Paper by Acquisti, Alessandro and Fong, Christina: “Surveys of U.S. employers suggest that numerous firms seek information about job applicants online. However, little is known about how this information gathering influences employers’ hiring behavior. We present results from two complementary randomized experiments (a field experiment and an online experiment) on the impact of online information on U.S. firms’ hiring behavior. We manipulate candidates’ personal information that is protected under either federal laws or some state laws, and may be risky for employers to enquire about during interviews, but which may be inferred from applicants’ online social media profiles. In the field experiment, we test responses of over 4,000 U.S. employers to a Muslim candidate relative to a Christian candidate, and to a gay candidate relative to a straight candidate. We supplement the field experiment with a randomized, survey-based online experiment with over 1,000 subjects (including subjects with previous human resources experience) testing the effects of the manipulated online information on hypothetical hiring decisions and perceptions of employability. The results of the field experiment suggest that a minority of U.S. firms likely searched online for the candidates’ information. Hence, the overall effect of the experimental manipulations on interview invitations is small and not statistically significant. However, in the field experiment, we find evidence of discrimination linked to political party affiliation. Specifically, following the Gallup Organization’s segmentation of U.S. states by political ideology, we use results from the 2012 presidential election and find evidence of discrimination against the Muslim candidate compared to the Christian candidate among employers in more Romney-leaning states and counties. These results are robust to controlling for firm characteristics, state fixed effects, and a host of county-level variables. We find no evidence of discrimination against the gay candidate relative to the straight candidate. Results from the online experiment are consistent with those from the field experiment: we find more evidence of bias among subjects more likely to self-report more political conservative party affiliation. The online experiment’s results are also robust to controlling for demographic variables. Results from both experiments should be interpreted carefully. Because politically conservative states and counties in our field experiment, and more conservative party affiliation in our online experiment, are not randomly assigned, the result that discrimination is greater in more politically conservative areas and among more politically conservative online subjects should be interpreted as correlational, not causal.”
Platform enables business to track local and state legislation, and predict the outcome
Springwise: “We’ve already seen platforms such as Tweetminster use social media to keep citizens up-to-date with the latest goings on in the British Parliament. Now FiscalNote is providing businesses in the US with the tools to track the bills and legislature that affects their industry, as well offering insights into their potential results.
For small businesses, it can be difficult to keep on top of all the goings-on in Congress, never mind individual state and county rulings that may affect their operations. In what it calls the Political Genome Project, FiscalNote aims to keep tabs on any changes to the law across the 50 states. After users have selected their chosen industries, the site delivers only the news relevant to them, presented in an easy-to-understand way on the user dashboard. Mobile notifications also keep businesses informed of changes as they’re fought on the floor. Infographic-style analytics show the progress of each piece of legislation, and the probability of each outcome is worked out with complex algorithms that take in previous results and historical data.
FiscalNote helps small businesses to make smarter decisions by gaining greater insight into the workings of national and local politics related to their industry, keeping them informed of changes they might have otherwise missed. How else can companies stay on top of the latest news from their particular sector?
Website: www.fiscalnote.com”
Google's Civic Information API: now connecting US users with their representatives
Jonathan Tomer, Software Engineer at Google Blog: “Many applications track and map governmental data, but few help their users identify the relevant local public officials. Too often local problems are divorced from the government institutions designed to help. Today, we’re launching new functionality in the Google Civic Information API that lets developers connect constituents to their federal, state, county and municipal elected officials—right down to the city council district.
The Civic Information API has already helped developers create apps for US elections that incorporate polling place and ballot information, from helping those affected by Superstorm Sandy find updated polling locations over SMS to learning more about local races through social networks. We want to support these developers in their work beyond elections, including everyday civic engagement.
In addition to elected representatives, the API also returns your political jurisdictions using Open Civic Data Identifiers. We worked with the Sunlight Foundation and other civic technology groups to create this new open standard to make it easier for developers to combine the Civic Information API with their datasets. For example, once you look up districts and representatives in the Civic Information API, you can match the districts up to historical election results published by Open Elections.
Developers can head over to the documentation to get started; be sure to check out the “Map Your Reps” sample application from Bow & Arrow to get a sense of what the API can do. You can also see the API in action today through new features from some of our partners, for example:
- Change.org has implemented a new Decision Makers feature which allows users to direct a petition to their elected representative and lists that petition publicly on the representative’s profile page. As a result, the leader has better insight into the issues being discussed in their district, and a new channel to respond to constituents.
- PopVox helps users share their opinions on bills with their Congressional Representatives in a meaningful format. PopVox uses the API to connect the user to the correct Congressional District. Because PopVox verifies that users are real constituents, the opinions shared with elected officials have more impact on the political process.
Over time, we will expand beyond US elected representatives and elections to other data types and places. We can’t grow without your help. As you use the API, please visit our Developer Forum to share your experiences and tell us how we can help you build the next generation of civic apps and services.”
Four critiques of open data initiatives
Blog by Rob Kitchin: “The arguments concerning the benefits of open data are now reasonably well established and include contentions that open data lead to increased transparency and accountability with respect to public bodies and services; increases the efficiency and productivity of agencies and enhances their governance; promotes public participation in decision making and social innovation; and fosters economic innovation and job and wealth creation (Pollock 2006; Huijboom and Van der Broek 2011; Janssen 2012; Yiu 2012).
What is less well examined are the potential problems affecting, and negative consequences of, open data initiatives. Consequently, as a provocation for Wednesday’s (Nov 13th, 4-6pm) Programmable City open data event I thought it might be useful to outline four critiques of open data, each of which deserves and demands critical attention: open data lacks a sustainable financial model; promotes a politics of the benign and empowers the empowered; lacks utility and usability; and facilitates the neoliberalisation and marketisation of public services. These critiques do not suggest abandoning the move towards opening data, but contend that open data initiatives need to be much more mindful of what data are being made open, how data are made available, how they are being used, and how they are being funded.”
Privacy in the 21st Century: From the “Dark Ages” to “Enlightenment”?
Paper by P. Kitsos and A. Yannoukakou in the International Journal of E-Politics (IJEP): “The events of 9/11 along with the bombarding in Madrid and London forced governments to resort to new structures of privacy safeguarding and electronic surveillance under the common denominator of terrorism and transnational crime fighting. Legislation as US PATRIOT Act and EU Data Retention Directive altered fundamentally the collection, processing and sharing methods of personal data, while it granted increased powers to police and law enforcement authorities concerning their jurisdiction in obtaining and processing personal information to an excessive degree. As an aftermath of the resulted opacity and the public outcry, a shift is recorded during the last years towards a more open governance by the implementation of open data and cloud computing practices in order to enhance transparency and accountability from the side of governments, restore the trust between the State and the citizens, and amplify the citizens’ participation to the decision-making procedures. However, privacy and personal data protection are major issues in all occasions and, thus, must be safeguarded without sacrificing national security and public interest on one hand, but without crossing the thin line between protection and infringement on the other. Where this delicate balance stands, is the focal point of this paper trying to demonstrate that it is better to be cautious with open practices than hostage of clandestine practices.”
NEW: The Open Governance Knowledge Base
In its continued efforts to organize and disseminate learnings in the field of technology-enabled governance innovation, today, The Governance Lab is introducing a collaborative, wiki-style repository of information and research at the nexus of technology, governance and citizenship. Right now we’re calling it the Open Governance Knowledge Base, and it goes live today.
Our goal in creating this collaborative platform is to provide a single source of research and insights related to the broad, interdiscplinary field of open governance for the benefit of: 1) decision-makers in governing institutions seeking information and inspiration to guide their efforts to increase openness; 2) academics seeking to enrich and expand their scholarly pursuits in this field; 3) technology practitioners seeking insights and examples of familiar tools being used to solve public problems; and 4) average citizens simply seeking interesting information on a complex, evolving topic area.
While you can already find some pre-populated information and research on the platform, we need your help! The field of open governance is too vast, complex and interdisciplinary to meaningfully document without broad collaboration.
Here’s how you can help to ensure this shared resource is as useful and engaging as possible:
- What should we call the platform? We want your title suggestions. Leave your ideas in the comments or tweet them to us @TheGovLab.
- And more importantly: Share your knowledge and research. Take a look at what we’ve posted, create an account, refer to this MediaWiki formatting guide as needed and start editing!
Transparency in Politics and the Media: Accountability and Open Government
New report from The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism by Nigel Bowles, James T. Hamilton, and David A. L. Levy: “Increasingly governments around the world are experimenting with initiatives in transparency or ‘open government’.
These involve a variety of measures including the announcement of more user-friendly government websites, greater access to government data, the extension of freedom of information legislation and broader attempts to involve the public in government decision making.
However, the role of the media in these initiatives has not hitherto been examined. This new RISJ edited volume analyses the challenges and opportunities presented to journalists as they attempt to hold governments accountable in an era of professed transparency.
In examining how transparency and open government initiatives have affected the accountability role of the press in the US and the UK, it also explores how policies in these two countries could change in the future to help journalists hold governments more accountable.
This volume will be essential reading for all practising journalists, for students of journalism or politics, and for policymakers. This publication can be bought from I. B. Tauris
Download the Executive Summary and First Chapter”
The trouble with democracy
David Runciman author of The Confidence Trap: A History of Democracy in Crisis from World War I to the Present in The Guardian: “Government shutdowns, petty policy squabbles, voter disaffection – democracy doesn’t seem to work very well. But what’s the alternative? And can we rely on muddling through?…Those of us who live in the western democracies might sometimes be tempted to agree. Dictator envy is a habitual feature of democratic politics. We don’t actually want to live under a dictatorship – we still have a horror of what that would entail – but we do envy dictators their ability to act decisively in a crisis….
The irony of dictator envy is that it goes against the historical evidence. Over the last 100 years, democracies have shown that they are better than dictatorships at dealing with the most serious crises that any political system has to face. Democracies win wars. They survive economic disasters. They adapt to meet environmental challenges. Precisely because they are able to act decisively without having to square public opinion first, dictators are the ones who end up making the catastrophic mistakes. When dictators get things wrong, they can take the whole state over the cliff with them. When democratic leaders get things wrong, we kick them out before they can do terminal damage.
Yet that is little consolation in the middle of a crisis. The reason we keep succumbing to dictator envy is that it requires steady nerves to take the long view when things are going wrong. The qualities that give democracies the advantage in the long run – their restlessness and impatience with failure – are the same qualities that make it hard for them to take the long view. They look with envy on political systems that can seize the moment. Democracies are very bad at seizing the moment. Their survival technique is muddling through. The curse of democracy is that we are condemned to want the thing we can’t have.
The person who first noticed this deeply conflicted character of democratic life was a French aristocrat. When he travelled to the US to study its prisons in 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville shared the common 19th-century prejudice against democracy. He thought it was a chaotic and stupid system of government. By the time he finished his journey a year later, he had changed his mind. He decided that American democracy was a lot better than it looks. On the surface, everything appeared a mess: bickering politicians, vituperative and ill-informed newspapers (“The job of the journalist in America”, Tocqueville wrote, “is to attack coarsely, without preparation and without art, to set aside principles in order to grab men”), distracted citizens. No one was able to exert a grip. There was far too much noise, not enough signal. But over time this surfeit of noise produced an adaptable politics that never sat still for long enough to get stuck. The raucousness of American politics was a sign of its essential health. Americans kept stumbling into holes and then back out of them. More mistakes are made in a democracy, Tocqueville wrote, but more mistakes are corrected as well. More fires get started by Americans. More fires get put out by them too….
It has always been like this. The history of democracy throughout the 20th century is a story of repeated crises during which politicians and publics have been torn between the twin impulses to overreact and to underreact to the dangers, without ever finding the balance between them. Dictator envy is never far from the surface….The pattern of democratic life is to drift into impending disaster and then to stumble out of it. Undemocratic practices creep up on us unawares, until the routine practices of democracy – a free press, a few unbiddable politicians – expose them. When that happens, democracies do not get a grip; they simply make the minimum of necessary adjustments until they drift into the next disaster. What is hard for any democracy is to exert the constant, vigilant pressure needed to rein in the forces that produce the crises. It is so much easier to wait for the crisis to reveal itself before trying to do something about it. The new information technology, far from solving this problem, has made it worse. We are more distracted than ever. The surfeit of information flowing around the world makes it practically impossible for anyone to keep secrets for long. But it also makes it practically impossible to secure broad democratic agreement for wide-ranging reform of public life. There is far too much noise, not enough signal. So we keep our fingers crossed in the hope we will muddle through.”
How to Promote Civic Engagement in Public Issues
Utne: “With collaborative consumption, access is valued above ownership and “mine” becomes “ours,” allowing everyone’s needs to be met with minimal waste. Sharing is Good (New Society Publishers, 2013) by Beth Buczynski is your roadmap to this new and exciting economic paradigm. In this excerpt from chapter six, “What to Share,” learn how to create civic engagement in your community and find solutions to public issues.
“Participatory government is the idea that all members of a population should be able to make meaningful contributions to decision-making. For too long, we’ve been content to vote, or not, hoping that elected officials will actually keep their promise to act in the best interest of the people. The power of the Internet now makes it much easier for all levels of government to become transparent, sharing data and engaging the public in a dialogue that leads to more creative and efficient solutions. Here are a few resources that promote civic engagement in one’s own governance.
Neighborland—People who live and work in a neighborhood know what services, infrastructure, and businesses their community needs, whether it’s a local grocery store, cafe with WiFi, bike lanes, or a recreational center. Neighborland offers residents a friendly and engaging tool to voice their needs and connect with like-minded people to make change happen.
ParticipatoryBudgeting—The Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP) is a non-profit organization that helps communities decide how to spend public money, primarily in the United States and Canada. This organization works directly with governments and non-profits to develop participatory budgeting processes in which local people directly decide how to spend part of a public budget. It’s their goal to include those who are normally left out of these types of discussions and decisions, namely the public! PBP offers many different opportunities for participation, from joining or starting a participatory budget movement in your own town, to volunteering, jobs, and internships. This isn’t a typical collaborative consumption service, but rather an invaluable resource for people who would like to see more transparency and community involvement when local government spends public monies.
OpenGovernment—A free, open-source public resource website for government transparency and civic engagement at the state and local levels. The site is a non-partisan joint project of two 501(c)3 non-profit organizations: the Participatory Politics Foundation and the Sunlight Foundation; OpenGovernment is independent from any government entity, candidate, or political party. The ultimate mission of OpenGovernment is to ensure that all three branches (executive, legislative, and judicial) at every level of US government (federal, state, city, local) comply with the principles of open government data.
YourView—YourView aspires to give Australians a stronger democratic voice. It has the unique ambition to present what people really think about major public issues—and giving that collective wisdom a role in the national political discourse.”
Selected Readings on Crowdsourcing Opinions and Ideas
The Living Library’s Selected Readings series seeks to build a knowledge base on innovative approaches for improving the effectiveness and legitimacy of governance. This curated and annotated collection of recommended works on the topic of crowdsourcing was originally published in 2013.
As technological advances give individuals greater ability to share their opinions and ideas with the world, citizens are increasingly expecting government to consult with them and factor their input into the policy-making process. Moving away from the representative democracy system created in a less connected time, e-petitions; participatory budgeting (PB), a collaborative, community-based system for budget allocation; open innovation initiatives; and Liquid Democracy, a hybrid of direct and indirect democracy, are allowing citizens to make their voices heard between trips to the ballot box.
Selected Reading List (in alphabetical order)
- Eirikur Bergmann — Reconstituting Iceland — Constitutional Reform Caught in a New Critical Order in the Wake of Crisis — a paper exploring the history and of Iceland’s “Crowdsourced Constitution.”
- Oliver Gassmann, Ellen Enkel and Henry Chesbrough — The Future of Open Innovation — a paper discussing opportunities and trends related to open innovation.
- Hollie Russon Gilman — The Participatory Turn: Participatory Budgeting Comes to America — a dissertation focused on both the recent history of international PB efforts and the largely untapped potential for PB in the United States.
- Alexa Kasdan and Lindsay Cattell — New Report on NYC Participatory Budgeting — a research and evaluation report on the 2011 PB process undertaken in New York City.
- Kai Masser — Participatory Budgeting as Its Critics See It — a critical look at PB drawing on lessons learned from a German pilot initiative.
- OECD — Citizens as Partners: Information, Consultation and Public Participation in Policy-making — this policy report examines the use of crowdsourcing in OECD countries to act as a new form of representation and participation.
- Angel Tchorbadjiiski — Liquid Democracy — a thesis on the potential benefits of and challenges to the wider use of Liquid Democracy.
Annotated Selected Reading List (in alphabetical order)
Bergmann, Eirikur. “Reconstituting Iceland – Constitutional Reform Caught in a New Critical Order in the Wake of Crisis.” in Academia.edu, (presented at the Political Legitimacy and the Paradox of Regulation, Leiden University, 2013). http://bit.ly/1aaTVYP.
- This paper explores the tumultuous history of Iceland’s “Crowdsourced Constitution.” The since-abandoned document was built upon three principles: distribution of power, transparency and responsibility.
- Even prior to the draft being dismantled through political processes, Bergmann argues that an overenthusiastic public viewed the constitution as a stronger example of citizen participation than it really was: “Perhaps with the delusion of distance the international media was branding the production as the world’s first ‘crowdsourced’ constitution, drafted by the interested public in clear view for the world to follow…This was however never a realistic description of the drafting. Despite this extraordinary open access, the Council was not able to systematically plough through all the extensive input as [it] only had four months to complete the task.”
- Bergmann’s paper illustrates the transition Iceland’s constitution has undertaken in recent years: moving form a paradigmatic example of crowdsourcing opinions to a demonstration of the challenges inherent in bringing more voices into a realm dominated by bureaucracy and political concerns.
Gassmann, Oliver, Ellen Enkel, and Henry Chesbrough. “The Future of Open Innovation.” R&D Management 40, no. 3 (2010): 213– 221. http://bit.ly/1bk4YeN.
- In this paper – an introduction to a special issue on the topic – Gassmann, Enkel and Chesbrough discuss the evolving trends in open innovation. They define the concept, referencing previous work by Chesbrough et al., as “…the purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and expand the markets for external use of innovation, respectively.”
- In addition to examining the existing literature for the field, the authors identify nine trends that they believe will define the future of open innovation for businesses, many of which can also be applied to governing insitutions:
- Industry penetration: from pioneers to mainstream
- R&D intensity: from high to low tech
- Size: from large firms to SMEs
- Processes: from stage gate to probe-and-learn
- Structure: from standalone to alliances
- Universities: from ivory towers to knowledge brokers Processes: from amateurs to professionals
- Content: from products to services
- Intellectual property: from protection to a tradable good
Gilman, Hollie Russon. “The Participatory Turn: Participatory Budgeting Comes to America.” Harvard University, 2012. https://bit.ly/2BhaeVv.
- In this dissertation, Gilman argues that participatory budgeting (PB) produces better outcomes than the status quo budget process in New York, while also transforming how those who participate understand themselves as citizens, constituents, Council members, civil society leaders and community stakeholders.
- The dissertation also highlights challenges to participation drawing from experience and lessons learned from PB’s inception in Porto Alege, Brazil in 1989. While recognizing a diversity of challenges, Gilman ultimately argues that, “PB provides a viable and informative democratic innovation for strengthening civic engagement within the United States that can be streamlined and adopted to scale.”
Kasdan, Alexa, and Cattell, Lindsay. “New Report on NYC Participatory Budgeting.” Practical Visionaries. Accessed October 21, 2013. https://bit.ly/2Ek8bTu.
- This research and evaluation report is the result of surveys, in-depth interviews and observations collected at key points during the 2011 participatory budgeting (PB) process in New York City, in which “[o]ver 2,000 community members were the ones to propose capital project ideas in neighborhood assemblies and town hall meetings.”
- The PBNYC project progressed through six main steps:
- First Round of Neighborhood Assemblies
- Delegate Orientations
- Delegate Meetings
- Second Round of Neighborhood Assemblies
- Voting
- Evaluation, Implementation & Monitoring
- The authors also discuss the varied roles and responsibilities for the divers stakeholders involved in the process:
- Community Stakeholders
- Budget Delegates
- District Committees
- City-wide Steering Committee Council Member Offices
Masser, Kai. “Participatory Budgeting as Its Critics See It.” Burgerhaushalt, April 30, 2013. http://bit.ly/1dppSxW.
- This report is a critique of the participatory budgeting (PB) process, focusing on lessons learned from the outcomes of a pilot initiative in Germany.
- The reports focuses on three main criticisms leveled against PB:
- Participatory Budgeting can be a time consuming process that is barely comprehensive to the people it seeks to engage, as a result there is need for information about the budget, and a strong willingness to participate in preparing it.
- Differences in the social structure of the participants inevitably affect the outcome – the process must be designed to avoid low participation or over-representation of one group.
- PB cannot be sustained over a prolonged period and should therefore focus on one aspect of the budgeting process. The article points to outcomes that show that citizens may find it considerably more attractive to make proposals on how to spend money than on how to save it, which may not always result in the best outcomes.
OECD. “Citizens as Partners: Information, Consultation and Public Participation in Policy-making.” The IT Law Wiki. http://bit.ly/1aIGquc.
- This OECD policy report features discussion on the concept of crowdsourcing as a new form or representation and public participation in OECD countries, with the understanding that it creates avenues for citizens to participate in public policy-making within the overall framework of representative democracy.
- The report provides a wealth of comparative information on measures adopted in OECD countries to strengthen citizens’ access to information, to enhance consultation and encourage their active participation in policy-making.
Tchorbadjiiski, Angel. “Liquid Democracy.” Rheinisch-Westf alische Technische Hochschule Aachen Informatik 4 ComSy, 2012. http://bit.ly/1eOsbIH.
- This thesis presents discusses how Liquid Democracy (LD) makes it for citizens participating in an election to “either take part directly or delegate [their] own voting rights to a representative/expert. This way the voters are not limited to taking one decision for legislative period as opposed to indirect (representative) democracy, but are able to actively and continuously take part in the decision-making process.”
- Tchorbadjiiski argues that, “LD provides great flexibility. You do not have to decide yourself on the program of a political party, which only suits some aspects of your opinion.” Through LD, “all voters can choose between direct and indirect democracy creating a hybrid government form suiting their own views.”
- In addition to describing the potential benefits of Liquid Democracy, Tchorbadjiiski focuses on the challenge of maintaining privacy and security in such a system. He proposes a platform that “allows for secure and anonymous voting in such a way that it is not possible, even for the system operator, to find out the identity of a voter or to prevent certain voters (for example minority groups) from casting a ballot.”