Situating Digital Self-Determination (DSD): A Comparison with Existing and Emerging Digital and Data Governance Approaches

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Sara Marcucci and Stefaan Verhulst: “In today’s increasingly complex digital landscape, traditional data governance models-such as consent-based, ownership-based, and sovereignty-based approaches-are proving insufficient to address the evolving ethical, social, and political dimensions of data use. These frameworks, often grounded in static and individualistic notions of control, struggle to keep pace with the fluidity and relational nature of contemporary data ecosystems. This paper proposes Digital Self-Determination (DSD) as a complementary and necessary evolution of existing models, offering a more participatory, adaptive, and ethically grounded approach to data governance. Centering ongoing agency, collective participation, and contextual responsiveness, DSD builds on foundational principles of consent and control while addressing their limitations. Drawing on comparisons with a range of governance models-including risk-based, compliance-oriented, principles-driven, and justice-centered frameworks-this paper highlights DSD’s unique contribution: its capacity to enable individuals and communities to actively shape how data about them is used, shared, and governed over time. In doing so, it reimagines data governance as a living, co-constructed practice grounded in trust, accountability, and care. Through this lens, the paper offers a framework for comparing different governance approaches and embedding DSD into existing paradigms, inviting policymakers and practitioners to consider how more inclusive and responsive forms of digital governance might be realized…(More)”.

Digital Technologies and Participatory Governance in Local Settings: Comparing Digital Civic Engagement Initiatives During the COVID-19 Outbreak

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Chapter by Nathalie Colasanti, Chiara Fantauzzi, Rocco Frondizi & Noemi Rossi: “Governance paradigms have undergone a deep transformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, necessitating agile, inclusive, and responsive mechanisms to address evolving challenges. Participatory governance has emerged as a guiding principle, emphasizing inclusive decision-making processes and collaboration among diverse stakeholders. In the outbreak context, digital technologies have played a crucial role in enabling participatory governance to flourish, democratizing participation, and facilitating the rapid dissemination of accurate information. These technologies have also empowered grassroots initiatives, such as civic hacking, to address societal challenges and mobilize communities for collective action. This study delves into the realm of bottom-up participatory initiatives at the local level, focusing on two emblematic cases of civic hacking experiences launched during the pandemic, the first in Wuhan, China, and the second in Italy. Through a comparative lens, drawing upon secondary sources, the aim is to analyze the dynamics, efficacy, and implications of these initiatives, shedding light on the evolving landscape of participatory governance in times of crisis. Findings underline the transformative potential of civic hacking and participatory governance in crisis response, highlighting the importance of collaboration, transparency, and inclusivity…(More)”.

DOGE comes for the data wonks

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

The Economist: “For nearly three decades the federal government has painstakingly surveyed tens of thousands of Americans each year about their health. Door-knockers collect data on the financial toll of chronic conditions like obesity and asthma, and probe the exact doses of medications sufferers take. The result, known as the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), is the single most comprehensive, nationally representative portrait of American health care, a balkanised and unwieldy $5trn industry that accounts for some 17% of GDP.

MEPS is part of a largely hidden infrastructure of government statistics collection now in the crosshairs of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). In mid-March officials at a unit of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that runs the survey told employees that DOGE had slated them for an 80-90% reduction in staff and that this would “not be a negotiation”. Since then scores of researchers have taken voluntary buyouts. Those left behind worry about the integrity of MEPS. “Very unclear whether or how we can put on MEPS” with roughly half of the staff leaving, one said. On March 27th, the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy junior, announced an overall reduction of 10,000 personnel at the department, in addition to those who took buyouts.

There are scores of underpublicised government surveys like MEPS that document trends in everything from house prices to the amount of lead in people’s blood. Many provide standard-setting datasets and insights into the world’s largest economy that the private sector has no incentive to replicate.

Even so, America’s system of statistics research is overly analogue and needs modernising. “Using surveys as the main source of information is just not working” because it is too slow and suffers from declining rates of participation, says Julia Lane, an economist at New York University. In a world where the economy shifts by the day, the lags in traditional surveys—whose results can take weeks or even years to refine and publish—are unsatisfactory. One practical reform DOGE might encourage is better integration of administrative data such as tax records and social-security filings which often capture the entire population and are collected as a matter of course.

As in so many other areas, however, DOGE’s sledgehammer is more likely to cause harm than to achieve improvements. And for all its clunkiness, America’s current system manages a spectacular feat. From Inuits in remote corners of Alaska to Spanish-speakers in the Bronx, it measures the country and its inhabitants remarkably well, given that the population is highly diverse and spread out over 4m square miles. Each month surveys from the federal government reach about 1.5m people, a number roughly equivalent to the population of Hawaii or West Virginia…(More)”.

How governments can move beyond bureaucracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Interview with Jorrit de Jong: “..Bureaucracy is not so much a system of rules, it is a system of values. It is an organizational form that governs how work gets done in accordance with principles that the sociologist Max Weber first codified: standardization, formalization, expert officialdom, specialization, hierarchy, and accountability. Add those up and you arrive at a system that values the written word; that is siloed because that’s what specialization does; that can sometimes be slow because there is a chain of command and an approval process. Standardization supports the value that it doesn’t matter who you are, who you know, what you look like when you’re applying for a permit, or who is issuing the permit: the case will be evaluated based on its merits. That is a good thing. Bureaucracy is a way to do business in a rational, impersonal, responsible and efficient way, at least in theory…

It becomes a problem when organizations start to violate their own values and lose connection with their purpose. If standardization turns into rigidity, doing justice to extenuating individual circumstances becomes hard. If formalization becomes pointless paper pushing, it defeats the purpose. And if accountability structures favor risk aversion over taking initiative, organizations can’t innovate.

Bureaucratic dysfunction occurs when the system that we’ve created ceases to produce the value that we wanted out of it. But that does not mean we have to throw away the baby with the bathwater. Can we create organizations that have the benefits of accountability, standardization and specialization without the burdens of slowness, rigidity, and silos? My answer is yes. Research we did with the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative shows how organizations can improve performance by building capabilities that make them more nimble, responsive, and user-friendly. Cities that leverage data to better understand the communities they serve and measure performance learn and improve faster. Cities that use design thinking to reinvent resident services save time and money. And cities that collaborate across organizational and sector boundaries come up with more effective solutions to urban problems…(More)”

Researching data discomfort: The case of Statistics Norway’s quest for billing data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Lisa Reutter: “National statistics offices are increasingly exploring the possibilities of utilizing new data sources to position themselves in emerging data markets. In 2022, Statistics Norway announced that the national agency will require the biggest grocers in Norway to hand over all collected billing data to produce consumer behavior statistics which had previously been produced by other sampling methods. An online article discussing this proposal sparked a surprisingly (at least to Statistics Norway) high level of interest among readers, many of whom expressed concerns about this intended change in data practice. This paper focuses on the multifaceted online discussions of the proposal, as these enable us to study citizens’ reactions and feelings towards increased data collection and emerging public-private data flows in a Nordic context. Through an explorative empirical analysis of comment sections, this paper investigates what is discussed by commenters and reflects upon why this case sparked so much interest among citizens in the first place. It therefore contributes to the growing literature of citizens’ voices in data-driven administration and to a wider discussion on how to research public feeling towards datafication. I argue that this presents an interesting case of discomfort voiced by citizens, which demonstrates the contested nature of data practices among citizens–and their ability to regard data as deeply intertwined with power and politics. This case also reminds researchers to pay attention to seemingly benign and small changes in administration beyond artificial intelligence…(More)”

Which Data Do Economists Use to Study Corruption ?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

World Bank paper: “…examines the data sources and methodologies used in economic research on corruption by analyzing 339 journal articles published in 2022 that include Journal of Economic Literature codes. The paper identifies the most commonly used data types, sources, and geographical foci, as well as whether studies primarily investigate the causes or consequences of corruption. Cross-country composite indicators remain the dominant measure, while single country studies more frequently utilize administrative data. Articles in ranked journals are more likely to employ administrative and experimental data and focus on the causes of corruption. The broader dataset of 882 articles highlights the significant academic interest in corruption across disciplines, particularly in political science and public policy. The findings raise concerns about the limited use of novel data sources and the relative neglect of research on the causes of corruption, underscoring the need for a more integrated approach within the field of economics…(More)”.

What Autocrats Want From Academics: Servility

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Anna Dumont: “Since Trump’s inauguration, the university community has received a good deal of “messaging” from academic leadership. We’ve received emails from our deans and university presidents; we’ve sat in department meetings regarding the “developing situation”; and we’ve seen the occasional official statement or op-ed or comment in the local newspaper. And the unfortunate takeaway from all this is that our leaders’ strategy rests on a disturbing and arbitrary distinction. The public-facing language of the university — mission statements, programming, administrative structures, and so on — has nothing at all to do with the autonomy of our teaching and research, which, they assure us, they hold sacrosanct. Recent concessions — say, the disappearance of the website of the Women’s Center — are concerning, they admit, but ultimately inconsequential to our overall working lives as students and scholars.

History, however, shows that public-facing statements are deeply consequential, and one episode from the 20-year march of Italian fascism strikes me as especially instructive. On October 8, 1931, a law went into effect requiring, as a condition of their employment, every Italian university professor to sign an oath pledging their loyalty to the government of Benito Mussolini. Out of over 1,200 professors in the country, only 12 refused.

Today, those who refused are known simply as “I Dodici”: the Twelve. They were a scholar of Middle Eastern languages, an organic chemist, a doctor of forensic medicine, three lawyers, a mathematician, a theologian, a surgeon, a historian of ancient Rome, a philosopher of Kantian ethics, and one art historian. Two, Francesco Ruffini and Edoardo Ruffini Avondo, were father and son. Four were Jewish. All of them were immediately fired…(More)”

2025 Ratings for Digital Participation Tools

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

People-Powered Report: The latest edition of our Digital Participation Tool Ratings evaluates 30 comprehensive tools that have been used to support digital participation all over the world. This year’s ratings offer more information and insights on each tool to help you select a suitable tool for your context and needs. We also researched how AI tools and features fit into the current digital participation landscape. 

For the last four years, People Powered has been committed to providing governments and organizations with digital participation guidance, to enable people leading participatory programs and citizen engagement efforts to effectively select and use digital participation tools by providing guidance and ratings for tools. These ratings are the latest edition of the evaluations first launched in 2022. Further guidance about how to use these tools is available from our Guide to Digital Participation Platforms and Online Training on Digital Participation…(More)”.

Political Responsibility and Tech Governance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Jude Browne: “Not a day goes by without a new story on the perils of technology: from increasingly clever machines that surpass human capability and comprehension to genetic technologies capable of altering the human genome in ways we cannot predict. How can we respond? What should we do politically? Focusing on the rise of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), and the impact of new reproductive and genetic technologies (Repro-tech), Jude Browne questions who has political responsibility for the structural impacts of these technologies and how we might go about preparing for the far-reaching societal changes they may bring. This thought-provoking book tackles some of the most pressing issues of our time and offers a compelling vision for how we can respond to these challenges in a way that is both politically feasible and socially responsible…(More)”.

Getting the Public on Side: How to Make Reforms Acceptable by Design

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

OECD Report: “Public acceptability is a crucial condition for the successful implementation of reforms. The challenges raised by the green, digital and demographic transitions call for urgent and ambitious policy action. Despite this, governments often struggle to build sufficiently broad public support for the reforms needed to promote change. Better information and effective public communication have a key role to play. But policymakers cannot get the public to choose the side of reform without a proper understanding of people’s views and how they can help strengthen the policy process.

Perceptual and behavioural data provide an important source of insights on the perceptions, attitudes and preferences that constitute the “demand-side” of reform. The interdisciplinary OECD Expert Group on New Measures of the Public Acceptability of Reforms was set up in 2021 to take stock of these insights and explore their potential for improving policy. This report reflects the outcomes of the Expert Group’s work. It looks at and assesses (i) the available data and what they can tell policymakers about people’s views; (ii) the analytical frameworks through which these data are interpreted; and (iii) the policy tools through which considerations of public acceptability are integrated into the reform process…(More)”.