Paper by Hannah Bloch-Wehba: “A consensus seems to be emerging that algorithmic governance is too opaque and ought to be made more accountable and transparent. But algorithmic governance underscores the limited capacity of transparency law—the Freedom of Information Act and its state equivalents—to promote accountability. Drawing on the critical literature on “open government,” this Essay shows that algorithmic governance reflects and amplifies systemic weaknesses in the transparency regime, including privatization, secrecy, private sector cooptation, and reactive disclosure. These deficiencies highlight the urgent need to reorient transparency and accountability law toward meaningful public engagement in ongoing oversight. This shift requires rethinking FOIA’s core commitment to public disclosure of agency records, exploring instead alternative ways to empower the public and to shed light on decisionmaking. The Essay argues that new approaches to transparency and accountability for algorithmic governance should be independent of private vendors, and ought to adequately represent the interests of affected individuals and communities. These considerations, of vital importance for the oversight of automated systems, also hold broader lessons for efforts to recraft open government obligations in the public interest….(More)”
Federal Statistical Needs for a National Advanced Industry and Technology Strategy
Position paper by Robert D. Atkinson: “With the rise of China and other robust economic competitors, the United States needs a more coherent national advanced technology strategy.1 Effectively crafting and implementing such a strategy requires the right kind of economic data. In part because of years of budget cuts to federal economic data agencies, coupled with a long-standing disregard of the need for sectoral and firm-level economic data to inform an industrial strategy, the federal government is severely lacking in the kinds of data needed.
Notwithstanding the hundreds of millions of dollars spent every year and the thousands of economists working for the federal government, the exact nature of the challenges to U.S. capabilities with regard to the competitiveness of America’s traded sectors is only weakly understood. At least since after the Great Depression, the federal government has never felt the need to develop strategic economic intelligence in order to fully understand the competitive position of its traded sectors or to help support overall economic productivity.2 Rather, most of the focus goes to understanding the ups and downs of the business cycle….
If the U.S. government is going to develop more effective policies to spur competitiveness, growth, and opportunity it will need to support better data collection. It should be able to understand the U.S. competitive position vis-à-vis other nations on key technologies and industries, as well as key strengths and weaknesses and where specific policies are needed.
Better data can also identify weaknesses in U.S. competitiveness that policy can address. For example, in the 1980s, studies conducted as part of the Census of Manufactures (studies that have long been discontinued) found many smaller firms lagging behind badly in costs and quality for reasons including inefficient work organization and obsolete machinery and equipment. End-product manufacturers bought parts and components from many of these smaller enterprises at prices higher than those paid by foreign-based firms with more efficient suppliers, contributing to the cost and quality disadvantages of U.S.-based manufacturers. Legislators heeded the findings in crafting what is now called the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, a program that, if too small in scale to have a significant impact on U.S. manufacturing overall, continues to provide meaningful assistance to thousands of companies each year.5
Moreover, as the federal government institutes more technology and industry policies and programs—as exemplified in the Senate U.S. Innovation and Competition Act—better data will be important to evaluate their effectiveness.
Finally, data are a key 21st century infrastructure. In a decentralized economy, good outcomes are possible only if organizations make good decisions—and that requires data, which, because of its public goods nature, is a quintessential role of government….(More)”.
Text Your Government: Participatory Cell Phone Technology in Ghana
Article by Emily DiMatteo: “Direct citizen engagement can be transformed with innovative technological tools. As communities search for new ways to connect citizens to democratic processes, using existing technological devices such as cell phones can reach a number of citizens—including those typically excluded from policy processes. This occurred in Ghana when a technology startup and social enterprise called VOTO Mobile (now Viamo) created polling and information sharing software that uses mobile phone SMS texts and voice calls. Since its founding in 2010, the Ghana-based company has worked to use mobile technology to advance democratic engagement and good governance through new communication channels between citizens and their government.
Previous methods to overcome public participation challenges in Ghana include using public radio. However, when VOTO Mobile evaluated technological capabilities in several districts, cell phones offered a new way to engage. The option to contact citizens via text or voice call also helped remove certain barriers to participation in political processes, including distance, language and literacy. In 2012-2013, VOTO Mobile facilitated a project called the, “Mobile for Social Inclusive Government,” to increase citizen engagement and participation. The project used the company’s software to disseminate local information and conduct citizen surveys in four Ghanaian districts: Tamale, Savelugu, Wa and Yendi. VOTO Mobile partnered with civil society organizations including Savana Signatures, GINKS and Amplify Governance, as well as District Assemblies in local district governments.
Participant selection for the project utilized pre-existing District Assembly membership data across the four districts to contact citizens to participate. This outreach also was supplemented by the project’s partner organizations and ultimately involved more than 2,000 participants. In using VOTO Mobile’s technological platform of interactive text and voice call surveys, the project gathered feedback from citizens as they shared concerns with their local government. There was a large focus on input from marginalized populations across the districts including women, young people and people with disabilities. In addition to the cell phone surveys, the platform enabled online consultations between citizens and local district officials in place of face-to-face visits.
As a result, local district governments were able to crowdsource information directly from citizens, leading to increased citizen input in subsequent policy formulation and planning processes….(More)”.
Solving Public Problems
Book by Beth Simone Noveck (The GovLab): “The challenges societies face today, from inequality to climate change to systemic racism, cannot be solved with yesterday’s toolkit. Solving Public Problems shows how readers can take advantage of digital technology, data, and the collective wisdom of our communities to design and deliver powerful solutions to contemporary problems.
Offering a radical rethinking of the role of the public servant and the skills of the public workforce, this book is about the vast gap between failing public institutions and the huge number of public entrepreneurs doing extraordinary things—and how to close that gap.
Drawing on lessons learned from decades of advising global leaders and from original interviews and surveys of thousands of public problem solvers, Beth Simone Noveck provides a practical guide for public servants, community leaders, students, and activists to become more effective, equitable, and inclusive leaders and repair our troubled, twenty-first-century world….(More)”
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Citizen participation in budgeting and beyond: Deliberative Practices and their Impact in Contemporary Cases
Open Access book by Joanna Podgórska-Rykała and Jacek Sroka: “…The basic questions which the theory and practice of public policy try to answer is the question about desires in democratic conditions and at the same time an effective formula for balancing centralization and decentralization in decision-making processes. […]
Participatory budgeting, as one of possible variants of deliberation, is one of those phenomena of public life, the quality of which depends on the relations of the parties involved. The shape of these relationships only to a limited extent depends on the ways of their current practice, because these methods are causally conditioned, and the causes lie in cultural constructions. That is why these relations are not easy to study; it is difficult to reach that deep, because it is difficult to both model the conceptualization of the problem and the methodological approach to such research. These are one of the most difficult and, at the same time, the most promising research areas of public policy. We hope that this book will contribute to their partial exploration…(More)”.
A Literature Review of E-government Services with Gamification Elements
Paper by Ruth S. Contreras-Espinosa and Alejandro Blanco-M: “Many democracies face breaches of communication between citizens and political representatives, resulting in low engagement in political decision-making and public consultations. Gamification strategies can be implemented to generate constructive relationships and increase citizens’ motivation and participation by including positive experiences like achievements. This document contains a literature review of the gamification topic, providing a conceptual background, and presenting a selection and analysis of the applications to e-government services. The study characterises gamification element usage and highlights the need for a standardised methodology during element selection. Three research gaps were identified, with a potential impact on future studies and e-government applications….(More)”.
Small-Scale Deliberation and Mass Democracy: A Systematic Review of the Spillover Effects of Deliberative Minipublics
Paper by Ramon van der Does and Vincent Jacquet: “Deliberative minipublics are popular tools to address the current crisis in democracy. However, it remains ambiguous to what degree these small-scale forums matter for mass democracy. In this study, we ask the question to what extent minipublics have “spillover effects” on lay citizens—that is, long-term effects on participating citizens and effects on non-participating citizens. We answer this question by means of a systematic review of the empirical research on minipublics’ spillover effects published before 2019. We identify 60 eligible studies published between 1999 and 2018 and provide a synthesis of the empirical results. We show that the evidence for most spillover effects remains tentative because the relevant body of empirical evidence is still small. Based on the review, we discuss the implications for democratic theory and outline several trajectories for future research…(More)”.
Here Be Dragons – Maintaining Trust in the Technologized Public Sector
Paper by Balázs Bodó and Heleen Janssen: “Emerging technologies, such as AI systems, distributed ledgers, but also private e-commerce and telecommunication platforms have permeated every aspect of our social, economic, political relations. Various bodies of the state, from education, via law enforcement to healthcare also increasingly rely on technical components to provide cheap, efficient public services, and supposedly fair, transparent, disinterested, accountable public administration. Most of these technical components are provided by private parties who designed, developed, trained, and maintain the technical components of public infrastructures.
The rapid, and often unplanned, and uncontrolled technologization of public services (as happened, for example in the rapid adoption of distance learning and teleconferencing systems during the COVID lockdowns) inseparably link the perception of the quality, trustworthiness, effectiveness of public services and the public bodies which provision them to the successes and failures of their private, technological components: if the government’s welfare fraud AI system fails, it is the confidence in the governments which is ultimately hit.
In this contribution we explore how the use of potentially untrustworthy private technological systems in the public sector may affect the trust in government. We argue that citizens’ and business’ trust in government is a valuable asset, which came under assault from many dimensions. The increasing reliance on private technical components in government is in part a response to protect this trust, but in many cases, it opens up new forms of threats and vulnerabilities, because the trustworthiness of many of these private technical systems is, at best, questionable, particularly where it is deployed in the context of public sector trust contexts. We consider a number of policy options to protect the trust in government even if some of their technological components are fundamentally untrustworthy….(More)”.
Civic Space Scan of Finland
OECD Report: “At the global level, civic space is narrowing and thus efforts to protect and promote it are more important than ever. The OECD defines Civic Space as the set of legal, policy, institutional, and practical conditions necessary for non-governmental actors to access information, express themselves, associate, organise, and participate in public life. This document presents the Civic Space Scan of Finland, which was undertaken at the request of the Finnish government and is the first OECD report of its kind. OECD Civic Space Scans in particular assess how governments protect and promote civic space in each national context and propose ways to strengthen existing frameworks and practices. The Scan assesses four key dimensions of civic space: civic freedoms and rights, media freedoms and digital rights, the enabling environment for civil society organisations, and civic participation in policy and decision making. Each respective chapter of the report contains actionable recommendations for the Government of Finland. As part of the scan process, a citizens’ panel – also overseen by the OECD – was held in February 2021 and generated a wide range of recommendations for the government from a representative microcosm of Finnish society….(More)”.
The Returns to Public Library Investment
Working Paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago: “Local governments spend over 12 billion dollars annually funding the operation of 15,000 public libraries in the United States. This funding supports widespread library use: more than 50% of Americans visit public libraries each year. But despite extensive public investment in libraries, surprisingly little research quantities the effects of public libraries on communities and children. We use data on the near-universe of U.S. public libraries to study the effects of capital spending shocks on library resources, patron usage, student achievement, and local housing prices. We use a dynamic difference-in-difference approach to show that library capital investment increases children’s attendance at library events by 18%, children’s checkouts of items by 21%, and total library visits by 21%. Increases in library use translate into improved children’s test scores in nearby school districts: a $1,000 or greater per-student capital investment in local public libraries increases reading test scores by 0.02 standard deviations and has no effects on math test scores. Housing prices do not change after a sharp increase in public library capital investment, suggesting that residents internalize the increased cost and improved quality of their public libraries….(More)”.