Northern Europe

VoXup

Curated on January 19, 2015May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Nesta: “Does your street feel safe? Would you like to change something in your neighbourhood? Is there enough for young people to do?
All basic questions, but how many local councillors have the time to put these issues to their constituents? A new web app aims to make it easier for councillors and council officers to talk to residents – and it’s all based around a series of simple questions.
Now, just a year after VoXup was created in a north London pub, Camden Council is using it to consult residents on its budget proposals.
One of VoXup’s creators, Peter Lewis, hit upon the idea after meeting an MP and being reminded of how hard it can be to get involved in decision-making….

Now VoXup is being used by Camden Council to engage with residents about its spending plans.
“They’ve got to cut a lot of money and they want to know which services people would prioritise,” Lewis explains.
“So we’ve created a custom community, and most popular topics have got about 200 votes. About 650 people have taken part at some level, and it’s only just begun. We’ve seen a lot of activity – of the people who look at the web page, almost half give an opinion on something.”

‘No need for smartphone app’
What does the future hold for VoXup? Lewis, who is working on the project full-time, says one thing the team won’t be doing is building a smartphone app.
“One of the things we thought about doing was creating a mobile app, but that’s been really unnecessary – we built VoXup as a responsive web app,” he says…. (More)”.

Mini Metro

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

“Description: Mini Metro is a minimalist subway simulation game about designing efficient subway networks. The player must constantly redesign their line layout to meet the needs of a rapidly-growing city.

History

The prototype for Mini Metro, Mind the Gap, was created at the end of April 2013 during the three-day Ludum Dare 26 Jam. The first pre-alpha build was made public in September 2013. Mini Metro was put up on Steam Greenlight in March 2014 and was greenlit within three weeks. The Early Access release is scheduled for the 11th of August.

Features

Compelling, constructive, hectic, relaxed gameplay. If that makes sense.
Three game modes: Commuter for quick scored games, Scenic for stress-free sandbox play, and Rush Hour for the ultimate challenge. (only Commuter is in so far, Scenic will follow soon)
Three real-world cities to design subways for (London, New York City and Paris), with many more being added before release. Each has a unique colour theme, set of obstacles, and pace.
Random city growth, so each game plays out differently. A strategy that proved successful last game may not help you in the next.
Each game’s map is a work of art, built by you in the classic abstract subway style of Harry Beck. If you think it’s a keeper, save it, tweet it, show it off or make it your desktop background!
Each game’s map is a work of art, built by the player in the classic abstract subway style. If you think it’s a keeper, save it, tweet it, show it off or make it your desktop background!
Dynamic soundtrack by Disasterpeace.
Colorblind and night modes.
Trains!”

Governments and Citizens Getting to Know Each Other? Open, Closed, and Big Data in Public Management Reform

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

New paper by Amanda Clarke and Helen Margetts in Policy and Internet: “Citizens and governments live increasingly digital lives, leaving trails of digital data that have the potential to support unprecedented levels of mutual government–citizen understanding, and in turn, vast improvements to public policies and services. Open data and open government initiatives promise to “open up” government operations to citizens. New forms of “big data” analysis can be used by government itself to understand citizens’ behavior and reveal the strengths and weaknesses of policy and service delivery. In practice, however, open data emerges as a reform development directed to a range of goals, including the stimulation of economic development, and not strictly transparency or public service improvement. Meanwhile, governments have been slow to capitalize on the potential of big data, while the largest data they do collect remain “closed” and under-exploited within the confines of intelligence agencies. Drawing on interviews with civil servants and researchers in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States between 2011 and 2014, this article argues that a big data approach could offer the greatest potential as a vehicle for improving mutual government–citizen understanding, thus embodying the core tenets of Digital Era Governance, argued by some authors to be the most viable public management model for the digital age (Dunleavy, Margetts, Bastow, & Tinkler, 2005, 2006; Margetts & Dunleavy, 2013).”

Democracy makes itself at home online

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

Geoff Mulgan on the creation of new parties in 2015 at NESTA: “….On its own the Internet is an imperfect tool for making decisions or shaping options. Opening decisions up to large numbers of people doesn’t automatically make decisions better (the ‘wisdom of crowds’). But in the right circumstances the Internet can involve far more people in shaping policy and sharing their expertise.
Hybrid models that combine the openness of the Internet with a continuing role for parliaments, committees and leaders in making decisions and being held to account are showing great promise (something being pursued in Nesta’s D-CENT project in countries like Finland and Iceland, and in our work with Podemos in Spain).
My prediction is that the aftermath of the UK election will see the first Internet-age parties emerge in the UK, our own versions of Podemos or Democracy OS. My hope is that they will help to engage millions of people currently detached from politics, and to provide them with ways to directly influence ideas and decisions. UKIP has tapped into that alienation – but mainly offers a better yesterday rather than a plausible vision of the future. That leaves a gap for new parties that are more at home in the 21st century and can target a much younger age group.
If new parties do spring up, the old ones will have to respond. Before long open primaries, deliberations on the Internet, and crowd-sourced policy processes could become the norm. As that happens politics will become messier and more interesting. Leaders will have to be adept at responding to contradictory currents of opinion, with more conversation and fewer bland speeches. The huge power once wielded by newspaper owners, commentators and editors will almost certainly continue to decline.
The hope, in short, is that democracy could be reenergised…. (More).

The openness revolution

Curated on December 12, 2014August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

The Economist: “Business is being forced to open up in a host of reporting areas, from tax and government contracts to anti-corruption and sustainability programmes. Campaigners are cock-a-hoop, but continue to demand more. Executives are starting to ask whether the revolution is in danger of going too far.
Three forces are driving change. First, governments are demanding greater corporate accountability in the wake of the global financial crisis. No longer is ending corporate secrecy—the sharp end of which is money-laundering shell companies—an agenda pushed merely by Norway and a few others; it has become a priority for the G20. Second, investigative journalists have piled in. A recent example is the exposure by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists of sweetheart tax deals for multinationals in Luxembourg. The third factor is the growing sophistication of NGOs in this sphere, such as Transparency International (TI) and Global Witness. “Twenty years ago our work seemed an impossible dream. Now it’s coming true,” says Ben Elers of TI.
TI recently published its latest study on corporate reporting, which evaluated 124 big publicly listed companies, based on the clarity of their anti-corruption programmes, their corporate holdings and their financial reporting. Four-fifths of them scored less than five out of ten overall, but there were big regional disparities: seven of the ten most open firms were European; eight of the ten most clammed-up were Asian (see table)….“

The Global Open Data Index 2014

Curated on December 12, 2014August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Open Knowledge Foundation: “The Global Open Data Index ranks countries based on the availability and accessibility of information in ten key areas, including government spending, election results, transport timetables, and pollution levels.
The UK tops the 2014 Index retaining its pole position with an overall score of 96%, closely followed by Denmark and then France at number 3 up from 12th last year. Finland comes in 4th while Australia and New Zealand share the 5th place. Impressive results were seen from India at #10 (up from #27) and Latin American countries like Colombia and Uruguay who came in joint 12th .
Sierra Leone, Mali, Haiti and Guinea rank lowest of the countries assessed, but there are many countries where the governments are less open but that were not assessed because of lack of openness or a sufficiently engaged civil society.
Overall, whilst there is meaningful improvement in the number of open datasets (from 87 to 105), the percentage of open datasets across all the surveyed countries remained low at only 11%.
Even amongst the leaders on open government data there is still room for improvement: the US and Germany, for example, do not provide a consolidated, open register of corporations. There was also a disappointing degree of openness around the details of government spending with most countries either failing to provide information at all or limiting the information available – only two countries out of 97 (the UK and Greece) got full marks here. This is noteworthy as in a period of sluggish growth and continuing austerity in many countries, giving citizens and businesses free and open access to this sort of data would seem to be an effective means of saving money and improving government efficiency.
Explore the Global Open Data Index 2014 for yourself!”

Estonia: What is e-Residency?

Curated on December 10, 2014August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

“E-residency is a state-issued secure digital identity for non-residents that allows digital authentication and the digital signing of documents.
E-residency is provided by the government of the Republic of Estonia, but does not bring physical residency or rights of entry to Estonia or EU. E-residency does not entail any residential or citizen rights and cannot be used as a physical identification card or travel document.
The purpose of e-residency is to make life easier by using secure e-services that have been accessible to Estonians for years already. By providing e-residency, we are moving towards the idea of a country without borders.
E-residents receive a smart ID-card with a microchip (contact chip) that contains two certificates:
• Certificate for authentication
• Certificate for digital signatures
Digital authentication allows you to access different e-services (provided both by the public and private sector), and to log in to any online portals that recognize this type of authentication (such as internet banks, government portals etc). Digital authenticating requires you to enter a 4-digit PIN code, similar to your bank card.
Digital signing allows you to securely sign any type of documents from anywhere you are in the world, provided there is Internet access, with your 5-12 digit PIN code. Within EU, digital signatures are legally binding in all member states. Outside EU, digital signatures are legally binding in the case of mutual agreement between the parties….
General information about e-residency can be found here on a downloadable PDF“

Test-tube government

Curated on December 8, 2014August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

The Economist: “INCUBATORS, accelerators, garages, laboratories: the best big companies have had them for years. Whatever the moniker (The Economist once had one called “Project Red Stripe”), in most cases a select few workers are liberated from the daily grind and encouraged to invent the future. Now such innovation units are becoming de rigueur in the public sector too: Boston has an Office of New Urban Mechanics; Denmark has a MindLab; and Singapore has the more prosaically named PS21 Office.
These government laboratories provide a bridge between the public and private sectors. Sometimes governments simply copy what private firms are doing. MindLab is based on the Future Centre, the innovation unit of Skandia, a big insurance firm. Sometimes they get money and advice from private sources: the New Orleans Innovation Delivery Team is partly funded by Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York city and one of America’s biggest media tycoons. Whatever the connection, these units plug the public sector into a new world. They are full of people talking about “disruption” and “iteration”.
The units also provide a connection with academia. Britain’s Behavioural Insights Team, originally based in the Cabinet Office, was the world’s first government outfit dedicated to applying the insights of behavioural economics to public policy (it was known as the “nudge unit”, after the book “Nudge”, by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein). David Halpern, the group’s head, says that its mission was to point out the “small details” of policy that can have big consequences (see Free Exchange). It persuaded, for instance, HM Revenue & Customs, Britain’s tax collection agency, to tweak the words of a routine letter to say that most people in the recipient’s local area had already paid their taxes. As a result, payment rates increased by five percentage points.
A new report published by Nesta, a British charity devoted to promoting innovation, and Bloomberg Philanthropies shows how popular these government innovation labs have become. They can be found in a striking variety of places, from developing countries such as Malaysia to rich countries like Finland, and in the offices of mayors as well as the halls of central government.
Whatever their location, the study suggests they go about things in similar ways, with a lot of emphasis on harnessing technology. The most popular idea is co-creation—getting one’s customers to help invent and improve products and services. Boston’s Office of New Urban Mechanics has produced a series of apps which provide citizens with a convenient way of reporting problems such as graffiti and pot holes (by taking a photograph and sending it to city hall, users provide it with evidence and GPS co-ordinates). The staff-suggestion scheme introduced by PS21 in Singapore has produced striking results: one air-force engineer came up with the idea of scanning aircraft for leaks with ultraviolet light, just as opticians scan the cornea for scratches….
The most striking thing about these institutions, however, is their willingness to experiment. Policymakers usually alternate between hostility to new ideas and determination to implement a new policy without bothering to try it out first. Innovation centres tend to be both more daring and happy to test things. Sitra, for instance, is experimenting with health kiosks in shopping centres which are staffed by nurses, provide routine care and stay open late and on weekends. The Centre for Social Innovation in Colombia has developed computer games which are designed to teach pre-teenagers to make sensible choices about everything from nutrition to gang membership. Sitra also tracks the progress of each project that it funds against its stated goals….”

How to Fingerprint a City

Curated on December 7, 2014August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Frank Jacobs at BigThink: “Thanks to Big Data, a new “Science of Cities” is emerging. Urban processes that until now could only be perceived subjectively can finally be quantified. Point in case: two French scientists have developed a mathematical formula to ‘fingerprint’ cities.
Take a good, close look at your fingertips. The pattern of grooves and ridges on your skin there [1] is yours alone. Equally unique is the warp and weft of urban road networks. No two cities’ street grids are exactly alike. Some are famously distinct. The forensic urbanist in all of us can probably recognise a blind map of New York, London and a few other global metropolises.
Rémi Louf and Marc Barthelemy examined the street patterns of 131 cities around the world. Not to learn them by heart and impress their fellow scientists at the Institut de Physique Théorique near Paris – although that would be a neat parlor trick. They wanted to see if it would be possible to classify them into distinct types. The title of their paper, A Typology of Street Patterns, is a bit of a giveaway: the answer is Yes.
Before we get to the How, let’s hear them explain the Why:

“[Street and road] networks can be thought as a simplified schematic view of cities, which captures a large part of their structure and organization and contain a large amount of information about underlying and universal mechanisms at play in their formation and evolution. Extracting common patterns between cities is a way towards the identification of these underlying mechanisms. At stake is the question of the processes behind the so-called ‘organic’ patterns – which grow in response to local constraints – and whether they are preferable to the planned patterns which are designed under large scale constraints”.

There have been attempts before to classify urban networks, but the results have always been colored by the subjectivity of what Louf and Barthelemy call the ‘Space Syntax Community’. That’s all changed now: Big Data – in this case, the mass digitization of street maps – makes it possible to extract common patterns from street grids in an objective manner, as dispassionately as the study of tree leaves according to their venation. …
Read their entire paper here.“