People’s Plan for Nature

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

About: “The nature crisis affects everyone, and we believe everyone should have a say in how we solve it. The People’s Plan for Nature is the UK’s biggest ever conversation about the future of nature.

The People’s Plan for Nature will include recommendations for governments (local and national), food and farming businesses, non-governmental organisations, communities, and individuals.
 
These recommendations will be the outcome of the People’s Assembly for Nature, a citizens’ assembly that will run as part of the project. This assembly will bring together a group of people from all walks of life to have an honest conversation, find common ground and make recommendations for the protection and restoration of nature in the UK.
 
This will ensure the People’s Plan for Nature is rooted in the values, ideas and experiences of people from all corners of the UK…(More)”.

Bad Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Georgina Sturge; “Our politicians make vital decisions and declarations every day that rely on official data. But should all statistics be trusted?

In BAD DATA, House of Commons Library statistician Georgina Sturge draws back the curtain on how governments of the past and present have been led astray by figures littered with inconsistency, guesswork and uncertainty.

Discover how a Hungarian businessman’s bright idea caused half a million people to go missing from UK migration statistics. Find out why it’s possible for two politicians to disagree over whether poverty has gone up or down, using the same official numbers, and for both to be right at the same time. And hear about how policies like ID cards, super-casinos and stopping ex-convicts from reoffending failed to live up to their promise because they were based on shaky data.

With stories that range from the troubling to the empowering to the downright absurd, BAD DATA reveals secrets from the usually closed-off world of policy-making. It also suggests how – once we understand the human story behind the numbers – we can make more informed choices about who to trust, and when…(More)”.

The Use of Data Science in a National Statistical Office

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by  Sevgui Erman, Eric Rancourt, Yanick Beaucage, and Andre Loranger: “Objective statistical information is vital to an open and democratic society. It provides a solid foundation so that informed decisions can be made by our elected representatives, businesses, unions, and non-profit organizations, as well as individual citizens. There is a great shift towards a more virtual and digital economy and society. The traditional official statistical systems are centered on surveys, and must be adapted to this new digital reality. National statistical offices have been increasingly embracing non-survey data sources along with data science methods to better serve society.

This paper provides a blueprint for the application of data science in a government organization. It describes how data science enables innovation and the delivery of new high-value, high-quality, relevant, and trusted products that reflect the ever-evolving needs of our society and economy. We discuss practical operational considerations and impactful data science applications that supported the work of Statistics Canada’s analysts and front-line health agencies during the pandemic. We also discuss the innovative use of scanner data in lieu of survey data for large business respondents in the retail industry. We will describe computer vision methodologies, including machine learning models used to detect the start of buildings construction from satellite imagery, greenhouse area and greenhouse production, as well as crop types detection. Data science and machine learning methods have tremendous potential, and their ethical use is of primary importance. We conclude the paper with a forward-facing view of responsible data science use in statistical production.

Democracy by Design: Perspectives for Digitally Assisted, Participatory Upgrades of Society

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Dirk Helbing et al: “The technological revolution, particularly the availability of more data and more powerful computational tools, has led to the emergence of a new scientific area called Computational Diplomacy. Our work focuses on a popular subarea of it. In recent years, there has been a surge of interest in using digital technologies to promote more participatory forms of democracy. While there are numerous potential benefits to using digital tools to enhance democracy, significant challenges must be addressed. It is essential to ensure that digital technologies are used in an accessible, equitable, and fair manner rather than reinforcing existing power imbalances. This paper investigates how digital tools can be used to help design more democratic societies by investigating three key research areas: (1) the role of digital technologies in facilitating civic engagement in collective decision-making; (2) the use of digital tools to improve transparency and accountability in gover-nance; and (3) the potential for digital technologies to enable the formation of more inclusive and representative democracies. We argue that more research on how digital technologies can be used to support democracy upgrade is needed, and we make some recommendations for future research in this direction…(More)”.

Artificial intelligence in government: Concepts, standards, and a unified framework

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Vincent J. Straub, Deborah Morgan, Jonathan Bright, Helen Margetts: “Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) hold the promise of improving government. Given the advanced capabilities of AI applications, it is critical that these are embedded using standard operational procedures, clear epistemic criteria, and behave in alignment with the normative expectations of society. Scholars in multiple domains have subsequently begun to conceptualize the different forms that AI systems may take, highlighting both their potential benefits and pitfalls. However, the literature remains fragmented, with researchers in social science disciplines like public administration and political science, and the fast-moving fields of AI, ML, and robotics, all developing concepts in relative isolation. Although there are calls to formalize the emerging study of AI in government, a balanced account that captures the full breadth of theoretical perspectives needed to understand the consequences of embedding AI into a public sector context is lacking. Here, we unify efforts across social and technical disciplines by using concept mapping to identify 107 different terms used in the multidisciplinary study of AI. We inductively sort these into three distinct semantic groups, which we label the (a) operational, (b) epistemic, and (c) normative domains. We then build on the results of this mapping exercise by proposing three new multifaceted concepts to study AI-based systems for government (AI-GOV) in an integrated, forward-looking way, which we call (1) operational fitness, (2) epistemic completeness, and (3) normative salience. Finally, we put these concepts to work by using them as dimensions in a conceptual typology of AI-GOV and connecting each with emerging AI technical measurement standards to encourage operationalization, foster cross-disciplinary dialogue, and stimulate debate among those aiming to reshape public administration with AI…(More)”.

Evaluating Social Innovation Prototypes

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Guide by Social Innovation Canada: “…practical resource for those involved with social research and development and who would like to create, test, and learn from prototypes. This how-to guide explores 12 principles to guide the testing process, five key steps for carrying out the process, and includes tables that summarize a variety of prototyping techniques, evaluation methods, and sampling strategies. Learn how to effectively use prototypes and test promising solutions to address social challenges….(More)”

Tech-Fuelled Inequality Could Catalyze Populism 2.0

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Kyle Hiebert: “Geopolitical crises, looming climate chaos and the relentless expansion of surveillance capitalism are driving the development of the technologies of tomorrow — artificial intelligence (AI), semiconductors, green energy, big data, advanced robotics, virtual and augmented reality, nanotechnology, quantum computing, the Internet of Things and more.

Each of these tools holds tremendous potential to improve lives and help solve the world’s biggest problems. But technological change always produces winners and losers by giving rise to new concentrations of power and novel forms of inequality. For example, a study by the US National Bureau of Economic Research found that between 50 and 70 percent of lost wages in America from 1980 to 2016 stemmed from automation — far more than from aggressive offshoring or the withering of labour unions.

However, automation has brought about new occupations as well, evidenced by the absence of mass joblessness in the United States over the same period. Despite the lost wages, the US unemployment rate from 1993 to 2019 stayed around or below seven percent when excluding a four-year recovery following the exogenous shock of the 2008 financial crisis. Productivity has also increased by nearly 62 percent since 1979. But the wages of American workers have failed to keep pace, rising only 17.5 percent, signalling a deep disconnect in recent history between new technologies being adopted and the average worker being better off as a result.

Similar circumstances across the democratic world have provoked severe political consequences over the past decade. Disaffected populations caught on the wrong side of economic transformations and alienated by the accompanying social changes spurred by globalization have aligned themselves with populists pitching simplistic solutions to complex problems. Polarization has skyrocketed; international cooperation has frayed.

As the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution accelerates in coming years, upending how economies and societies operate, a new form of populism rooted in tech-fuelled disparities may eventually consume democratic nations. To avoid this outcome, governments must get serious about harnessing new technologies to make the democratic process more agile and responsive to voters’ frustrations…(More)”

Who rules the deliberative party? Examining the Agora case in Belgium

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Nino Junius and Joke Matthieu: “In recent years, pessimism about plebiscitary intra-party democracy has been challenged by assembly-based models of intra-party democracy. However, research has yet to explore the emergence of new power dynamics in parties originating from the implementation of deliberative practices in their intra-party democracy. We investigate how deliberative democratization reshuffles power relations within political parties through a case study of Agora, an internally deliberative movement party in Belgium. Employing a process-tracing approach using original interview and participant observation data, we argue that while plebiscitary intra-party democracy shifts power towards passive members prone to elite domination, our case suggests that deliberative intra-party democracy shifts power towards active members that are more likely to be critical of elites…(More)”

The role and power of re-patterning in systems change

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by Griffith University Yunus Centre: “In simple terms, patterns are interconnected behaviours, relationships and structures that together make up a picture of what ‘common practice’ looks like and how it is ultimately experienced by people interacting with and in a system.

If we take Public Services in the twenty-first century here are some examples.

Public Service organisations have most often been formed around concepts such as universal access, service delivery, social safety nets, and public provision of critical infrastructure. Built into these elements are patterns, like:

Patterns of relationships: based on objectivity, universalism, professional relationships.

Patterns of resourcing: focused on rationing, efficiency, programmatic resource flows.

Patterns of power: centred on professional expertise, needs assessments, deserving access to spaces and services.

On the surface, these are not necessarily negative and there have doubtless been many successes enabling broad access to services and infrastructure.

It’s also true though that there remain many who have not benefited, who have missed out on access or opportunity, and who have actually been harmed by and within the system.

What is needed is a foundation for public systems that moves away from goals of access to more and better servicing of communities, and towards goals around learning how we can promote patterns of thriving, aspiration, success and ‘wellbeing’…(More)”.

A graphic that shows an organic shape much like mycelium representing how everyday behaviours, mindsets, structures, practices, interactions, values are interconnected and fractal. It shows how we only SEE a tiny bit of this on the surface but most of it is invisible.
The organic patterns of systems. The Yunus Centre Griffith and Auckland Co-Design Lab 2022

The Law As a Conversation among Equals

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Roberto Gargarella: “In a time of disenchantment with democracy, massive social protests and the ‘erosion’ of the system of checks and balances, this book proposes to reflect upon the main problems of our constitutional democracies from a particular regulative ideal: that of the conversation among equals. It examines the structural character of the current democratic crisis, and the way in which, from its origins, constitutions were built around a ‘discomfort with democracy’. In this sense, the book critically explores the creation of different restraints upon majority rule and collective debate: constitutional rights that are presented as limits to (and not, fundamentally, as a product of) democratic debate; an elitist system of judicial review; a checks and balances scheme that discourages, rather than promotes, dialogue between the different branches of power; etc. Finally, the book proposes a dignified constitutional democracy aimed at enabling fraternal conversation within the framework of a community of equals…(More)”.