Trust in official statistics remains high but there’s still work to do

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Ian Diamond (UK): “..I’m excited about the potential of new data sources, and I want everyone in the UK to have the skills to understand and use the stats they allow us to create. With this in mind, we’re launching a whole host of new projects to bring our stats to the people:

How to videos

To benefit from stats, and be confident that they are reliable, we need to understand more about the data they have been derived from and how to read and use them.

Our new set of video guides are a great place to start, covering topics such as why data matters to how the ONS de-identifies them and where we get them from.

They are all available to watch on our YouTube channel.

Playground survey

During the 2023/2024 school year, we teamed up with the BBC and the Micro:bit Foundation to give children in primary schools the opportunity to take part in a nationwide playground survey.

The BBC Micro:bit Playground Survey is a wonderful way for children to learn data skills at an early age, getting to grips with data collection and analysis in a way that is relevant to their everyday lives, in a familiar and fun setting.

If children become data-literate now, they will be well prepared to navigate and take advantage of the huge amounts of data that will no doubt play an important role in their adult lives.

Keep an eye out for the results in October.

Navigating numbers – the ONS data education programme

We’ve also been busy developing a data education programme for students in further education or sixth form.

Navigating numbers: how data are used to create statistics includes a series of five classroom toolkits, exploring topics such as gender pay gaps, inflation, and health.

Created with the support of the Association of Colleges (AoC), this learning resource is free for teachers to use and available for download on the ONS website.

The ONS’s educational webinar series: Bringing data to life

If you want to learn more about measuring the cost of living or our nation’s health, then our new webinar series has you covered. These and other topics will be brought to life in this new series of online events, launching in September 2024…(More)”

Reviving the commons: A scoping review of urban and digital commoning

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by James Henderson and Oliver Escobar: “The review aims to contribute to the growing discourse on the commons, highlighting its significance in contemporary societies and its potential as an alternative to traditional forms of socioeconomic and political organisation via the state and/or the market. Practitioners in the field argue that we are witnessing a revival of the commons in the 21st century. This report interrogates the nature of that revival and explores key concepts, examples, trends and debates in theory and practice, while outlining an emerging research agenda…(More)”.

A blueprint for better international collaboration on evidence

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

BIT Report: “…This report is focused on four countries: the U.S., the UK, Australia, and Canada and provides a series of practical ideas for investments to improve the quality and use of evidence in policy design, implementation, and evaluation. It highlights the opportunities and challenges ahead, as the demand for and supply of evidence continue to grow in a world with complex policy challenges. 

It is a call to action for governments to collaborate more closely on evidence generation and utilisation. By pooling resources and expertise, countries can bridge the existing gaps in their evidence ecosystems, ultimately leading to more informed and effective public policies. 

The main recommendation is for countries to collaborate on evidence synthesis. The most promising avenue for evidence synthesis is Living Evidence Reviews (LERs), which are systematic reviews that are continuously updated. The authors propose ‘meta’ LERs are conducted across all areas of social policy to answer the questions that really matter to policymakers…(More)”. See also: Using Living Evidence and
Visualization in the Grant Making Process

UN E-Government Survey 2024

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by United Nations (DESA): “…provides a comprehensive assessment of the digital government landscape across all 193 Member States. The 2024 Survey highlights a significant upward trend in the development of digital government worldwide, with increased investment in resilient infrastructure and cutting-edge technologies. The global average value of the E-Government Development Index (EGDI) shows substantial improvement, with the proportion of the population lagging in digital government development decreasing from 45.0 per cent in 2022 to 22.4 per cent in 2024. Despite significant progress in digital government development, the EGDI averages for the African region, least developed countries, and small island developing States remain below the global average, underscoring the need for targeted efforts to bridge existing gaps.

At the local level, the Survey continues to assess city portals using the Local Online Services Index (LOSI). The LOSI findings reflect steady progress but also highlight persistent disparities between national and local e-government performance, pointing to the need for focused initiatives to strengthen digital government at the municipal level. This edition introduces the new Digital Government Model Framework, providing countries with a comprehensive road map for the effective planning, implementation and assessment of digital government initiatives. A short addendum explores the integration of AI in digital government development, emphasizing the importance of maximizing benefits and minimizing risks to achieve balanced governance…(More)”

Leadership as Stewardship

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Marian Iszatt-White: “Exploring different understandings of stewardship across a range of research domains and cultures, this insightful book examines the tensions between competing perspectives and their implications for leadership. Marian Iszatt-White proposes ‘leadership-as-stewardship’ as a new signifier for leadership research, providing practical guidance to leaders navigating the challenges and trade-offs of the Anthropocene.

Leadership as Stewardship identifies how the apparent inadequacy of modern leadership coincides with a shift in scholarship away from practical inquiry and towards a range of aspirational approaches, including authentic, sustainable, responsible and ethical. Iszatt-White proposes stewardship as an alternative to these aspirational forms of leadership and challenges the ability of Western, Enlightenment-based thinking to solve global issues created by that same thinking. The book concludes that it is time to place the more enact-able construct of stewardship at the heart of leadership aspirations and scholarly activities.

Interdisciplinary in scope, this book will be vital for scholars of leadership, management and organization studies. Highlighting the ability of stewardship to combat perceived failings in leadership as both a construct and a practice, it is also valuable to policymakers, management educators and leadership practitioners…(More)”.

Artificial Intelligence for the Internal Democracy of Political Parties

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Claudio Novelli et al: “The article argues that AI can enhance the measurement and implementation of democratic processes within political parties, known as Intra-Party Democracy (IPD). It identifies the limitations of traditional methods for measuring IPD, which often rely on formal parameters, self-reported data, and tools like surveys. Such limitations lead to partial data collection, rare updates, and significant resource demands. To address these issues, the article suggests that specific data management and Machine Learning techniques, such as natural language processing and sentiment analysis, can improve the measurement and practice of IPD…(More)”.

Toward a citizen science framework for public policy evaluation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Giovanni Esposito et al: “This study pioneers the use of citizen science in evaluating Freedom of Information laws, with a focus on Belgium, where since its 1994 enactment, Freedom of Information’s effectiveness has remained largely unexamined. Utilizing participatory methods, it engages citizens in assessing transparency policies, significantly contributing to public policy evaluation methodology. The research identifies regional differences in Freedom of Information implementation across Belgian municipalities, highlighting that larger municipalities handle requests more effectively, while administrations generally show reluctance to respond to requests from perceived knowledgeable individuals. This phenomenon reflects a broader European caution toward well-informed requesters. By integrating citizen science, this study not only advances our understanding of Freedom of Information law effectiveness in Belgium but also advocates for a more inclusive, collaborative approach to policy evaluation. It addresses the gap in researchers’ experience with citizen science, showcasing its vast potential to enhance participatory governance and policy evaluation…(More)”.

Definitions, digital, and distance: on AI and policymaking

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Gavin Freeguard: “Our first question is less, ‘to what extent can AI improve public policymaking?’, but ‘what is currently wrong with policymaking?’, and then, ‘is AI able to help?’.

Ask those in and around policymaking about the problems and you’ll get a list likely to include:

  • the practice not having changed in decades (or centuries)
  • it being an opaque ‘dark art’ with little transparency
  • defaulting to easily accessible stakeholders and evidence
  • a separation between policy and delivery (and digital and other disciplines), and failure to recognise the need for agility and feedback as opposed to distinct stages
  • the challenges in measuring or evaluating the impact of policy interventions and understanding what works, with a lack of awareness, let alone sharing, of case studies elsewhere
  • difficulties in sharing data
  • the siloed nature of government complicating cross-departmental working
  • policy asks often being dictated by politics, with electoral cycles leading to short-termism, ministerial churn changing priorities and personal style, events prompting rushed reactions, or political priorities dictating ‘policy-based evidence making’
  • a rush to answers before understanding the problem
  • definitional issues about what policy actually is making it hard to get a hold of or develop professional expertise.  

If we’re defining ‘policy’ and the problem, we also need to define ‘AI’, or at least acknowledge that we are not only talking about new, shiny generative AI, but a world of other techniques for automating processes and analysing data that have been used in government for years.

So is ‘AI’ able to help? It could support us to make better use of a wider range of data more quickly; but it could privilege that which is easier to measure, strip data of vital context, and embed biases and historical assumptions. It could ‘make decisions more transparent (perhaps through capturing digital records of the process behind them, or by visualising the data that underpins a decision)’; or make them more opaque with ‘black-box’ algorithms, and distract from overcoming the very human cultural problems around greater openness. It could help synthesise submissions or generate ideas to brainstorm; or fail to compensate for deficiencies in underlying government knowledge infrastructure, and generate gibberish. It could be a tempting silver bullet for better policy; or it could paper over the cracks, while underlying technical, organisational and cultural plumbing goes unfixed. It could have real value in some areas, or cause harms in others…(More)”.

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks From the Stone Age to AI 

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Yuval Noah Harari: “For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite all our discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI—a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. For all that we have accomplished, why are we so self-destructive?

Nexus looks through the long lens of human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age, through the canonization of the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism, and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems throughout history have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence.
 
Information is not the raw material of truth; neither is it a mere weapon. Nexus explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes, and in doing so, rediscovers our shared humanity…(More)”.

Advocating an International Decade for Data under G20 Sponsorship

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

G20 Policy Brief by Lorrayne Porciuncula, David Passarelli, Muznah Siddiqui, and Stefaan Verhulst: “This brief draws attention to the important role of data in social and economic development. It advocates the establishment of an International Decade for Data (IDD) from 2025-2035 under G20 sponsorship. The IDD can be used to bridge existing data governance initiatives and deliver global ambitions to use data for social impact, innovation, economic growth, research, and social development. Despite the critical importance of data governance to achieving the SDGs and to emerging topics such as artificial intelligence, there is no unified space that brings together stakeholders to coordinate and shape the data dimension of digital societies.

While various data governance processes exist, they often operate in silos, without effective coordination and interoperability. This fragmented landscape inhibits progress toward a more inclusive and sustainable digital future. The envisaged IDD fosters an integrated approach to data governance that supports all stakeholders in navigating complex data landscapes. Central to this proposal are new institutional frameworks (e.g. data collaboratives), mechanisms (e.g. digital social licenses and sandboxes), and professional domains (e.g. data stewards), that can respond to the multifaceted issue of data governance and the multiplicity of actors involved.

The G20 can capitalize on the Global Digital Compact’s momentum and create a task force to position itself as a data champion through the launch of the IDD, enabling collective progress and steering global efforts towards a more informed and responsible data-centric society…(More)”.