international development

What do we know about when data does/doesn’t influence policy?

Curated on April 18, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Josh Powell at Oxfam Blog: “While development actors are now creating more data than ever, examples of impactful use are anecdotal and scant. Put bluntly, despite this supply-side push for more data, we are far from realizing an evidence-based utopia filled with data-driven decisions.

One of the key shortcomings of our work on development data has been failing to develop realistic models for how data can fit into existing institutional policy/program processes. The political economy – institutional structures, individual (dis)incentives, policy constraints – of data use in government and development agencies remains largely unknown to “data people” like me, who work on creating tools and methods for using development data.

We’ve documented several preconditions for getting data to be used, which could be thought of in a cycle:
While broadly helpful, I think we also need more specific theories of change (ToCs) to guide data initiatives in different institutional contexts. Borrowing from a host of theories on systems thinking and adaptive learning, I gave this a try with a simple 2×2 model. The x-axis can be thought of as the level of institutional buy-in, while the y-axis reflects whether available data suggest a (reasonably) “clear” policy approach. Different data strategies are likely to be effective in each of these four quadrants.

So what does this look like in the real world? Let’s tackle these with some examples we’ve come across:

.…(More).

Building State Capability: Evidence, Analysis, Action

Curated on April 18, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

(Open Access) Book by Matt Andrews, Lant Pritchett, and Michael Woolcock: “…Governments play a major role in the development process, and constantly introduce reforms and policies to achieve developmental objectives. Many of these interventions have limited impact, however; schools get built but children don’t learn, IT systems are introduced but not used, plans are written but not implemented. These achievement deficiencies reveal gaps in capabilities, and weaknesses in the process of building state capability.

This book addresses these weaknesses and gaps. It starts by providing evidence of the capability shortfalls that currently exist in many countries, showing that many governments lack basic capacities even after decades of reforms and capacity building efforts. The book then analyses this evidence, identifying capability traps that hold many governments back – particularly related to isomorphic mimicry (where governments copy best practice solutions from other countries that make them look more capable even if they are not more capable) and premature load bearing (where governments adopt new mechanisms that they cannot actually make work, given weak extant capacities). The book then describes a process that governments can use to escape these capability traps. Called PDIA (problem driven iterative adaptation), this process empowers people working in governments to find and fit solutions to the problems they face. The discussion about this process is structured in a practical manner so that readers can actually apply tools and ideas to the capability challenges they face in their own contexts. These applications will help readers devise policies and reforms that have more impact than those of the past….(More)”.

Decentralized Self-Organizing Systems

Curated on April 18, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Fred Wilson at AVC: “Mankind has been inventing new ways to organize and govern since we showed up on planet earth. Our history is a gradual evolution of these organization and governance systems. Much of what we are using right now was invented in ancient Greece and perfected in western Europe in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.

I have been thinking for some time that we are on the cusp of something new. I don’t know exactly what it will be but I think it will be inspired by the big technological innovations of the late 20th century and early 21st century and it will be based on decentralized and self-organizing systems.

The Internet is, at its core, a scaled decentralized system. Its design has been a resounding success. It has scaled elegantly and gradually to well over 2bn users over fifty years. No central entity controls the Internet and it upgrades itself and scales itself slowly over time.

Open source software development communities are also an important development of the past fifty years. These communities come together to create and maintain new software systems and are not financed or governed by traditional corporate models. The goals of these communities are largely based on delivering new capabilities to the market and they don’t have capitalist based incentive systems and they have shown that in many instances they work better than traditional corporate models, Linux being the best example.

And, for the past decade or so, we have seen that modern cryptography and some important computer science innovations have led to decentralized blockchain systems, most notably Bitcoin and Ethereum. But there are many more to study and learn from. These blockchain systems are pushing forward our understanding of economic models, governance models, and security models.

I think it is high time that political scientists, philosophers, economists, and historians turn their attention to these new self-organizing and self-governing systems….(More)”.

Are blockchain applications guided by adequate social values?

Curated on April 6, 2017May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Philip Boucher at EuroScientist: “…The way blockchains create fast, cheap and secure public records means that they also can be used for many non-financial tasks, such as casting votes in elections or proving that a document existed at a specific time. Blockchains are particularly well suited to situations where it is necessary to record ownership histories. For example, they could help keep track of how and where our diamonds are sourced and our clothes are made, or to be sure that our champagne really came from Champagne.

They could help us to finally resolve the problem of music and video piracy while enabling second-hand markets for digital media; just like we have for books and vinyl. They also present opportunities in all kinds of public services, such as health and welfare payments. At the frontier of blockchain development, self-executing contracts are paving the way for companies that run themselves without human intervention.

The opportunities are many, but there are also some challenges to consider. For example, blockchain’s transparency is fine for matters of public record such as land registries, but what about bank balances and other sensitive data? It is possible (albeit only sometimes and with substantial effort), to identify the individuals associated with transactions, which could compromise their privacy and anonymity. While some blockchains do offer full anonymity, some sensitive information simply should not be distributed in this way.

We often talk about blockchain’s economic and functional potential. These are important, but its most profound legacy may be in subtle changes to broad social values and political structures. Just because technologies can be used for both ‘good’ actions and ‘bad’ actions does not mean that they are neutral.

To the contrary, all technologies have values and politics, and they usually reinforce the interests of those that control them. Each time we use a centralised ledger – like a bank or government database – we confirm their owners’ legitimacy and strengthen their position.

Perhaps each time we use a decentralised blockchain ledger instead, we will participate in the gradual relegation of traditional financial and governance institutions and the prioritisation of transparency over anonymity. But this would only happen if we develop and use blockchains that have these values at their core….

We cannot know exactly where and how blockchain will change our lives. They have the potential to help us develop more transparent and distributed social and economic structures. However, we have to look closely to see whether this is really what we are getting.

The sharing economy also promised to connect individuals more directly, ousting middlemen and unburdening people from the intervention of states, banks and other traditional institutions. It also had a similar rhetoric of transition, disruption and even revolution. However, the most successful initiatives of this movement are, at heart, very effective middlemen. Even with ubiquitous blockchain development, we might not achieve the levels of transparency and distribution that we expected.

For example, as an alternative to the most open and transparent blockchain applications such as Bitcoin, so-called permissioned blockchains allow their creators to maintain some centralised control. These blockchains offer a more moderate form of decentralisation and are favoured by many governments and businesses.

Blockchains and regulation

For now, there is little appetite for intervention in blockchain development at a European level. Indeed, a recent European Parliament report on virtual currencies, published in May 2016, acknowledged the increased risks, which will require enhanced regulatory oversight and adequate technical expertise to handle such currencies. However, the report also calls for a proportionate EU regulatory approach to avoid hampering innovation in the field at such an early stage. This means that, for now, we will continue to analyse developments and promote dialogue amongst policymakers, businesses and citizens….(More)”

Online Field Experiments: Studying Social Interactions in Context

Curated on April 6, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Paolo Parigi, Jessica J. Santana and Karen S. Cook in Social Psychology Quarterly: “Thanks to the Internet and the related availability of “Big Data,” social interactions and their environmental context can now be studied experimentally. In this article, we discuss a methodology that we term the online field experiment to differentiate it from more traditional lab-based experimental designs. We explain how this experimental method can be used to capture theoretically relevant environmental conditions while also maximizing the researcher’s control over the treatment(s) of interest. We argue that this methodology is particularly well suited for social psychology because of its focus on social interactions and the factors that influence the nature and structure of these interactions. We provide one detailed example of an online field experiment used to investigate the impact of the sharing economy on trust behavior. We argue that we are fundamentally living in a new social world in which the Internet mediates a growing number of our social interactions. These highly prevalent forms of social interaction create opportunities for the development of new research designs that allow us to advance our theories of social interaction and social structure with new data sources….(More)”.

Realising the Data Revolution for Sustainable Development: Towards Capacity Development 4.0

Curated on April 5, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Niels Keijzer and Stephan Klingebiel for Paris21: “An ever-deepening data revolution is shaping everyday lives in many parts of the world. As just one of many mindboggling statistics on Big Data, it has been estimated that by the year 2020, about 1.7 megabytes of new information will be created every second for every human being on the planet. The benefits of the data revolution extend to different groups of people, social movements, institutions and businesses. Yet many people and countries do not have access to these positive benefits and in richer countries potentially positive changes raise suspicion amongst citizens as well as concerns related to privacy and confidentiality. The availability of potential advantages is, to a large extent, guided by levels of development and income. Despite the rapid spread of mobile phone technology that allows regions otherwise disconnected from the grid to ‘leapfrog’ in terms of using and producing data and statistics, poor people are still less likely to benefit from the dramatic changes in the field of data.

Against the background of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the main challenge for statistics is to manage the data revolution in support of sustainable development. The main priorities are the broadening and deepening of production, dissemination and use of data and statistics, and achieving them requires identifying those population groups which are most vulnerable and making governments more accountable to their citizens. In parallel, the risks accompanying the data revolution need to be mitigated and reduced, including the use of data for purposes of repression or otherwise infringing on the privacy of citizens. In addition to representing a universal agenda that breaks away from the dichotomy of developed and developing countries, the new agenda calls for tailor-made approaches in each country or region concerned, supported by global actions. The 2030 Agenda further states the international community’s realisation of the need to move away from ‘business as usual’ in international support for data and statistics.

The most important driving forces shaping the data revolution are domestic (legal) frameworks and public policies across the globe. This applies not only to wealthier countries but also developing countries2 , and external support cannot compensate for absent domestic leadership and investment. Technical, legal and political factors all affect whether countries are willing and able to succeed in benefiting from the data revolution. However, in both low income countries and lower-middle income countries, and to some extent in upper-middle income countries, we can observe two constraining factors in this regard, capacities and funding. These factors are, to some degree, interrelated: if funding is not sufficiently available it might be difficult to increase the capacities required, and if capacities are insufficient funding issues might be more challenging….(More)”

Governing through Goals

Curated on April 5, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Norichika Kanie and Frank Biermann: “In September 2015, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Sustainable Development Goals as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Sustainable Development Goals built on and broadened the earlier Millennium Development Goals, but they also signaled a larger shift in governance strategies. The seventeen goals add detailed content to the concept of sustainable development, identify specific targets for each goal, and help frame a broader, more coherent, and transformative 2030 agenda. The Sustainable Development Goals aim to build a universal, integrated framework for action that reflects the economic, social, and planetary complexities of the twenty-first century.

This book examines in detail the core characteristics of goal setting, asking when it is an appropriate governance strategy and how it differs from other approaches; analyzes the conditions under which a goal-oriented agenda can enable progress toward desired ends; and considers the practical challenges in implementation….(More)”

A Data-driven Approach to Assess the Potential of Smart Cities: The Case of Open Data for Brussels Capital Region

Curated on April 1, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Miguel Angel Gomez Zotano and Hugues Bersini in Energy Procedia: “The success of smart city projects is intrinsically related to the existence of large volumes of data that could be processed to achieve their objectives. For this purpose, the plethora of data stored by public administrations becomes an incredibly rich source of insight and information due to its volume and diversity. However, it was only with the Open Government Movement when governments have been concerned with the need to open their data to citizens and businesses. Thus, with the emergence of open data portals, these myriad of data enables the development of new business models. The achievement of the benefits sought by making this data available triggers new challenges to cope with the diversity of sources involved. The business potential could be jeopardized by the scarcity of relevant data in the different blocks and domains that makes a city and by the lack of a common approach to data publication, in terms of format, content, etc.

This paper introduces a holistic approach that relies on the Smart City Ontology as the cornerstone to standardise and structure data. This approach, which is proposed to be an analytical tool to assess the potential of data in a given smart city, analyses three main aspects: availability of data, the criteria that data should fulfil to be considered eligible and the model used to structure and organise data. The approach has been applied to the case of Brussels Capital Region, which first results are presented and discussed in this paper. The main conclusion that has been obtained is that, besides its commitment with open data and smart cities, Brussels is not mature enough to fully exploit the real intelligence that smart cities could provide. This maturity would be achieved in the following years with the implementation of the new Brussels’ Smart City Strategy…(More)”.

The Governance Report 2017

Curated on April 1, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by The Hertie School of Governance: “Looking at recent developments around the world, it seems that democratic values — from freedom of association and speech to fair and free elections and a system of checks and balances — have come under threat. Experts have, however, disproportionately focused on the problems of democracy in the West, and pointed to familiar sets of shortcomings and emerging deficiencies. By contrast, and with few exceptions, there is less attention to assessing the numerous efforts and innovative activities that are taking place at local, national and international levels. They seek to counteract backsliding and subversion by improving resilience and consolidation and by promoting the expansion of democracy, especially in an era of limited sovereignty and, frequently also, statehood.

The Governance Report 2017 focuses on those policies, programs, and initiatives meant to address the causes of the current democratic malaise, to foster democratic resilience, and to stimulate the (re-)consolidation and development of democratic regimes. The Report’s ambition, reflecting its evidence-based approach, is to shed light on how to manage and care for democracy itself. Specifically, against the backdrop of an assessment of the state of democracy and enriched by cross-national, comparative indicators and case studies, the Report emphasizes solutions geared toward enhancing citizen participation and improving institutions in various contexts, including the rise of neo-populism. Going beyond descriptions of best practices, the Report also examines their origins, identifies the actual and potential trade-offs these solutions entail, and makes concrete recommendations to policymakers….(More)”