resource development, and programming) to anyone who wished to attend and participate.
Since our organization is global, we hold our meetings via Google Hangout, and community members participate via a dedicated Twitter hashtag. Everyone is encouraged to participate—through asking questions and sharing observations—as if they are board members, whether or not they are.
This online openness mirrors the kind of inclusive, participatory culture that many grassroots neighborhood groups have fostered in the “real world” for decades. As we’ve studied those groups and experienced open engagement for ourselves, here are some of the things we’ve learned that can apply to any organization, whether they are working at a distance or in person.

What Being Open Makes Possible

1. Being open adds new thinking to the mix. We can’t overstate this obvious practical benefit for every strategic issue an organization considers. During a recent discussion of employee “paid time off” policies, a participant with no formal relationship to the organization powerfully shifted the board’s conversation and perspectives away from the rigidity of a policy, focusing instead on the values of relationships, outcomes, buy-in, and adaptability. That input helped the board clarify its intent. It ultimately chose to scrap the idea of a certain amount of “paid time off,” in favor of an outcomes-based approach that provides flexibility for both employees and their supervisors.
2. Being open flattens internal communications. Opening all our meetings has led to cross-pollination across every aspect of our organization, providing an ongoing opportunity for sharing information and resources, and for developing everyone’s potential as leaders….
3. Being open walks the talk of the engaged communities we want to see. From the moment we opened the doors to our meetings, people have walked in and found meaningful ways to become part of our work. …
It seems so simple: If we want to engage the community, we just need to open the doors and invite people in!
4. Being open creates meaningful inclusion. Board diversity initiatives are intended to ensure that an organization’s decision-making reflects the experience of the community it serves. In reality, though, there can never be enough seats on a board to accomplish inclusion beyond what often feels like tokenism. Creating the Future’s board doesn’t have to worry about representing the community, because our community members represent themselves. And while this is powerful in an online setting, it is even more powerful when on-the-ground community members are part of a community-based organization’s decision-making fabric.
5. Being open creates more inclusive accountability. During a discussion of cash flow for our young organization, one concerned board member wondered aloud whether adhering to our values might be at cross-purposes with our survival. Our community members went wild via Twitter, expressing that it was that very code of values that drew them to the work in the first place. That reminder helped board members remove scarcity and fear from the conversation so that they could base their decision on what would align with our values and help accomplish the mission.
The needs of our community directly impacted that decision—not because of a bylaws requirement for “voting members” but simply because we encouraged community members to actively take part in the conversation….(More)”