Plurality: The Future of Collaborative Technology and Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by E. Glen Weyl, Audrey Tang and ⿻ Community: “Technology and democracy today are at odds: technology reinforces authoritarian oversight and corrupts democratic institutions, while democracies fight back with restrictive regulation and public sector conservatism. However, this conflict is not inevitable. This is the consequence of choosing to invest in technologies such as AI and cryptocurrencies at the expense of democratic principles. In some places, such as the Ether community, Estonia, Colorado, and especially Taiwan, the focus has shifted to technologies that promote pluralistic collaboration, and have witnessed the co-prosperity of both democracy and technology. Written by the paradigm leaders of the Plurality, this book shows for the first time how every technologist, policymaker, business leader, and activist can use it to build a more collaborative, diverse, and productive democratic world.

When Uber arrived in Taiwan, it sparked a lot of controversy, as it has in most parts of the world. But instead of fueling the controversy, social media, with the help of vTaiwan, a platform developed with the help of cabinet ministers, encouraged citizens to share their feelings and engage in deep conversations with thousands of participants to brainstorm how to regulate online ride-hailing services. The technology, which uses statistical tools often associated with AI to aggregate opinions, allows each participant to quickly view a clear representation of all people’s viewpoints and provide feedback on their own thoughts. From the outset, a broadly supported viewpoint is brought to the forefront among a diverse group of people with different perspectives, creating a rough consensus that ensures the benefits of this new form of ridesharing while protecting the rights of the drivers, and is implemented by the government. This process has been used in Taiwan to solve dozens of controversial problems and has quickly spread to governments, cooperatives, and blockchain communities around the world…(More)”.

The Unintended Consequences of Data Standardization

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Cathleen Clerkin: “The benefits of data standardization within the social sector—and indeed just about any industry—are multiple, important, and undeniable. Access to the same type of data over time lends the ability to track progress and increase accountability. For example, over the last 20 years, my organization, Candid, has tracked grantmaking by the largest foundations to assess changes in giving trends. The data allowed us to demonstrate philanthropy’s disinvestment in historically Black colleges and universities. Data standardization also creates opportunities for benchmarking—allowing individuals and organizations to assess how they stack up to their colleagues and competitors. Moreover, large amounts of standardized data can help predict trends in the sector. Finally—and perhaps most importantly to the social sector—data standardization invariably reduces the significant reporting burdens placed on nonprofits.

Yet, for all of its benefits, data is too often proposed as a universal cure that will allow us to unequivocally determine the success of social change programs and processes. The reality is far more complex and nuanced. Left unchecked, the unintended consequences of data standardization pose significant risks to achieving a more effective, efficient, and equitable social sector…(More)”.

Sludge Toolkit

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

About: “Sludge audits are a way to identify, quantify and remove sludge (unnecessary frictions) from government services. Using the NSW Government sludge audit method, you can

  • understand where sludge is making your government service difficult to access
  • quantify the impact of sludge on the community
  • know where and how you can improve your service using behavioural science
  • measure the impact of your service improvements…(More)”.

This City Pilots Web3 Quadratic Funding for Public Infrastructure

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Makoto Takahiro: “The city of Split, Croatia is piloting an innovative new system for deciding how to fund municipal infrastructure projects. Called “quadratic funding,” the mechanism aims to fairly account for both public and private preferences when allocating limited budget resources.

A coalition of organizations including BlockSplit, Funding the Commons, Gitcoin, and the City of Split launched the Municipal Quadratic Funding Initiative in September 2023. The project goals include implementing quadratic funding for prioritizing public spending, utilizing web3 tools to increase transparency and participation, and demonstrating the potential of these technologies to improve legacy processes.

If successful, the model could scale to other towns and cities or inspire additional quadratic funding experiments.

The partners believe that the transparency and configurability of blockchain systems make them well-suited to quadratic funding applications.

Quadratic funding mathematically accounts for the intensity of demand for public goods. Groups can create projects which individuals can support financially. The amount of money ultimately directed to each proposal is based on the square of support received. This means that projects attracting larger numbers of smaller contributions can compete with those receiving fewer large donations.

In this way, quadratic funding aims to reflect both willingness to pay and breadth of support in funding decisions. It attempts to break tendency towards corruption where influential groups lobby for their niche interests. The goal is a fairer allocation suited to the whole community’s preferences.

The initiative will build on open source quadratic funding infrastructure already deployed for other uses like funding public goods on Ethereum. Practical web3 tools can help teadministration manage funding rounds and disburse awards…(More)”.

Designing an instrument for scaling public sector innovations

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Mirte A R van Hout, Rik B Braams, Paul Meijer, and Albert J Meijer: “Governments worldwide invest in developing and diffusing innovations to deal with wicked problems. While experiments and pilots flourish, governments struggle to successfully scale innovations. Public sector scaling remains understudied, and scholarly suggestions for scaling trajectories are lacking. Following a design approach, this research develops an academically grounded, practice-oriented scaling instrument for planning and reflecting on the scaling of public sector innovations. We design this instrument based on the academic literature, an empirical analysis of three scaling projects at the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management, and six focus groups with practitioners. This research proposes a context-specific and iterative understanding of scaling processes and contributes a typology of scaling barriers and an additional scaling strategy to the literature. The presented instrument increases our academic understanding of scaling and enables teams of policymakers, in cooperation with stakeholders, to plan and reflect on a context-specific scaling pathway for public sector innovations…(More)”.

Digital transformation of public services

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Policy Brief by Interreg Europe: “In a world of digital advancements, the public sector must undergo a comprehensive digital transformation to enhance service delivery efficiency, improve governance, foster innovation and increase citizen satisfaction.

The European Union is playing a leading role and has been actively developing policy frameworks for the digitalisation of the public sector. This policy brief provides a general overview of the most relevant initiatives, regulations, and strategies of the European Union, which are shaping Europe’s digital future.

The European Union’s strategy for the digital transformation of public services is centred on enhancing accessibility, efficiency, and user-centricity. This strategy also promotes interoperability among Member States, fostering seamless cross-border interactions. Privacy and security measures are integral to building trust in digital public services, with a focus on data protection and cybersecurity. Ultimately, the goal is to create a cohesive, digitally advanced public service ecosystem throughout the EU, with the active participation of the private sector (GovTech).

This policy brief outlines key policy improvements, good practices and recommendations, stemming from the Interreg Europe projects BEST DIH, BETTER, ENAIBLER, Next2Met, Digital Regions, Digitourism, Inno Provement, ERUDITE, iBuy and Carpe Digem, to inform and guide policymakers to embark upon digital transformation processes successfully, as well as encouraging greater interregional cooperation…(More)”.

Objectivity vs affect: how competing forms of legitimacy can polarize public debate in data-driven public consultation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Alison Powell: “How do data and objectivity become politicized? How do processes intended to include citizen voices instead push them into social media that intensify negative expression? This paper examines the possibility and limits of ‘agonistic data practices’ (Crooks & Currie, 2021) examining how data-driven consultation practices create competing forms of legitimacy for quantifiable knowledge and affective lived experience. Drawing on a two-year study of a private Facebook group self-presenting as a supportive space for working-class people critical of the development of ‘low-traffic neighbourhoods’ (LTNs), the paper reveals how the dynamics of ‘affective polarization’ associated the use of data with elite and exclusionary politics. Participants addressed this by framing their online contributions as ‘vernacular data’ and also by associating numerical data with exclusion and inequality. Over time the strong statements of feeling began to support content of a conspiratorial nature, reflected at the social level of discourse in the broader media environment where stories of strong feeling gain legitimacy in right-wing sources. The paper concludes that ideologies of dataism and practices of datafication may create conditions for political extremism to develop when the potential conditions of ‘agonistic data practices’ are not met, and that consultation processes must avoid overly valorizing data and calculable knowledge if they wish to retain democratic accountability…(More)”.

AI and the Future of Government: Unexpected Effects and Critical Challenges

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Policy Brief by Tiago C. Peixoto, Otaviano Canuto, and Luke Jordan: “Based on observable facts, this policy paper explores some of the less- acknowledged yet critically important ways in which artificial intelligence (AI) may affect the public sector and its role. Our focus is on those areas where AI’s influence might be understated currently, but where it has substantial implications for future government policies and actions.

We identify four main areas of impact that could redefine the public sector role, require new answers from it, or both. These areas are the emergence of a new language-based digital divide, jobs displacement in the public administration, disruptions in revenue mobilization, and declining government responsiveness.

This discussion not only identifies critical areas but also underscores the importance of transcending conventional approaches in tackling them. As we examine these challenges, we shed light on their significance, seeking to inform policymakers and stakeholders about the nuanced ways in which AI may quietly, yet profoundly, alter the public sector landscape…(More)”.

The Cambridge Handbook of Facial Recognition in the Modern State

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Rita Matulionyte and Monika Zalnieriute: “In situations ranging from border control to policing and welfare, governments are using automated facial recognition technology (FRT) to collect taxes, prevent crime, police cities and control immigration. FRT involves the processing of a person’s facial image, usually for identification, categorisation or counting. This ambitious handbook brings together a diverse group of legal, computer, communications, and social and political science scholars to shed light on how FRT has been developed, used by public authorities, and regulated in different jurisdictions across five continents. Informed by their experiences working on FRT across the globe, chapter authors analyse the increasing deployment of FRT in public and private life. The collection argues for the passage of new laws, rules, frameworks, and approaches to prevent harms of FRT in the modern state and advances the debate on scrutiny of power and accountability of public authorities which use FRT…(More)”.

Designing Digital Voting Systems for Citizens

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Joshua C. Yang et al: “Participatory Budgeting (PB) has evolved into a key democratic instrument for resource allocation in cities. Enabled by digital platforms, cities now have the opportunity to let citizens directly propose and vote on urban projects, using different voting input and aggregation rules. However, the choices cities make in terms of the rules of their PB have often not been informed by academic studies on voter behaviour and preferences. Therefore, this work presents the results of behavioural experiments where participants were asked to vote in a fictional PB setting. We identified approaches to designing PB voting that minimise cognitive load and enhance the perceived fairness and legitimacy of the digital process from the citizens’ perspective. In our study, participants preferred voting input formats that are more expressive (like rankings and distributing points) over simpler formats (like approval voting). Participants also indicated a desire for the budget to be fairly distributed across city districts and project categories. Participants found the Method of Equal Shares voting rule to be fairer than the conventional Greedy voting rule. These findings offer actionable insights for digital governance, contributing to the development of fairer and more transparent digital systems and collective decision-making processes for citizens…(More)”.