Good government data requires good statistics officials – but how motivated and competent are they?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Worldbank Blog: “Government data is only as reliable as the statistics officials who produce it. Yet, surprisingly little is known about these officials themselves. For decades, they have diligently collected data on others –  such as households and firms – to generate official statistics, from poverty rates to inflation figures. Yet, data about statistics officials themselves is missing. How competent are they at analyzing statistical data? How motivated are they to excel in their roles? Do they uphold integrity when producing official statistics, even in the face of opposing career incentives or political pressures? And what can National Statistical Offices (NSOs) do to cultivate a workforce that is competent, motivated, and ethical?

We surveyed 13,300 statistics officials in 14 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean to find out. Five results stand out. For further insights, consult our Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) report, Making National Statistical Offices Work Better.

1. The competence and management of statistics officials shape the quality of statistical data

Our survey included a short exam assessing basic statistical competencies, such as descriptive statistics and probability. Statistical competence correlates with data quality: NSOs with higher exam scores among employees tend to achieve better results in the World Bank’s Statistical Performance Indicators (r = 0.36).

NSOs with better management practices also have better statistical performance. For instance, NSOs with more robust recruitment and selection processes have better statistical performance (r = 0.62)…(More)”.

Nearly all Americans use AI, though most dislike it, poll shows

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Axios: “The vast majority of Americans use products that involve AI, but their views of the technology remain overwhelmingly negative, according to a Gallup-Telescope survey published Wednesday.

Why it matters: The rapid advancement of generative AI threatens to have far-reaching consequences for Americans’ everyday lives, including reshaping the job market, impacting elections, and affecting the health care industry.

The big picture: An estimated 99% of Americans used at least one AI-enabled product in the past week, but nearly two-thirds didn’t realize they were doing so, according to the poll’s findings.

  • These products included navigation apps, personal virtual assistants, weather forecasting apps, streaming services, shopping websites and social media platforms.
  • Ellyn Maese, a senior research consultant at Gallup, told Axios that the disconnect is because there is “a lot of confusion when it comes to what is just a computer program versus what is truly AI and intelligent.”

Zoom in: Despite its prevalent use, Americans’ views of AI remain overwhelmingly bleak, the survey found.

  • 72% of those surveyed had a “somewhat” or “very” negative opinion of how AI would impact the spread of false information, while 64% said the same about how it affects social connections.
  • The only area where a majority of Americans (61%) had a positive view of AI’s impact was regarding how it might help medical diagnosis and treatment…

State of play: The survey found that 68% of Americans believe the government and businesses equally bear responsibility for addressing the spread of false information related to AI.

  • 63% said the same about personal data privacy violations.
  • Majorities of those surveyed felt the same about combatting the unauthorized use of individuals’ likenesses (62%) and AI’s impact on job losses (52%).
  • In fact, the only area where Americans felt differently was when it came to national security threats; 62% of those surveyed said the government bore primary responsibility for reducing such threats…(More).”

Governing artificial intelligence means governing data: (re)setting the agenda for data justice

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Linnet Taylor, Siddharth Peter de Souza, Aaron Martin, and Joan López Solano: “The field of data justice has been evolving to take into account the role of data in powering the field of artificial intelligence (AI). In this paper we review the main conceptual bases for governing data and AI: the market-based approach, the personal–non-personal data distinction and strategic sovereignty. We then analyse how these are being operationalised into practical models for governance, including public data trusts, data cooperatives, personal data sovereignty, data collaboratives, data commons approaches and indigenous data sovereignty. We interrogate these models’ potential for just governance based on four benchmarks which we propose as a reformulation of the Data Justice governance agenda identified by Taylor in her 2017 framework. Re-situating data justice at the intersection of data and AI, these benchmarks focus on preserving and strengthening public infrastructures and public goods; inclusiveness; contestability and accountability; and global responsibility. We demonstrate how they can be used to test whether a governance approach will succeed in redistributing power, engaging with public concerns and creating a plural politics of AI…(More)”.

Why Canada needs to embrace innovations in democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Megan Mattes and Joanna Massie: “Although one-off democratic innovations like citizens’ assemblies are excellent approaches for tackling a big issue, more embedded types of innovations could be a powerful tool for maintaining an ongoing connection between public interest and political decision-making.

Innovative approaches to maintaining an ongoing, meaningful connection between people and policymakers are underway. In New Westminster, B.C., a standing citizen body called the Community Advisory Assembly has been convened since January 2024 to January 2025.

These citizen advisers are selected through random sampling to ensure the assembly’s demographic makeup is aligned with the overall population.

Over the last year, members have both given input on policy ideas initiated by New Westminster city council and initiated conversations on their own policy priorities. Notes from these discussions are passed on to council and city staff to consider their incorporation into policymaking.

The question is whether the project will live beyond its pilot.

Another similar and hopeful democratic innovation, the City of Toronto’s Planning Review Panel, ran for two terms before it was cancelled. In contrast, both the Paris city council and the state government of Ostbelgien (East Belgium) have convened permanent citizen advisory bodies to work alongside elected officials.

While public opinion is only one ingredient in government decision-making, ensuring democratic innovations are a standard component of policymaking could go a long way to enshrining public dialogue as a valuable governance tool.

Whether through annual participatory budgeting exercises or a standing citizen advisory body, democratic innovations can make public priorities a key focus of policy and restore government accountability to citizens…(More)”.

Information Ecosystems and Troubled Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the Observatory on Information and Democracy: “This inaugural meta-analysis provides a critical assessment of the role of information ecosystems in the Global North and Global Majority World, focusing on their relationship with information integrity (the quality of public discourse), the fairness of political processes, the protection of media freedoms, and the resilience of public institutions.

The report addresses three thematic areas with a cross-cutting theme of mis- and disinformation:

  • Media, Politics and Trust;
  • Artificial Intelligence, Information Ecosystems and Democracy;
  • and Data Governance and Democracy.

The analysis is based mainly on academic publications supplemented by reports and other materials from different disciplines and regions (1,664 citations selected among a total corpus of over +2700 resources aggregated). The report showcases what we can learn from landmark research on often intractable challenges posed by rapid changes in information and communication spaces…(More)”.

What Could Citizens’ Assemblies Do for American Politics?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Nick Romeo: “Last July, an unusual letter arrived at Kathryn Kundmueller’s mobile home, in central Oregon. It invited her to enter a lottery that would select thirty residents of Deschutes County to deliberate for five days on youth homelessness—a visible and contentious issue in an area where the population and cost of living have spiked in recent years. Those chosen would be paid for their time—almost five hundred dollars—and asked to develop specific policy recommendations.

Kundmueller was being invited to join what is known as a citizens’ assembly. These gatherings do what most democracies only pretend to: trust normal people to make decisions on difficult policy questions. Many citizens’ assemblies follow a basic template. They impanel a random but representative cross-section of a population, give them high-quality information on a topic, and ask them to work together to reach a decision. In Europe, such groups have helped spur reform of the Irish constitution in order to legalize abortion, guided an Austrian pharmaceutical heiress on how to give away her wealth, and become a regular part of government in Paris and Belgium. Though still rare in America, the model reflects the striking idea that fundamental problems of politics—polarization, apathy, manipulation by special interests—can be transformed through radically direct democracy.

Kundmueller, who is generally frustrated by politics, was intrigued by the letter. She liked the prospect of helping to shape local policy, and the topic of housing insecurity had a particular resonance for her. As a teen-ager, following a falling-out with her father, she spent months bouncing between friends’ couches in Vermont. When she moved across the country to San Jose, after college, she lived in her car for a time while she searched for a stable job. She worked in finance but became disillusioned; now in her early forties, she ran a small housecleaning business. She still thought about living in a van and renting out her mobile home to save money…(More)”.

Sortition: Past and Present

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Introduction to the Journal of Sortition: “Since ancient times sortition (random selection by lot) has been used both to distribute political office and as a general prophylactic against factionalism and corruption in societies as diverse as classical-era Athens and the Most Serene Republic of Venice. Lotteries have also been employed for the allocation of scarce goods such as social housing and school places to eliminate bias and ensure just distribution, along with drawing lots in circumstances where unpopular tasks or tragic choices are involved (as some situations are beyond rational human decision-making). More recently, developments in public opinion polling using random sampling have led to the proliferation of citizens’ assemblies selected by lot. Some activists have even proposed such bodies as an alternative to elected representatives. The Journal of Sortition benefits from an editorial board with a wide range of expertise and perspectives in this area. In this introduction to the first issue, we have invited our editors to explain why they are interested in sortition, and to outline the benefits (and pitfalls) of the recent explosion of interest in the topic…(More)”.

Theorizing the functions and patterns of agency in the policymaking process

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Giliberto Capano, et al: “Theories of the policy process understand the dynamics of policymaking as the result of the interaction of structural and agency variables. While these theories tend to conceptualize structural variables in a careful manner, agency (i.e. the actions of individual agents, like policy entrepreneurs, policy leaders, policy brokers, and policy experts) is left as a residual piece in the puzzle of the causality of change and stability. This treatment of agency leaves room for conceptual overlaps, analytical confusion and empirical shortcomings that can complicate the life of the empirical researcher and, most importantly, hinder the ability of theories of the policy process to fully address the drivers of variation in policy dynamics. Drawing on Merton’s concept of function, this article presents a novel theorization of agency in the policy process. We start from the assumption that agency functions are a necessary component through which policy dynamics evolve. We then theorise that agency can fulfil four main functions – steering, innovation, intermediation and intelligence – that need to be performed, by individual agents, in any policy process through four patterns of action – leadership, entrepreneurship, brokerage and knowledge accumulation – and we provide a roadmap for operationalising and measuring these concepts. We then demonstrate what can be achieved in terms of analytical clarity and potential theoretical leverage by applying this novel conceptualisation to two major policy process theories: the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) and the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF)…(More)”.

Digital Governance: Confronting the Challenges Posed by Artificial Intelligence

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Kostina Prifti, Esra Demir, Julia Krämer, Klaus Heine, and Evert Stamhuis: “This book explores the structure and frameworks of digital governance, focusing on various regulatory patterns, with the aim of tackling the disruptive impact of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Addressing the various challenges posed by AI technologies, this book explores potential avenues for crafting legal remedies and solutions, spanning liability of AI, platform governance, and the implications for data protection and privacy…(More)”.

Anticipatory Governance: Shaping a Responsible Future

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Melodena Stephens, Raed Awamleh and Frederic Sicre: “Anticipatory Governance is the systemic process of future shaping built on the understanding that the future is not a continuation of the past or present, thus making foresight a complex task requiring the engagement of the whole of government with its constituents in a constructive and iterative manner to achieve collective intelligence. Effective anticipatory governance amplifies the fundamental properties of agile government to build trust, challenge assumptions, and reach consensus. Moreover, anticipatory governance sets the foundation to adapt to exponential change. This seismic shift in the governance environment should lead to urgent rethinking of the ways and means governments and large corporate players formulate strategies, design processes, develop human capital and shape instiutional culture to achieve public value.

From a long-term multigenerational perspective, anticipatory governance is a key component to ensure guardrails for the future. Systems thinking is needed to harness our collective intelligence, by tapping into knowledge trapped within nations, organizations, and people. Many of the wicked problems governments and corporations are grappling with like artificial intelligence applications and ethics, climate change, refugee migration, education for future skills, and health care for all, require a “system of systems”, or anticipatory governance.

Yet, no matter how much we invest in foresight and shaping the future, we still need an agile government approach to manage unintended outcomes and people’s expectations. Crisis management which begins with listening to weak signals, sensemaking, intelligence management, reputation enhancement, and public value alignment and delivery, is critical. This book dives into the theory and practice of anticipatory governance and sets the agenda for future research…(More)”