Steering through capability

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Geoff Mulgan: ‘… shows why governments should steer and how they can show the way for our societies to overcome the transformational challenges that they are facing in the current century, from the climate crisis to aging populations.

The paper’s focus is on “steering through capability” – not using only tools of downward control, but rather enhancing the capabilities and problem-solving skills of other tiers of government, citizens and businesses. To do this, the paper describes how governments can combine direction with experimentation, linking multiple partners through so called ‘constellations’; showing how these can be supported by ‘intelligence assemblies’ that orchestrate rapid learning and mobilization of data, and the curation of knowledge commons. These are summarized in to five keys for the future of steering – potent tools for any government seeking to lead our societies through the challenges ahead….(More)”.

Managing Organizations to Sustain Passion for Public Service

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by James Perry: “Almost three decades ago, James Perry created the first survey instrument to measure public service motivation. Since then, social and behavioural scientists have intensively studied the motivating power of public service. This research relating to public service motivation, altruism and prosocial motivation and behaviour has overturned widespread assumptions grounded in market-orientated perspectives and produced a critical mass of new knowledge for transforming the motivation of public employees, civil service policies and management practices. This is the first study to look systematically across the different streams of research. Furthermore, it is the first study to synthesize the research across the applied questions that public organizations and their leaders confront, including: how to recruit ethical and committed staff; how to design meaningful public work; how to create work environments that support prosocial behaviour; how to compensate employees to sustain their public service; how to socialise employees for public service missions; and how to lead employees to engage in causes greater than themselves….(More)”

Enhancing Government Effectiveness and Transparency: The Fight Against Corruption

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
Image

Report by The World Bank: “… has undertaken a fresh assessment of challenges governments face in tackling corruption, what instruments tend to work and why, and how incremental progress is being achieved in specific country contexts. This flagship report shows positive examples of how countries are progressing in their fight against corruption. It is part of a series of initiatives being led by the Equitable Growth, Finance & Institutions (EFI) Vice Presidency to reaffirm the Bank’s commitment to anticorruption. The report follows the Anticorruption Initiatives completed last December. It also informs our pending work on the Bank’s Anticorruption Action Plan – on how we will be implementing anticorruption work going forward.

The report draws on the collective experts of staff across the World Bank to develop ways for enhancing the effectiveness of anti-corruption strategies in selected sectors and through targeted policy instruments. It covers issues, challenges and trends in five key thematic areas: Public Procurement; Public Infrastructure; State Owned Enterprises; Customs Administration; and Delivery of Services in selected sectors. The report also focuses on cross-cutting themes such as transparency, citizen engagement and Gov-tech; selected tools to build integrity; and the role and effectiveness of anticorruption agencies, tax and audit administrations, and justice systems. It features a country case study on Malaysia that traces the history of a country’s anti-corruption efforts over the last few decades…(More)”.

Policy priority inference: A computational framework to analyze the allocation of resources for the sustainable development goals

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Omar A. Guerrero and Gonzalo Castañeda: “We build a computational framework to support the planning of development and the evaluation of budgetary strategies toward the 2030 Agenda. The methodology takes into account some of the complexities of the political economy underpinning the policymaking process: the multidimensionality of development, the interlinkages between these dimensions, and the inefficiencies of policy interventions, as well as institutional factors that promote or discourage these inefficiencies. The framework is scalable and usable even with limited publicly available information: development-indicator data. However, it can be further refined as more data becomes available, for example, on public expenditure. We demonstrate its usage through an application for the Mexican federal government. For this, we infer historical policy priorities, that is, the non-observable allocations of transformative resources that generated past changes in development indicators. We also show how to use the tool to assess the feasibility of development goals, to measure policy coherence, and to identify accelerators. Overall, the framework and its computational tools allow policymakers and other stakeholders to embrace a complexity (and a quantitative) view to tackle the challenges of the Sustainable Development Goals….(More)”.

Berlin Declaration on Digital Society and Value-based Digital Government

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

European Commission: “…The Declaration follows up on the success of the Tallinn Declaration on eGovernment, which endorsed the key principles for digital public services put forward in the eGovernment Action Plan 2016-2020. The Berlin Declaration takes the user-centricity principles formulated in the Tallinn Declaration a step further by strengthening the pioneering role of public administrations in driving a value-based digital transformation of our European societies.

The Declaration acknowledges the public sector as an essential element for the European Single Market and a driving force for new and innovative technological solutions for public services and societal challenges. It emphasises that public authorities at all levels must lead by example to strengthen the tenets of the European Union.

To do so it sets out seven key principles with related policy action lines and national and EU level:

  1. Validity and respect of fundamental rights and democratic values in the digital sphere;
  2. Social participation and digital inclusion to shape the digital world;
  3. Empowerment and digital literacy, allowing all citizens to participate in the digital sphere;
  4. Trust and security in digital government interactions, allowing everyone to navigate the digital world safely, authenticate and be digitally recognised within the EU conveniently;
  5. Digital sovereignty and interoperability, as a key in ensuring the ability of citizens and public administrations to make decisions and act self-determined in the digital world;
  6. Human-centred systems and innovative technologies in the public sector, strengthening its pioneering role in the research on secure and trustworthy technology design;
  7. A resilient and sustainable digital society, preserving our natural foundations of life in line with the Green Deal and using digital technologies to enhance the sustainability of our health systems….(More)”.

Digital Politics in Canada: Promises and Realities

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Tamara A. Small and Harold J. Jansen: “Digital Politics in Canada addresses a significant gap in the scholarly literature on both media in Canada and Canadian political science. Using a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, historical, and focused analysis of Canadian digital politics, this book covers the full scope of actors in the Canadian political system, including traditional political institutions of the government, elected officials, political parties, and the mass media. At a time when issues of inclusion are central to political debate, this book features timely chapters on Indigenous people, women, and young people, and takes an in-depth look at key issues of online surveillance and internet voting. Ideal for a wide-ranging course on the impact of digital technology on the Canadian political system, this book encourages students to critically engage in discussions about the future of Canadian politics and democracy….(More)”.

COVID-19 Pushes Digital Services from Luxury to Necessity

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Zack Quintance at GovTech: “So much of American life was pushed out of physical spaces and onto the Internet this year, including the vast majority of local government services. Following the outbreak of COVID-19 and resultant social distancing guidelines, seemingly overnight it became dangerous to wait in line at city hall, or to interact with a public servant in close proximity across the space of a traditional counter.

As a result, long-simmering governmental efforts to modernize and make services digital in 2020 were supercharged. For digital government services, the danger of the virus was like a turbo boost for a race car that had been lazily chugging along. Indeed, public-sector entities at state and local levels have sought to catch up to private companies online for years, struggling to offer a modern customer experience to constituents with projects that have ranged from online permit renewal to 24-hour chatbots. With the pandemic, providing digital services fast moved from luxury to necessity….

A great example of the former at the state level took place in Vermont, specifically within that state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). The Vermont DMV was already working to launch a new online driver’s license renewal platform, one that would enable residents there to avoid in-person trips to the office. The pandemic made the timing of that launch ideal, finally giving users a digital option they could use from home.

And the Vermont DMV is far from alone. There were others at the state level that worked on and debuted new online processes as well. Maryland, for example, managed to stand up a new online grant application in the early days of the crisis, doing so in just eight hours. Digitization efforts like this have traditionally taken far longer, but agencywide buy-in was fostered here by COVID-19. Armed with this, the Maryland Department of Information Technology (DoIT) was able to rapidly collaborate with the state’s Department of Commerce to add new small business grant application functionality to a platform the IT shop had launched for a different purpose back in early 2018.

At the city level, Buffalo, N.Y., managed the similarly speedy task of transitioning its 311 infrastructure to be remote-operated as its city staff moved to work-from-home operations. In that instance, City Hall was vacated in the service of social distancing on a Friday, and by the following Monday, the IT shop had 311 up and running again via remote operation, doing so again with a collaboration, this time with the University of Buffalo and Cisco….(More)”.

The Politics of Technology in Latin America

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Avery Plaw, Barbara Carvalho Gurgel and David Ramírez Plascencia: “This book analyses the arrival of emerging and traditional information and technology for public and economic use in Latin America. It focuses on the governmental, economic and security issues and the study of the complex relationship between citizens and government.

The book is divided into three parts:

• ‘Digital data and privacy, prospects and barriers’ centers on the debates among the right of privacy and the loss of intimacy in the Internet,

• ‘Homeland security and human rights’ focuses on how novel technologies such as drones and autonomous weapons systems reconfigure the strategies of police authorities and organized crime,

• ‘Labor Markets, digital media and emerging technologies’ emphasize the legal, economic and social perils and challenges caused by the increased presence of social media, blockchain-based applications, artificial intelligence and automation technologies in the Latin American economy….(More)”.

Civic Technologies: Research, Practice and Open Challenges

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Pablo Aragon, Adriana Alvarado Garcia, Christopher A. Le Dantec, Claudia Flores-Saviaga, and Jorge Saldivar: “Over the last years, civic technology projects have emerged around the world to advance open government and community action. Although Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) communities have shown a growing interest in researching issues around civic technologies, yet most research still focuses on projects from the Global North. The goal of this workshop is, therefore, to advance CSCW research by raising awareness for the ongoing challenges and open questions around civic technology by bridging the gap between researchers and practitioners from different regions.

The workshop will be organized around three central topics: (1) discuss how the local context and infrastructure affect the design, implementation, adoption, and maintenance of civic technology; (2) identify key elements of the configuration of trust among government, citizenry, and local organizations and how these elements change depending on the sociopolitical context where community engagement takes place; (3) discover what methods and strategies are best suited for conducting research on civic technologies in different contexts. These core topics will be covered across sessions that will initiate in-depth discussions and, thereby, stimulate collaboration between the CSCW research community and practitioners of civic technologies from both Global North and South….(More)”.

Data Disappeared

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Samanth Subramanian: “Whenever President Donald Trump is questioned about why the United States has nearly three times more coronavirus cases than the entire European Union, or why hundreds of Americans are still dying every day, he whips out one standard comment. We find so many cases, he contends, because we test so many people. The remark typifies Trump’s deep distrust of data: his wariness of what it will reveal, and his eagerness to distort it. In April, when he refused to allow coronavirus-stricken passengers off the Grand Princess cruise liner and onto American soil for medical treatment, he explained: “I like the numbers where they are. I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship.” Unable—or unwilling—to fix the problem, Trump’s instinct is to fix the numbers instead.

The administration has failed on so many different fronts in its handling of the coronavirus, creating the overall impression of sheer mayhem. But there is a common thread that runs through these government malfunctions. Precise, transparent data is crucial in the fight against a pandemic—yet through a combination of ineptness and active manipulation, the government has depleted and corrupted the key statistics that public health officials rely on to protect us.

In mid-July, just when the U.S. was breaking and rebreaking its own records for daily counts of new coronavirus cases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found itself abruptly relieved of its customary duty of collating national numbers on COVID-19 patients. Instead, the Department of Health and Human Services instructed hospitals to funnel their information to the government via TeleTracking, a small Tennessee firm started by a real estate entrepreneur who has frequently donated to the Republican Party. For a while, past data disappeared from the CDC’s website entirely, and although it reappeared after an outcry, it was never updated thereafter. The TeleTracking system was riddled with errors, and the newest statistics sometimes appeared after delays. This has severely limited the ability of public health officials to determine where new clusters of COVID-19 are blooming, to notice demographic patterns in the spread of the disease, or to allocate ICU beds to those who need them most.

To make matters more confusing still, Jared Kushner moved to start a separate coronavirus surveillance system run out of the White House and built by health technology giants—burdening already-overwhelmed officials and health care experts with a needless stream of queries. Kushner’s assessments often contradicted those of agencies working on the ground. When Andrew Cuomo, New York’s governor, asked for 30,000 ventilators, Kushner claimed the state didn’t need them: “I’m doing my own projections, and I’ve gotten a lot smarter about this.”…(More)”.