Oceania

New #ODimpact Release: How is Open Data Creating Economic Opportunities and Solving Public Problems?

Curated on February 25, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Andrew Young at The GovLab: “Last month, the GovLab and Omidyar Network launched Open Data’s Impact (odimpact.org), a custom-built repository offering a range of in-depth case studies on global open data projects. The initial launch of theproject featured the release of 13 open data impact case studies – ten undertaken by the GovLab, as well asthree case studies from Becky Hogge (@barefoot_techie), an independent researcher collaborating withOmidyar Network. Today, we are releasing a second batch of 12 case studies – nine case studies from theGovLab and three from Hogge…

The batch of case studies being revealed today examines two additional dimensions of impact. They find that:

Open data is creating new opportunities for citizens and organizations, by fostering innovation and promoting economic growth and job creation.
Open data is playing a role in solving public problems, primarily by allowing citizens and policymakers access to new forms of data-driven assessment of the problems at hand. It also enables data-driven engagement, producing more targeted interventions and enhanced collaboration.

The specific impacts revealed by today’s release of case studies are wide-ranging, and include both positive and negative transformations. We have found that open data has enabled:

The creation of new industries built on open weather data released by the United States NationalOceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The generation of billions of dollars of economic activity as a result of the Global Positioning System(GPS) being opened to the global public in the 1980s, and the United Kingdom’s Ordnance Survey geospatial offerings.
A more level playing field for small businesses in New York City seeking market research data.
The coordinated sharing of data among government and international actors during the response to theEbola outbreak in Sierra Leone.
The identification of discriminatory water access decisions in the case Kennedy v the City of Zanesville, resulting in a $10.9 million settlement for the African-American plaintiffs.
Increased awareness among Singaporeans about the location of hotspots for dengue fever transmission.
Improved, data-driven emergency response following earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Troubling privacy violations on Eightmaps related to Californians’ political donation activity….(More)”

All case studies available at odimpact.org.

Improving government effectiveness: lessons from Germany

Curated on February 11, 2016July 19, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Tom Gash at Global Government Forum: “All countries face their own unique challenges but advanced democracies also have much in common: the global economic downturn, aging populations, increasingly expensive health and pension spending, and citizens who remain as hard to please as ever.

At an event last week in Bavaria, attended by representatives of Bavaria’s governing party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) and their guests, it also became clear that there is a growing consensus that governments face another common problem. They have relied for too long on traditional legislation and regulation to drive change. The consensus was that simply prescribing in law what citizens and companies can and can’t do will not solve the complex problems governments are facing, that governments cannot legislate their way to improved citizen health, wealth and wellbeing….

…a number of developments …from which both UK and international policymakers and practitioners can learn to improve government effectiveness.

Behavioural economics: The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), which span out of government in 2013 and is the subject of a new book by one of its founders and former IfG Director of Research, David Halpern, is being watched carefully by many countries abroad. Some are using its services, while others – including the New South Wales Government in Australia –are building their own skills in this area. BIT and others using similar principles have shown that using insights from social psychology – alongside an experimental approach – can help save money and improve outcomes. Well known successes include increasing the tax take through changing wording of reminder letters (work led by another IfG alumni Mike Hallsworth) and increasing pension take-up through auto-enrolment.
Market design: There is an emerging field of study which is examining how algorithms can be used to match people better with services they need – particularly in cases where it is unfair or morally repugnant to let allow a free market to operate. Alvin Roth, the Harvard Professor and Nobel prize winner, writes about these ‘matching markets’ in his book Who Gets What and Why – in which he also explains how the approach can ensure that more kidneys reach compatible donors, and children find the right education.
Big data: Large datasets can now be mined far more effectively, whether it is to analyse crime patterns to spot where police patrols might be useful or to understand crowd flows on public transport. The use of real-time information allows far more sophisticated deployment of public sector resources, better targeted at demand and need, and better tailored to individual preferences.
Transparency: Transparency has the potential to enhance both the accountability and effectiveness of governments across the world – as shown in our latest Whitehall Monitor Annual Report. The UK government is considered a world-leader for its transparency – but there are still areas where progress has stalled, including in transparency over the costs and performance of privately provided public services.
New management models: There is a growing realisation that new methods are best harnessed when supported by effective management. The Institute’s work on civil service reform highlights a range of success factors from past reforms in the UK – and the benefits of clear mechanisms for setting priorities and sticking to them, as is being attempted by governments new(ish) Implementation Taskforces and the Departmental Implementation Units currently cropping up across Whitehall. I looked overseas for a different model that clearly aligns government activities behind citizens’ concerns – in this case the example of the single non-emergency number system operating in New York City and elsewhere. This system supports a powerful, highly responsive, data-driven performance management regime. But like many performance management regimes it can risk a narrow and excessively short-term focus – so such tools must be combined with the mind-set of system stewardship that the Institute has long championed in its policymaking work.
Investment in new capability: It is striking that all of these developments are supported by technological change and research insights developed outside government. But to embed new approaches in government, there appear to be benefits to incubating new capacity, either in specialist departmental teams or at the centre of government….(More)”

Open government data and why it matters

Curated on February 9, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Australian Government: “This was a key focus of the Prime Minister’s $1.1 billion innovation package announced this month.

The Bureau of Communications Research (BCR) today released analysis of the impact of open government data, revealing its potential to generate up to $25 billion per year, or 1.5 per cent of Australia’s GDP.

‘In Australia, users can already access and re-use more than 7000 government data sets published on data.gov.au,’ said Dr Paul Paterson, Chief Economist and Head of the Bureau of Communications Research (BCR).

‘Some of the high-value data sets include geospatial/mapping data, health data, transport data, mining data, environmental data, demographics data, and real-time emergency data.

‘Many Australians are unaware of the flow-on benefits from open government data as a result of the increased innovation and informed choice it creates. For example open data has the power to generate new careers, more efficient government revenues, improved business practices, and drive better public engagement,’

Download PDF (1.71 MB) ; Download DOC (1.1 MB)”

Passive Philanthropy

Curated on January 22, 2016August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

PSFK: “What if you could cure cancer in your sleep? What if throwing out food meant feeding more people? What if helping coffee farmers in developing nations was as easy as a retweet? Today, businesses pay big money in order to reach the same audience as some viral tweets, and the same strategy is being applied to the reach and impact of social good campaigns. Nonprofits have also begun to leverage creative opportunities to spread awareness and raise funds to harness socially-aware citizens and rethink how social good is spread and executed. Take, for instance, an app that tracks exercise and donates to the charity of choice based on distance….

The DreamLab is a free app that turns smartphones into a research tool for cancer researchers in the Garvan Institute in Australia when their users are sleeping. Developed in conjunction with Vodaphone, the app uses the processing power of idle phones as an alternative to supercomputers which can be difficult to access. After downloading the app, participants simply open it and charge their phone. Once the phone reaches 95 percent charge, it gets to work, acting as a networked processor alongside other users with the app. Each phone solves a small piece of a larger puzzle and sends it back to Garvan.

If 1,000 people are using the app, cancer puzzles can be solved 30x faster.

As DreamLab researchers work toward finding a cure for cancer, Feeding Forward is working toward ending hunger. In America, hunger is not a problem of supply, but rather of distribution. Feeding Forward aims to solves this by connecting restaurants, grocery stores, caterers, or other businesses that are forced to throw away perishable food products with those in need.

Businesses simply need post their excess food on the platform and a driver will come pick it up to deliver to a food bank in need. Donors receive profiles of the people they helped and can also write off the donation as a charitable contribution for tax purposes. Since their launch in 2013, Feeding Forward has achieved a pick up rate of 99 percent, distributing 780,000 pounds of food saving business $3.9 million.

DreamLab and Feeding Forward are putting activities people are already going to do to use, while One Big Tweet harnesses the power of people’s social media accounts as a fundraising strategy. Cafédirect Producers’ Foundation are getting people to donate their Twitter followings for charity, asking people to sign up to post an automated tweet from a corporate sponsor who purchased the privilege at an auction for social good. The more people who donate their accounts, the higher the value of the tweet at auction. After four months, over 700 people with a collective reach of 3.2 mil followers, signed up to help make the One Big Tweet worth $49,000. While the charity is still in search of a buyer, Cafédirect promises the tweet that will be sent out through participants’ accounts will only happen once and be “safe enough for your Gran to read.” All money from the sale will go directly to continuing the work they do with coffee and tea farmers in Africa, Asia, and Latin America…(MoreMore)

The Power of the Nudge to Change Our Energy Future

Curated on January 4, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Sebastian Berger in the Scientific American: “More than ever, psychology has become influential not only in explaining human behavior, but also as a resource for policy makers to achieve goals related to health, well-being, or sustainability. For example, President Obama signed an executive order directing the government to systematically use behavioral science insights to “better serve the American people.” Not alone in this endeavor, many governments – including the UK, Germany, Denmark, or Australia – are turning to the insights that most frequently stem from psychological researchers, but also include insights from behavioral economics, sociology, or anthropology.

Particularly relevant are the analysis and the setting of “default-options.” A default is the option that a decision maker receives if he or she does not specifically state otherwise. Are we automatically enrolled in a 401(k), are we organ donors by default, or is the flu-shot a standard that is routinely given to all citizens? Research has given us many examples of how and when defaults can promote public safety or wealth.

One of the most important questions facing the planet, however, is how to manage the transition into a carbon-free economy. In a recent paper, Felix Ebeling of the University of Cologne and I tested whether defaults could nudge consumers into choosing a green energy contract over one that relies on conventional energy. The results were striking: setting the default to green energy increased participation nearly tenfold. This is an important result because it tells us that subtle, non-coercive changes in the decision making environment are enough to show substantial differences in consumers’ preferences in the domain of clean energy. It changes green energy participation from “hardly anyone” to “almost everyone”. Merely within the domain of energy behavior, one can think of many applications where this finding can be applied: For instance, default engines of new cars could be set to hybrid and customers would need to actively switch to standard options. Standard temperatures of washing machines could be low, etc….(More)”

The Moral Failure of Computer Scientists

Curated on December 15, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Kaveh Waddell at the Atlantic: “Computer scientists and cryptographers occupy some of the ivory tower’s highest floors. Among academics, their work is prestigious and celebrated. To the average observer, much of it is too technical to comprehend. The field’s problems can sometimes seem remote from reality.

But computer science has quite a bit to do with reality. Its practitioners devise the surveillance systems that watch over nearly every space, public or otherwise—and they design the tools that allow for privacy in the digital realm. Computer science is political, by its very nature.

That’s at least according to Phillip Rogaway, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis, who has helped create some of the most important tools that secure the Internet today. Last week, Rogaway took his case directly to a roomful of cryptographers at a conference in Auckland, New Zealand. He accused them of a moral failure: By allowing the government to construct a massive surveillance apparatus, the field had abused the public trust. Rogaway said the scientists had a duty to pursue social good in their work.
He likened the danger posed by modern governments’ growing surveillance capabilities to the threat of nuclear warfare in the 1950s, and called upon scientists to step up and speak out today, as they did then.

I spoke to Rogaway about why cryptographers fail to see their work in moral terms, and the emerging link between encryption and terrorism in the national conversation. A transcript of our conversation appears below, lightly edited for concision and clarity….(More)”

Opening up government data for public benefit

Curated on December 14, 2015May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Keiran Hardy at the Mandarin (Australia): “…This post explains the open data movement and considers the benefits and risks of releasing government data as open data. It then outlines the steps taken by the Labor and Liberal governments in accordance with this trend. It argues that the Prime Minister’stask, while admirably intentioned, is likely to prove difficult due to ongoing challenges surrounding the requirements of privacy law and a public service culture that remains reluctant to release government data into the public domain….

A key purpose of releasing government data is to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of services delivered by the government. For example, data on crops, weather and geography might be analysed to improve current approaches to farming and industry, or data on hospital admissions might be analysed alongside demographic and census data to improve the efficiency of health services in areas of need. It has been estimated that such innovation based on open data could benefit the Australian economy by up to $16 billion per year.

Another core benefit is that the open data movement is making gains in transparency and accountability, as a greater proportion of government decisions and operations are being shared with the public. These democratic values are made clear in the OGP’s Open Government Declaration, which aims to make governments ‘more open, accountable, and responsive to citizens’.

Open data can also improve democratic participation by allowing citizens to contribute to policy innovation. Events like GovHack, an annual Australian competition in which government, industry and the general public collaborate to find new uses for open government data, epitomise a growing trend towards service delivery informed by user input. The winner of the “Best Policy Insights Hack” at GovHack 2015 developed a software program for analysing which suburbs are best placed for rooftop solar investment.

At the same time, the release of government data poses significant risks to the privacy of Australian citizens. Much of the open data currently available is spatial (geographic or satellite) data, which is relatively unproblematic to post online as it poses minimal privacy risks. However, for the full benefits of open data to be gained, these kinds of data need to be supplemented with information on welfare payments, hospital admission rates and other potentially sensitive areas which could drive policy innovation.

Policy data in these areas would be de-identified — that is, all names, addresses and other obvious identifying information would be removed so that only aggregate or statistical data remains. However, debates continue as to the reliability of de-identification techniques, as there have been prominent examples of individuals being re-identified by cross-referencing datasets….

With regard to open data, a culture resistant to releasing government informationappears to be driven by several similar factors, including:

A generational preference amongst public service management for maintaining secrecy of information, whereas younger generations expect that data should be made freely available;
Concerns about the quality or accuracy of information being released;
Fear that mistakes or misconduct on behalf of government employees might be exposed;
Limited understanding of the benefits that can be gained from open data; and
A lack of leadership to help drive the open data movement.

If open data policies have a similar effect on public service culture as FOI legislation, it may be that open data policies in fact hinder transparency by having a chilling effect on government decision-making for fear of what might be exposed….

These legal and cultural hurdles will pose ongoing challenges for the Turnbull government in seeking to release greater amounts of government data as open data….(More)

Can we achieve effective economic diplomacy without innovation diplomacy?

Curated on December 3, 2015August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Lisa Rauter at innovationXchange (Australia): “Increasingly innovation is a topic of discussion within Government departments; across agencies; and between governments and external organisations. It is also a strong focus in the development community. At its core, innovation is the development of new ideas, more effective technologies or approaches. Innovation leads to the application of better solutions to improve outputs.

DFAT’s innovationXchange is seeing throughout our conversations with other countries that so many of us are looking at the issue of innovation. …There is a great deal of interest in exploring how we can share information across borders, how we use that information to trigger new ideas, and how we leverage the skills and knowledge of others to achieve better outcomes. Innovation is fast becoming a common objective, something we all aim to embed in our respective organisations, but which we know we cannot do alone. The problems we seek to solve are global and a collaborative, innovative approach to solve them is needed….

This makes me think, is innovation the new diplomatic tool on which we can base new or enhanced relationships on? Can we use the shared goal of doing things better, more cost effectively harnessing the knowledge and capital that sits outside governments to not only have a better impact but bring countries closer together in a collaborative partnership? Could these collaborative partnerships even contribute to increased regional stability?

Innovation is fuelled by collaboration – taking an idea, sharing with others, using their knowledge and creativity to improve the idea, building on it, testing it, adapting and testing again. This collaborative process aligns very well with the intent behind diplomacy – the act of a state seeking toachieve its aims, in relation to those of others, through dialogue and negotiation.

This is already happening to some extent with like-mindeds, like UK and US. But innovation is about risk taking, trying new things and stepping outside of the familiar and comfortable. The emergence of new groupings, like MIKTA, and the increasing engagement of the private sector in partnering for social impact expands the opportunities to learn about other approaches and find complementary skills and knowledge.

This is all about making collaboration, co-creation and through that, innovation a way of working – an approach we can take to working with other states and other organisations. While innovation is the latest buzzword in government and in the development community, it will remain just a buzzword, easily replaced by the next trend, unless we look for opportunities to work with others to co-create and innovate to solve shared problems….(More)”

Innovation Behaviours for the Public Service

Curated on November 29, 2015August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Alex Roberts at Public Sector Innovation Unit (Australia): “If we want to encourage innovation, then we need to encourage and support the behaviours that will lead to innovative thinking and doing.

As part of the work supporting the Innovation Champions Group, we sought suggestions and advice about the behaviours that people who are doing new things need to demonstrate (or avoid). We also wanted to know what the behaviours were that were needed to be shown (or avoided) by leaders. In response we received a number of suggestions and some suggested writing or research relating to the topic – thank you to everyone who contributed.

So what did we find?

Well, there is research about the characteristics of what makes an innovator – for instance being able to connect fields and ideas that others find unrelated, questioning, and being an intense observer.

There is research that describes the key considerations for organisations seeking to innovate – such as aspiring and setting innovation targets, choosing which ideas to support and scale, the ability to accelerate and extend.

There is research that shows that trust is very important for innovation – particularly to have trust in colleagues that they have genuine care and concern as innovation is about making yourself, your ideas and your position, vulnerable.

There is work by the Canadian Conference Board on the skills you need to contribute to an organisation’s innovation performance – including looking for new ways to create value; rethinking the way things are done; assessing and managing risk; engaging others; listening to valuing diverse opinions and perspectives; and accepting feedback.

And there is extensive literature on innovative organisations, the process of innovation and about ideas and innovators. There’s also much written with advice for government innovators, including one of my favourites, the ‘Paradoxical Commandments of Government’ (“Your ideas will at best make someone else look good and at worst get you ostracized by your co-workers. Share your ideas anyway.”).

These all include some very pertinent points. However if we want to limit ourselves to a small number of behaviours, ones that might reflect the broader spread – gateway behaviours – which do we choose? What are some simple behaviours that people can adopt – the things that they can do, as opposed to descriptors of who or what they are?

The below is the ‘alpha’ version of behaviours for innovators and those supporting or leading innovation, as endorsed by the Innovation Champions Group.

For Innovators – people seeking to do something innovative

Ask questions – of others and of yourself Innovation is about changing our behaviour, the way we do things, and how we understand problems and solutions. When you question some aspect of the status quo, you open yourself to seeing different options and ways of doing things. Question assumptions, question how and why things are done the way they are, question whether there might be a better way, ask whether there might be a different way of looking at things or whether there might be others who can add insight. Use answers to those questions to build a richer understanding of the current situation, what the problems are and what might be done.
Try things – experiment a little (or a lot) Innovation is uncertain – if you knew exactly what was going to happen, then it wouldn’t be innovative. To reduce that uncertainty, you have to experiment in some way, to test the idea and how it works. The easiest way to experiment is to make the idea real or tangible in some form, such as a mock-up, a prototype or a rehearsal. This can be done quickly and at low cost, at least initially. As with an experiment, there should be openness to results that may not be what was expected or wanted, including failure, criticism or no reaction.
(Help) Tell a story – who does this matter to and why? ….

For leaders – people wanting others to do something innovative

Tell people where innovation is most needed One of the easiest ways to empower others to innovate is to let them know where it is most needed. This can help ensure that ideas that come forward will more likely fit with strategic needs and aims.
Invite in the outliers – demonstrate that diversity is valued Innovation involves new ways of looking at things, and that requires tapping into different networks and groups and experiences, different ways of working and thinking, and allowing and encouraging constructive debate. One way to foster an environment that values diversity is to actively invite in those with different perspectives, from outside and inside your organisation. Who are the outliers that represent new or different ways of understanding your world? Invite them into the conversation and show that you are open to very different insights…..(More)”