Beyond Benchmarking: Why Countries should Ignore International Rankings

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Robyn Klingler-Vidra and Yu-Ching Kuo: “In Ranking the World, Alexander Cooley and Jack Snyder explore the rise of benchmarking and rankings of countries. They indicate more than 95 such rankings by the time their book was published in 2016. Today, with the success of country rankings such as the Economic Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index and the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Rankings, that number has grown two-fold, as more than 200 rankings systems compare countries for their democratic quality, investor friendliness, economic competitiveness, and more.

But, international benchmarking methods are problematic; they reflect politics, suffer from incomplete coverage, sample size and bias challenges, and institutional bias. Why, then, do countries increasingly rely on them to inform their policymaking? We employ Taiwan, and entrepreneurship rankings, as a lens to explore the accuracy of benchmarking methodologies, and the offer a new way forward. One that is informed by local evidence rather than global rankings, and as such, is better positioned to solve the ecosystem’s pressing challenges…(More)”.

Policy Building Blocks, And How We Talk About The Law

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Cathy Gellis: “One of the fundamental difficulties in doing policy advocacy, including, and perhaps especially tech policy advocacy, is that we are not only speaking of technology, which can often seem inscrutable and scary to non-experts, but law, which itself is an intricate and often opaque system. This complicated nature of our legal system can present challenges, because policy involves an application of law to technology, and we can’t apply it well when we don’t understand how the law works. (It’s also hard to do well when we don’t understand how the technology works, either, but this post is about the law part so we’ll leave the issues with understanding technology aside for now.)

Even among lawyers, who should have some expertise in understanding the law, people can find themselves at different points along the learning curve in terms of understanding the intricacies and basic mechanics of our legal system. As explained before, law is often so complex that, even as practitioners, lawyers tend to become very specialized and may lose touch with some basic concepts if they do not often encounter them in the course of their careers.

Meanwhile it shouldn’t just be lawyers who understand law anyway. Certainly policymakers, charged with making the law, should have a solid understanding what they are working with. But regular people should too. After all, the point of a democracy is that the people get to decide what their laws should be (or at least be able to charge their representatives to make good ones on their behalf). And people can’t make good choices when they don’t understand how the choices they make fit into the system they are being made for.

Remember that none of these choices are being made in a vacuum; we do not find ourselves today with a completely blank canvas. Instead, we’ve all inherited a legal system that has chugged along for two centuries. We can, of course, choose to change any of it should we so require, but such an exercise would be best served by having a solid grasp on just what it is that we would be changing. Only with that insight can we be sure that any changes we might make would be needed, appropriate, and not themselves likely to cause even more problems than whatever we were trying to fix…(More)”.

What counts’ as accountability, and who decides?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Working Paper by Jonathan Fox: “Accountability is often treated as a magic bullet, an all-purpose solution to a very wide range of problems—from corrupt politicians or the quality of public service provision to persistent injustice and impunity. The concept has become shorthand to refer to diverse efforts to address problems with the exercise of power. In practice, the accountability idea is malleable, ambiguous — and contested.

This working paper unpacks diverse understandings of accountability ideas, using the ‘keywords’ approach. This tradition takes everyday big ideas whose meanings are often taken for granted and makes their subtexts explicit. The proposition here is that ambiguous or contested language can either constrain or enable possible strategies for promoting accountability. After all, different potential coalition partners may use the same term with different meanings—or may use different terms to communicate the same idea. Indeed, the concept’s fundamental ambiguity is a major reason why it can be difficult to communicate ideas about accountability across disciplines, cultures, and languages. The goal here is to inform efforts to find common ground between diverse potential constituencies for accountable governance.

This analysis is informed by dialogue with advocates and reformers from many countries and sectors, many of whom share their ideas in blogposts on the Accountability Keywords website (see also #AccountabilityKeyword on social media). Both the working paper and blogposts reflect on accountability-related words and sayings that resonate with popular cultures, to get a better handle on what sticks.

The format of the working paper is nonlinear, designed so that readers can go right to the keywords that spark their interest:

  • The introduction maps the landscape of accountability keywords.
  • Section 2 addresses what counts as accountability?
  • Section 3 identifies big concepts that overlap with accountability but are not synonyms- such as good governance, democracy, responsiveness and responsibility.
  • Section 4 shows the relevance of accountability adjectives by spelling out different ways in which the idea is understood.
  • Section 5 unpacks widely used, emblematic keywords in the field.
  • Section 6 considers more specialized keywords, focusing on examples that serve as shorthand for big ideas within specific communities of practice.
  • Section 7 brings together a range of widely-used accountability sayings, from the ancient to the recently-invented—illustrating the enduring and diverse nature of accountability claims.
  • Section 8 makes a series of propositions for discussion…(More)”.

Open Data for Social Impact Framework

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Framework by Microsoft: “The global pandemic has shown us the important role of data in understanding, assessing, and taking action to solve the challenges created by COVID-19. However, nearly all organizations, large and small, still struggle to make data relevant to their work. Despite the value data provides, many organizations fail to harness its power to improve outcomes.

Part of this struggle stems from the “data divide” – the gap that exists between countries and organizations that have effective access to data to help them innovate and solve problems and those that do not. To close this divide, Microsoft launched the Open Data Campaign in 2020 to help realize the promise of more open data and data collaborations that drive innovation.

One of the key lessons we’ve learned from the Campaign and the work we’ve been doing with our partners, the Open Data Institute and The GovLab, is that the ability to access and use data to improve outcomes involves much more than technological tools and the data itself. It is also important to be able to leverage and share the experiences and practices that promote effective data collaboration and decision-making. This is especially true when it comes to working with governments, multi-lateral organizations, nonprofits, research institutions, and others who seek to open and reuse data to address important social issues, particularly those faced by developing countries.

Put another way, just having access to data and technology does not magically create value and improve outcomes. Making the most of open data and data collaboration requires thinking about how an organization’s leadership can commit to making data useful towards its mission, defining the questions it wants to answer with data, identifying the skills its team needs to use data, and determining how best to develop and establish trust among collaborators and communities served to derive more insight and benefit from data.

The Open Data for Social Impact Framework is a tool leaders can use to put data to work to solve the challenges most important to them. Recognizing that not all data can be made publicly accessible, we see the tremendous benefits that can come from advancing more open data, whether that takes shape as trusted data collaborations or truly open and public data. We use the phrase ‘social impact’ to mean a positive change towards addressing a societal problem, such as reducing carbon emissions, closing the broadband gap, building skills for jobs, and advancing accessibility and inclusion.

We believe in the limitless opportunities that opening, sharing, and collaborating around data can create to draw out new insights, make better decisions, and improve efficiencies when tackling some of the world’s most pressing challenges….(More)”.

The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, a Philosophy, a Warning

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Justin E. H. Smith: “Many think of the internet as an unprecedented and overwhelmingly positive achievement of modern human technology. But is it? In The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is, Justin Smith offers an original deep history of the internet, from the ancient to the modern world—uncovering its surprising origins in nature and centuries-old dreams of radically improving human life by outsourcing thinking to machines and communicating across vast distances. Yet, despite the internet’s continuing potential, Smith argues, the utopian hopes behind it have finally died today, killed by the harsh realities of social media, the global information economy, and the attention-destroying nature of networked technology.

Ranging over centuries of the history and philosophy of science and technology, Smith shows how the “internet” has been with us much longer than we usually think. He draws fascinating connections between internet user experience, artificial intelligence, the invention of the printing press, communication between trees, and the origins of computing in the machine-driven looms of the silk industry. At the same time, he reveals how the internet’s organic structure and development root it in the natural world in unexpected ways that challenge efforts to draw an easy line between technology and nature.

Combining the sweep of intellectual history with the incisiveness of philosophy, The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is cuts through our daily digital lives to give a clear-sighted picture of what the internet is, where it came from, and where it might be taking us in the coming decades….(More)”.

The Strategic and Responsible Use of Artificial Intelligence in the Public Sector of Latin America and the Caribbean

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

OECD Report: “Governments can use artificial intelligence (AI) to design better policies and make better and more targeted decisions, enhance communication and engagement with citizens, and improve the speed and quality of public services. The Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region is seeking to leverage the immense potential of AI to promote the digital transformation of the public sector. The OECD, in collaboration with CAF, Development Bank of Latin America, prepared this report to help national governments in the LAC region understand the current regional baseline of activities and capacities for AI in the public sector; to identify specific approaches and actions they can take to enhance their ability to use this emerging technology for efficient, effective and responsive governments; and to collaborate across borders in pursuit of a regional vision for AI in the public sector. This report incorporates a stocktaking of each country’s strategies and commitments around AI in the public sector, including their alignment with the OECD AI Principles. It also includes an analysis of efforts to build key governance capacities and put in place critical enablers for AI in the public sector. It concludes with a series of recommendations for governments in the LAC region….(More)”.

Identifying and interpreting government successes: An assessment tool for classroom use

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Scott Douglas, Paul ‘t Hart, and Judith Van Erp: “Journalists, politicians, watchdog institutions, and public administration scholars devote considerable energy to identifying and dissecting failures in government. Studies and casestudies of policy, organizational, and institutional failures in the public sector figure prominently in public administration curriculums and classrooms. Such a focus on failures provides students with cautionary tales and theoretical tools for understanding how things can go badly wrong. However, students are provided with less insights and tools when it comes to identifying and understanding instances of success. To address this imbalance, this article offers students a framework to systematically identify, comprehensively assess and carefully interpret instances of successful public governance. The three-stage design of the funnel introduces students to relevant debates and literatures about meaningful public outcomes, the prudent use of public power, and the ability to sustain performance over time. The articles also discuss how this framework can be used effectively in classroom settings, helping teachers to stimulate reflection on the key challenges of assessing and learning from successes…(More)”.

Age of uncertainty: the fatal flaw with trying to predict the future

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Margaret Hefferna: “Famed for the beauty of his economic models, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman once reflected that “there’s a pretty good case to be made that the stuff that I stressed in the models is a less important story than the things I left out because I couldn’t model them”.

It’s a casually explosive comment, because we use models all the time. Designed to reduce the world’s complexity to a manageable state, business models, economic models, scientific models are tools with which we test out our hypotheses and decisions.

But their simplification and utility is a trap. Because they must leave out so much – otherwise the model would be unwieldy – we’re vulnerable when we mistake them for reality.

Still, the rhetorical power of models is persistent, because they imbue statements about the future with the aura of inevitability. In an age of uncertainty, they seem to promise certainty.

Nor are they as objective as their numbers imply. Chair of the US Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, acknowledged as much. When testifying before Congress about why he had failed to predict the 2008 banking crisis, he called his conceptual model an ideology. “Everyone has one”, he said. “You have to. To exist, you need an ideology”.

His own ideology had assumed unregulated markets to be the safest, something he now saw as “a flaw”. But that flaw – and the economic crisis that followed – inadvertently demonstrated just how easily models give authority to bias and belief.

Taking history as a model presents similar dangers. The belief that history repeats itself is widespread, though rarely shared by professional historians. Mostly, it is our own history that we see being repeated – not anyone else’s.

When the Arab Spring unfolded, the Russians saw Russian history, with the politician Dmitry Medvedev fearing that, like the fall of the Berlin Wall, these demonstrations would prove destabilising for Russia.

Meanwhile, President Obama likened uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt to the Boston Tea Party and the beginning of America’s war for independence, drawing comparison too with the civil rights protest of Rosa Parks. Such analogies blinded both leaders to the dangerous contingencies and complexities of unfolding events….(More)”.

Broadband Internet and social capital

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Andrea Geraci, Mattia Nardotto, Tommaso Reggiani and FabioSabatini: “We study the impact of broadband penetration on social capital in the UK. Our empirical strategy exploits a technological feature of the telecommunication infrastructure that generated substantial variation in the quality of Internet access across households. The speed of a domestic connection rapidly decays with the distance of a user’s line from the network’s node serving the area. Merging information on the topology of the network with geocoded longitudinal data about individual social capital from 1997 to 2017, we show that access to fast Internet caused a significant decline in civic and political engagement. Overall, our results suggest that broadband penetration crowded out several dimensions of social capital….(More)”.

Publicizing Corporate Secrets for Public Good

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Christopher Morten: “Federal regulatory agencies in the United States hold a treasure trove of valuable information essential to a functional society. Yet little of this immense and nominally “public” resource is accessible to the public. That worrying phenomenon is particularly true for the valuable information that agencies hold on powerful private actors. Corporations regularly shield vast swaths of the information they share with federal regulatory agencies from public view, claiming that the information contains legally protected trade secrets (or other proprietary “confidential commercial information”). Federal agencies themselves have largely acceded to these claims and even fueled them, by construing restrictively various doctrines of law, including trade secrecy law, freedom of information law, and constitutional law. Today, these laws—and fear of these laws—have reduced to a trickle the flow of information that the public can access. This should not and need not be the case.

This article challenges the conventional wisdom that trade secrecy law restricts public agencies’ power to publicize private businesses’ secrets. In fact, federal agencies, and regulatory agencies especially, have long held and still hold statutory and constitutional authority to obtain and divulge otherwise secret information on private actors, when doing so serves the public interest. For many regulatory agencies, that authority extends even to bona fide trade secrets. In an age of “informational capitalism,” this disclosure authority makes U.S. federal regulatory agencies uniquely valuable—and perhaps uniquely dangerous. Building on recent work that explores this right in the context of drugs and vaccines, and drawing heavily from scholarship in privacy and information law, the article proposes a practical framework that regulators can use to publicize secret information in a way that maximizes public benefit and minimizes private harm. Rather than endorse unconstrained information disclosure—transparency for transparency’s sake—this article instead proposes controlled “information publicity,” in which regulators cultivate carefully bounded “gardens” of secret information. Within these gardens, agencies admit only certain users and certain uses of information. Drawing on existing but largely overlooked real-world examples, the article shows that regulators can effectively and selectively publicize trade secret information to noncommercial users while thwarting commercial uses. Regulators can protect trade secrets’ integrity vis-à-vis competitors while simultaneously unlocking new, socially valuable uses…(More)”.