environment

Simpler, smarter and innovative public services

Curated on October 22, 2015August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Northern Future Forum: “How can governments deliver services better and more efficiently? This is one of the key questions governments all over the world are constantly dealing with. In recent years countries have had to cut back government spending at the same time as demand from citizens for more high quality service is increasing. Public institutions, just as companies, must adapt and develop over time. Rapid technological advancements and societal changes have forced the public sector to reform the way it operates and delivers services. The public sector needs to innovate to adapt and advance in the 21st century.
There are a number of reasons why public sector innovation matters (Potts and Kastelle 2010):

The size of the public sector in terms of percentages of GDP makes public sectors large components of the macro economy in many countries. Public sector innovation can affect productivity growth by reducing costs of inputs, better organisation and increasing the value of outputs.
The need for evolving policy to match evolving economies.
The public sector sets the rules of the game for private sector innovation.

As pointed out there is clearly an imperative to innovate. However, public sector innovation can be difficult, as public services deal with complex problems that have contradictory and diverse demands, need to respond quickly, whilst being transparent and accountable. Public sector innovation has a part to play to grow future economies, but also to develop the solutions to the biggest challenges facing most western nations today. These problems won’t be solved without strong leadership from the public sector and governments of the future. These issues are (Pollitt 2013):

Demographic change. The effects ageing of the general population will have on public services.
Climate change.
Economic trajectories, especially the effects of the current period of austerity.
Technological developments.
Public trust in government.
The changing nature of politics, with declining party loyalty, personalisation of politics, new parties, more media coverage etc.

According to the publications of national governments, the OECD, World Bank and the big international management consultancies, these issues will have major long-term impacts and implications (Pollitt 2013).
The essence of this background paper is to look at how governments can use innovation to help grow the economies and solve some of the biggest challenges of this generation and determine what the essentials to make it happen are. Firstly, a difficult economic environment in many countries tends to constrain the capacity of governments to deliver quality public services. Fiscal pressures, demographic changes, and diverse public and private demands all challenge traditional approaches and call for a rethinking of the way governments operate. There is a growing recognition that the complexity of the challenges facing the public sector cannot be solved by public sector institutions working alone, and that innovative solutions to public challenges require improved internal collaboration, as well as the involvement of external stakeholders partnering with public sector organisations (OECD 2015 a).
Willingness to solve some of these problems is not enough. The system that most western countries have created is in many ways a barrier to innovation. For instance, the public sector can lack innovative leaders and champions (Bason 2010, European Commission 2013), the way money is allocated, and reward and incentive systems can often hinder innovative performance (Kohli and Mulgan 2010), there may be limited knowledge of how to apply innovation processes and methods (European Commission 2013), and departmental silos can create significant challenges to ‘joined up’ problem solving (Carstensen and Bason 2012, Queensland Public Service Commission 2009).
There is not an established definition of innovation in the public sector. However some common elements have emerged from national and international research projects. The OECD has identified the following characteristics of public sector innovation:

Novelty: Innovations introduce new approaches, relative to the context where they are introduced.
Implementation: Innovations must be implemented, not just an idea.
Impact: Innovations aim to result in better public results including efficiency, effectiveness, and user or employee satisfaction.

Public sector innovation does not happen in a vacuum: problems need to be identified; ideas translated into projects which can be tested and then scaled up. For this to happen public sector organisations need to identify the processes and structures which can support and accelerate the innovation activity.

Figure 1. Key components for successful public sector innovation.
The barriers to public sector innovation are in many ways the key to its success. In this background paper four key components for public sector innovation success will be discussed and ways to change them from barriers to supporters of innovation. The framework and the policy levers can play a key role in enabling and sustaining the innovation process:
These levers are:

Institutions. Innovation is likely to emerge from the interactions between different bodies.
Human Resources. Create ability, motivate and give the right opportunities.
Funding. Increase flexibility in allocating and managing financial resources.
Regulations. Processes need to be shortened and made more efficient.

Realising the potential of innovation means understanding which factors are most effective in creating the conditions for innovation to flourish, and assessing their relative impact on the capacity and performance of public sector organisations….(More). PDF: Simpler, smarter and innovative public services

A new model to explore non-profit social media use for advocacy and civic engagement

Curated on October 11, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

David Chapman, Katrina Miller-Stevens, John C Morris, and Brendan O’Hallarn in First Monday: “In an age when electronic communication is ubiquitous, non-profit organizations are actively using social media platforms as a way to deliver information to end users. In spite of the broad use of these platforms, little scholarship has focused on the internal processes these organizations employ to implement these tools. A limited number of studies offer models to help explain an organization’s use of social media from initiation to outcomes, yet few studies address a non-profit organization’s mission as the driver to employ social media strategies and tactics. Furthermore, the effectiveness of social media use is difficult for non-profit organizations to measure. Studies that attempt to address this question have done so by viewing social media platform analytics (e.g., Facebook analytics) or analyzing written content by users of social media (Nah and Saxton, 2013; Auger, 2013; Uzunoğlu and Misci Kip, 2014; or Guo and Saxton, 2014). The value added of this study is to present a model for practice (Weil, 1997) that explores social media use and its challenges from a non-profit organization’s mission through its desired outcome, in this case an outcome of advocacy and civic engagement.

We focus on one non-profit organization, Blue Star Families, that actively engages in advocacy and civic engagement. Blue Star Families was formed in 2009 to “raise the awareness of the challenges of military family life with our civilian communities and leaders” (Blue Star Families, 2010). Blue Star Families is a virtual organization with no physical office location. Thus, the organization relies on its Web presence and social media tools to advocate for military families and engage service members and their families, communities, and citizens in civic engagement activities (Blue Star Families, 2010).

The study aims to provide organizational-level insights of the successes and challenges of working in the social media environment. Specifically, the study asks: What are the processes non-profit organizations follow to link organizational mission to outcomes when using social media platforms? What are the successes and challenges of using social media platforms for advocacy and civic engagement purposes? In our effort to answer these questions, we present a new model to explore non-profit organizations’ use of social media platforms by building on previous models and frameworks developed to explore the use of social media in the public, private, and non-profit sectors.

This research is important for three reasons. First, most previous studies of social media tend to employ models that focus on the satisfaction of the social media tools for organizational members, rather than the utility of social media as a tool to meet organizational goals. Our research offers a means to explore the utility of social media from an organization perspective. Second, the exemplar case for our research, Blue Star Families, Inc., is a non-profit organization whose mission is to create and nurture a virtual community spread over a large geographical — if not global — area. Because Blue Star Families was founded as an online organization that could not exist without social media, it provides a case for which social media is a critical component of the organization’s activity. Finally, we offer some “lessons learned” from our case to identify issues for other organizations seeking to create a significant social media presence.

This paper is organized as follows: first, the growth of social media is briefly addressed to provide background context. Second, previous models and frameworks exploring social media are discussed. This is followed by a presentation of a new model exploring the use of social media from an organizational perspective, starting with the driver of a non-profit organization’s mission, to its desired outcomes of advocacy and civic engagement. Third, the case study methodology is explained. Next, we present an analysis and discussion applying the new model to Blue Star Families’ use of social media platforms. We conclude by discussing the challenges of social media revealed in the case study analysis, and we offer recommendations to address these challenges….(More)”

Web design plays a role in how much we reveal online

Curated on October 8, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

European Commission: “A JRC study, “Nudges to Privacy Behaviour: Exploring an Alternative Approach to Privacy Notices“, used behavioural sciences to look at how individuals react to different types of privacy notices. Specifically, the authors analysed users’ reactions to modified choice architecture (i.e. the environment in which decisions take place) of web interfaces.

Two types of privacy behaviour were measured: passive disclosure, when people unwittingly disclose personal information, and direct disclosure, when people make an active choice to reveal personal information. After testing different designs with over 3 000 users from the UK, Italy, Germany and Poland, results show web interface affects decisions on disclosing personal information. The study also explored differences related to country of origin, gender, education level and age.

A depiction of a person’s face on the website led people to reveal more personal information. Also, this design choice and the visualisation of the user’s IP or browsing history had an impact on people’s awareness of a privacy notice. If confirmed, these features are particularly relevant for habitual and instinctive online behaviour.

With regard to education, users who had attended (though not necessarily graduated from) college felt significantly less observed or monitored and more comfortable answering questions than those who never went to college. This result challenges the assumption that the better educated are more aware of information tracking practices. Further investigation, perhaps of a qualitative nature, could help dig deeper into this issue. On the other hand, people with a lower level of education were more likely to reveal personal information unwittingly. This behaviour appeared to be due to the fact that non-college attendees were simply less aware that some online behaviour revealed personal information about themselves.

Strong differences between countries were noticed, indicating a relation between cultures and information disclosure. Even though participants in Italy revealed the most personal information in passive disclosure, in direct disclosure they revealed less than in other countries. Approximately 75% of participants in Italy chose to answer positively to at least one stigmatised question, compared to 81% in Poland, 83% in Germany and 92% in the UK.

Approximately 73% of women answered ‘never’ to the questions asking whether they had ever engaged in socially stigmatised behaviour, compared to 27% of males. This large difference could be due to the nature of the questions (e.g. about alcohol consumption, which might be more acceptable for males). It could also suggest women feel under greater social scrutiny or are simply more cautious when disclosing personal information.

These results could offer valuable insights to inform European policy decisions, despite the fact that the study has targeted a sample of users in four countries in an experimental setting. Major web service providers are likely to have extensive amounts of data on how slight changes to their services’ privacy controls affect users’ privacy behaviour. The authors of the study suggest that collaboration between web providers and policy-makers can lead to recommendations for web interface design that allow for conscientious disclosure of privacy information….(More)”

Data-Driven Innovation: Big Data for Growth and Well-Being

Curated on October 7, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

“A new OECD report on data-driven innovation finds that countries could be getting much more out of data analytics in terms of economic and social gains if governments did more to encourage investment in “Big Data” and promote data sharing and reuse.

The migration of economic and social activities to the Internet and the advent of The Internet of Things – along with dramatically lower costs of data collection, storage and processing and rising computing power – means that data-analytics is increasingly driving innovation and is potentially an important new source of growth.

The report suggest countries act to seize these benefits, by training more and better data scientists, reducing barriers to cross-border data flows, and encouraging investment in business processes to incorporate data analytics.

Few companies outside of the ICT sector are changing internal procedures to take advantage of data. For example, data gathered by companies’ marketing departments is not always used by other departments to drive decisions and innovation. And in particular, small and medium-sized companies face barriers to the adoption of data-related technologies such as cloud computing, partly because they have difficulty implementing organisational change due to limited resources, including the shortage of skilled personnel.

At the same time, governments will need to anticipate and address the disruptive effects of big data on the economy and overall well-being, as issues as broad as privacy, jobs, intellectual property rights, competition and taxation will be impacted. Read the Policy Brief…

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Expand

Preface	Read
Foreword	Read
Executive summary	Read
The phenomenon of data-driven innovation	Read
Mapping the global data ecosystem and its points of control	Read
How data now drive innovation	Read
Drawing value from data as an infrastructure	Read
Building trust for data-driven innovation	Read
Skills and employment in a data-driven economy	Read
Promoting data-driven scientific research	Read
The evolution of health care in a data-rich environment	Read
Cities as hubs for data-driven innovation	Read
Governments leading by example with public sector data	Read

Digital Research Confidential

Curated on October 4, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

New book edited by Eszter Hargittai and Christian Sandvig: “The realm of the digital offers both new methods of research and new objects of study. Because the digital environment for scholarship is constantly evolving, researchers must sometimes improvise, change their plans, and adapt. These details are often left out of research write-ups, leaving newcomers to the field frustrated when their approaches do not work as expected. Digital Research Confidentialoffers scholars a chance to learn from their fellow researchers’ mistakes—and their successes.

The book—a follow-up to Eszter Hargittai’s widely read Research Confidential—presents behind-the-scenes, nuts-and-bolts stories of digital research projects, written by established and rising scholars. They discuss such challenges as archiving, Web crawling, crowdsourcing, and confidentiality. They do not shrink from specifics, describing such research hiccups as an ethnographic interview so emotionally draining that afterward the researcher retreated to a bathroom to cry, and the seemingly simple research question about Wikipedia that mushroomed into years of work on millions of data points. Digital Research Confidential will be an essential resource for scholars in every field….(More)”

Open collaboration in the public sector: The case of social coding on GitHub

Curated on October 3, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Ines Mergel at Government Information Quarterly: “Open collaboration has evolved as a new form of innovation creation in the public sector. Government organizations are using online platforms to collaborative create or contribute to public sector innovations with the help of external and internal problem solvers. Most recently the U.S. federal government has encouraged agencies to collaboratively create and share open source code on the social coding platform GitHub and allow third parties to share their changes to the code. A community of government employees is using the social coding site GitHub to share open source code for software and website development, distribution of data sets and research results, or to seek input to draft policy documents. Quantitative data extracted from GitHub’s application programming interface is used to analyze the collaboration ties between contributors to government repositories and their reuse of digital products developed on GitHub by other government entities in the U.S. federal government. In addition, qualitative interviews with government contributors in this social coding environment provide insights into new forms of co-development of open source digital products in the public sector….(More)”

Harnessing the Data Revolution for Sustainable Development

Curated on September 30, 2015May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

US State Department Fact Sheet on “U.S. Government Commitments and Collaboration with the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data”: “On September 27, 2015, the member states of the United Nations agreed to a set of Sustainable Development Goals (Global Goals) that define a common agenda to achieve inclusive growth, end poverty, and protect the environment by 2030. The Global Goals build on tremendous development gains made over the past decade, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, and set actionable steps with measureable indicators to drive progress. The availability and use of high quality data is essential to measuring and achieving the Global Goals. By harnessing the power of technology, mobilizing new and open data sources, and partnering across sectors, we will achieve these goals faster and make their progress more transparent.

Harnessing the data revolution is a critical enabler of the global goals—not only to monitor progress, but also to inclusively engage stakeholders at all levels – local, regional, national, global—to advance evidence-based policies and programs to reach those who need it most. Data can show us where girls are at greatest risk of violence so we can better prevent it; where forests are being destroyed in real-time so we can protect them; and where HIV/AIDS is enduring so we can focus our efforts and finish the fight. Data can catalyze private investment; build modern and inclusive economies; and support transparent and effective investment of resources for social good…..

The Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (Global Data Partnership), launched on the sidelines of the 70^th United Nations General Assembly, is mobilizing a range of data producers and users—including governments, companies, civil society, data scientists, and international organizations—to harness the data revolution to achieve and measure the Global Goals. Working together, signatories to the Global Data Partnership will address the barriers to accessing and using development data, delivering outcomes that no single stakeholder can achieve working alone….The United States, through the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), is joining a consortium of funders to seed this initiative. The U.S. Government has many initiatives that are harnessing the data revolution for impact domestically and internationally. Highlights of our international efforts are found below:

Health and Gender

• Country Data Collaboratives for Local Impact – PEPFAR and the Millennium Challenge Corporation(MCC) are partnering to invest $21.8 million in Country Data Collaboratives for Local Impact in sub-Saharan Africa that will use data on HIV/AIDS, global health, gender equality, and economic growth to improve programs and policies. Initially, the Country Data Collaboratives will align with and support the objectives of DREAMS, a PEPFAR, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Girl Effect partnership to reduce new HIV infections among adolescent girls and young women in high-burden areas.

• Measurement and Accountability for Results in Health (MA4Health) Collaborative – USAID is partnering with the World Health Organization, the World Bank, and over 20 other agencies, countries, and civil society organizations to establish the MA4Health Collaborative, a multi-stakeholder partnership focused on reducing fragmentation and better aligning support to country health-system performance and accountability. The Collaborative will provide a vehicle to strengthen country-led health information platforms and accountability systems by improving data and increasing capacity for better decision-making; facilitating greater technical collaboration and joint investments; and developing international standards and tools for better information and accountability. In September 2015, partners agreed to a set of common strategic and operational principles, including a strong focus on 3–4 pathfinder countries where all partners will initially come together to support country-led monitoring and accountability platforms. Global actions will focus on promoting open data, establishing common norms and standards, and monitoring progress on data and accountability for the Global Goals. A more detailed operational plan will be developed through the end of the year, and implementation will start on January 1, 2016.

• Data2X: Closing the Gender Gap – Data2X is a platform for partners to work together to identify innovative sources of data, including “big data,” that can provide an evidence base to guide development policy and investment on gender data. As part of its commitment to Data2X—an initiative of the United Nations Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, Clinton Foundation, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation—PEPFAR and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) are working with partners to sponsor an open data challenge to incentivize the use of gender data to improve gender policy and practice….(More)”

See also: Data matters: the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data. Speech by UK International Development Secretary Justine Greening at the launch of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data.

Data Collaboratives: Sharing Public Data in Private Hands for Social Good

Curated on September 24, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Beth Simone Noveck (The GovLab) in Forbes: “Sensor-rich consumer electronics such as mobile phones, wearable devices, commercial cameras and even cars are collecting zettabytes of data about the environment and about us. According to one McKinsey study, the volume of data is growing at fifty percent a year. No one needs convincing that these private storehouses of information represent a goldmine for business, but these data can do double duty as rich social assets—if they are shared wisely.

Think about a couple of recent examples: Sharing data held by businesses and corporations (i.e. public data in private hands) can help to improve policy interventions. California planners make water allocation decisions based upon expertise, data and analytical tools from public and private sources, including Intel, the Earth Research Institute at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the World Food Center at the University of California at Davis.

In Europe, several phone companies have made anonymized datasets available, making it possible for researchers to track calling and commuting patterns and gain better insight into social problems from unemployment to mental health. In the United States, LinkedIn is providing free data about demand for IT jobs in different markets which, when combined with open data from the Department of Labor, helps communities target efforts around training….

Despite the promise of data sharing, these kind of data collaboratives remain relatively new. There is a need toaccelerate their use by giving companies strong tax incentives for sharing data for public good. There’s a need for more study to identify models for data sharing in ways that respect personal privacy and security and enable companies to do well by doing good. My colleagues at The GovLab together with UN Global Pulse and the University of Leiden, for example, published this initial analysis of terms and conditions used when exchanging data as part of a prize-backed challenge. We also need philanthropy to start putting money into “meta research;” it’s not going to be enough to just open up databases: we need to know if the data is good.

After years of growing disenchantment with closed-door institutions, the push for greater use of data in governing can be seen as both a response and as a mirror to the Big Data revolution in business. Although more than 1,000,000 government datasets about everything from air quality to farmers markets are openly available online in downloadable formats, much of the data about environmental, biometric, epidemiological, and physical conditions rest in private hands. Governing better requires a new empiricism for developing solutions together. That will depend on access to these private, not just public data….(More)”

Openness an Essential Building Block for Inclusive Societies

Curated on September 23, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

President Enrique Peña Nieto (Mexico) in the Huffington Post: “The international community faces a complex environment that requires transforming the way we govern. In that sense, 2015 marks a historic milestone, as 193 Member States of the United Nations will come together to agree on the adoption of the 2030 Agenda. With the definition of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we will set an ambitious course toward a better and more inclusive world for the next 15 years.

The SDGs will be established just when governments deal with new and more defiant challenges, which require increased collaboration with multiple stakeholders to deliver innovative solutions. For that reason, cutting-edge technologies, fueled by vast amounts of data, provide an efficient platform to foster a global transformation and consolidate more responsive, collaborative and open governments.

Goal 16 seeks to promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies by ensuring access to public information, strengthening the rule of law, as well as building stronger and more accountable institutions. By doing so, we will contribute to successfully achieve the rest of the 2030 Agenda objectives.

During the 70^th United Nations General Assembly, the 11 countries of the Steering Committee of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), along with civil-society leaders, will gather to acknowledge Goal 16 as a common target through a Joint Declaration: Open Government for the Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. As the Global Summit of OGP convenes this year in Mexico City, on October 28^th and 29^th, my government will call on all 65 members to subscribe to this fundamental declaration.

The SDGs will be reached only through trustworthy, effective and inclusive institutions. This is why Mexico, as current chair of the OGP, has committed to promote citizen participation, innovative policies, transparency and accountability.

Furthermore, we have worked with a global community of key players to develop the international Open Data Charter (ODC), which sets the founding principles for a greater coherence and increased use of open data across the world. We seek to recognize the value of having timely, comprehensive, accessible, and comparable data to improve governance and citizen engagement, as well as to foster inclusive development and innovation….(More)”