New Report Finds Cost-Benefit Analyses Improve Budget Choices & Taxpayer Results

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Press Release: “A new report shows cost-benefit analyses have helped states make better investments of public dollars by identifying programs and policies that deliver high returns. However, the majority of states are not yet consistently using this approach when making critical decisions. This 50-state look at cost-benefit analysis, a method that compares the expense of public programs to the returns they deliver, was released today by the Pew-MacArthur Results First Initiative, a project of The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

The study, “States’ Use of Cost-benefit Analysis: Improving Results for Taxpayers”, comes at a time when states are under continuing pressure to direct limited dollars toward the most cost-effective programs and policies while curbing spending on those that do not deliver. The report is the first comprehensive study of how all 50 states and the District of Columbia analyze the costs and benefits of programs and policies, report findings, and incorporate the assessments into decision-making. It identifies key challenges states face in conducting and using the analyses and offers strategies to overcome those obstacles. The study includes a review of state statutes, a search for cost benefit analyses released between 2008 and 2011, and interviews with legislators, legislative and program evaluation staff, executive officials, report authors, and agency officials.”

If Your Government Fails, Can You Create a New One With Your Phone?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Philip Howard in the Atlantic: “Wherever governments are in crisis, in transition, or in absentia, people are using digital media to try to improve their condition, to build new organizations, and to craft new institutional arrangements. Technology is, in a way, enabling new kinds of states.
It is out of vogue in Washington to refer to failed states. But regardless of the term, there are an unfortunate number of places where governments have ceased to function, creating openings for these new institutional arrangements to flourish. Indeed, state failure doesn’t always take the form of a catastrophic and complete collapse in government. States can fail at particular moments, such as during a natural disaster or an election. States can also fail in particular domains, such as in tax collection.
Information technologies like cellphones and the Internet are generating small acts of self-governance in a wide range of domains and in surprising places.”

The Role of Digital Media in Participatory Politics

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Interview with Joseph Kahne, chair of the MacArthur Foundation’s Research Network on Youth and Participatory Politics: “What we found was that many games provided civic learning opportunities, such as opportunities to take on the role of a leader—the president, for example—or opportunities to help others. There also were simulations where players had opportunities to work on a societal issue and to learn about institutional processes—how a legislature works, for example. And we found that when games provided those kinds of civic learning opportunities, playing them was associated with much higher commitments to civic engagement. We think some of the relationship was due to youth with civic interests choosing to play those games, and that some of the relationship was due to these games orienting youth towards the potential of civic activity. – …

Historically, the way I thought about how people engaged with the internet did not emphasize what Henry Jenkins and others refer to as “participatory culture.” I focused on whether people send email or look things up on the web. But that’s really not so different than what people did before. It’s just more efficient. The more I got involved, though, the more I began to see that the ways in which people participated with digital media actually transformed or enabled new kinds of engagement—or at least greatly facilitated the kinds of engagement that might have been possible before but would have been much less common. Such participation teaches norms and skills that end up being quite valuable in the civic realm—and it connects youth and adults to networks where they learn about issues and ways to get involved. – …
We found that many youth engage in nonpolitical forms of interest-driven activity— they’re part of online groups connected to their hobbies or sports or entertainment, for example. And we found that youth who engage in those nonpolitical, interest-driven activities become more engaged civically and politically even after controlling for their prior levels of civic and political engagement. That’s fascinating. – “

Eduardo Paes on Open Government

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Mayor, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in the Huffington Post: “The Internet revolution has transformed the way knowledge is disseminated and how people unite over causes. Social networks are playing a key role in this movement, just as books and the press have done over the last six centuries. During the recent demonstrations in Brazil, approximately 62 percent of the people were informed of the event via Facebook, a much higher rate than TV, which was first source of information to 14 percent of attendees, according to Ibope Institute. Three out of four agitators used social networks to round up support. As generations succeed and the digital gap narrows, these statistics could possibly rise.
This revolution is also accentuating the imperfections of the representative democracy, the only plausible alternative, as Churchill famously said. We live in an era of “Liquid Modernity” as defined by sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, which describes the ephemeral nature of contemporary social interactions. Bauman says that these days society, in a similar manner to liquid, adopts various unstable forms under small amounts of pressure. They are incapable of stabilizing in a consistent form, which results in consequences to social relationships and politics. Meanwhile, political parties, bureaucracy and institutions seem to remain firmly in the 17th Century.
Democracy has to reinvent itself in accordance with this new “liquid society” where collaboration happens between many millions of people directly. Leadership is not vertical, as in the past, but horizontal. Nowadays some say following is more important than leading. Cyber culture understands open code as a principle, something the music industry has reluctantly had to learn. There is no time and space limitation for public accountability on the Internet. Creative commonality is standard and does not resemble the authoritarian style of the dead communist experience. It seems that it is no longer society’s obligation to understand legislation, it is a duty for governments to be understood by their people.”

Index: Participation and Civic Engagement

Curated on Posted on by admin

The Living Library Index – inspired by the Harper’s Index – provides important statistics and highlights global trends in governance innovation. This installment focuses on participation and civic engagement and was originally published in 2013.

  • Percent turnout of voting age population in 2012 U.S. Presidential election: 57.5
  • Percent turnout in 2008, 2004, 2000 elections: 62.3, 60.4, 54.2
  • Change in voting rate in U.S. from 1980 to most recent election: –29
  • Change in voting rate in Slovak Republic from 1980 to most recent election: –42, the lowest rate among democratic countries surveyed
  • Change in voting rate in Russian Federation from 1980 to most recent election: +14, the highest rate among democratic countries surveyed
  • Percent turnout in Australia as of 2011: 95, the highest rate among democratic countries surveyed
  • Percentage point difference in voting rates between high and low educated people in Australia as of 2011: 1
  • Percentage point difference in voting rates between high and low educated people in the U.S. as of 2011:  33
  • Number of Black and Hispanic U.S. voters in comparison to 2008 election: 1.7 million and 1.4 million increase
  • Number of non-Hispanic White U.S. voters in comparison to 2008 election: 2 million decrease, the only example of a race group showing a decrease in net voting from one presidential election to the next
  • Percent of Americans that contact their elected officials between elections: 10
  • Margin of victory in May 2013 Los Angeles mayoral election: 54-46
  • Percent turnout among Los Angeles citizens in May 2013 Los Angeles mayoral election: 19
  • Percent of U.S. adults that used social networking sites in 2012: 60
  • How many of which participated in a political or civic activity online: 2/3
  • Percent of U.S. social media users in 2012 that used social tools to encourage other people to take action on an issue that is important to them: 31
  • Percent of U.S. adults that belonged to a group on a social networking site involved in advancing a political or social issue in 2012: 12
  • Increase in the number of adults who took part in these behaviors in 2008: four-fold
  • Number of U.S. adults that signed up to receive alerts about local issues via email or text messaging in 2010: 1 in 5
  • Percent of U.S. adults that used digital tools digital tools to talk to their neighbors and keep informed about community issues in 2010: 20
  • Number of Americans that talked face-to-face with neighbors about community issues in 2010: almost half
  • How many online adults that have used social tools as blogs, social networking sites, and online video as well as email and text alerts to keep informed about government activities: 1/3
  • Percent of U.S. adult internet users that have gone online for raw data about government spending and activities in 2010: 40
  • Of which how many look online to see how federal stimulus money is being spent: 1 in 5
  • Read or download the text of legislation: 22%
  • How many Americans volunteered through or for an organization at least once between September 2011 and September 2012: 64.5 million
  • Median hours spent on volunteer activities during this time: 50
  • Change in volunteer rate compared to the year before: 0.3 decline

Sources

Open Government is About Raising People’s Opinions

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Lucas Dailey, Chief Innovation Officer at political social network MyMaryland.net, in Sunlight Foundation’s OpenGov Voices: “The mechanism for citizen interaction with government doesn’t start and end at the ballot box. An essential goal of our fight for greater government openness and transparency is to give citizens’ opinions greater power. For government to be responsive it must have a fast, easy means to understand how constituents feel about any given issues. Ultimatelogoly, government itself is a relationship between the institutions that constitute a polity and its citizens.

MyMaryland.net wants to bridge the gap between voters and their representatives because we believe people’s voices matter. MyMaryland.net connects verified Maryland voters with their elected officials in democracy’s first 24/7 online Town Hall.

Participation: a two-sided problem

One of the keys to a vibrant representative democracy is an informed and engaged citizenry. Yet only 10% of Americans contact their elected officials between elections. We can do better by lowering the hurdles to participate and raising the political value of opinions.

…Open Government isn’t just about transparency, it’s also about the ability to take action based on what that transparency allows us to learn. The Open Government movement has helped us learn what government does and how it does it. Now it’s your move.”

The Republic of Choosing

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

William H. Simon in the Boston Review: “Cass Sunstein went to Washington with the aim of putting some theory into practice. As administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) during President Obama’s first term, he drew on the behavioral economics he helped develop as an academic. In his new book, Simpler, he reports on these efforts and elaborates a larger vision in which they exemplify “the future of government.”
…Simpler reports some notable achievements, but it exaggerates the practical value of the behaviorist toolkit. The Obama administration’s most important policy initiatives make only minor use of it. Despite its upbeat tone, the book implies an oddly constrained conception of the means and ends of government. It sometimes calls to mind a doctor putting on a cheerful face to say that, while there is little he can do to arrest the disease, he will try to make the patient as comfortable as possible.
…The obverse of Sunstein’s preoccupation with choice architecture is his relative indifference to other approaches to making administration less rigid. Recall that among the problems Sunstein sees with conventional regulation are, first, that it mandates conduct in situations where the regulator doesn’t know with confidence what is the right thing to do, and second, that it is insufficiently sensitive to relevant local variations in taste or circumstances.
The most common way to deal with the first problem—insufficient information—is to build learning into the process of intervention: the regulator intervenes provisionally, studies the effects of her intervention, and adapts as she learns. It is commonplace for statutes to mandate or fund demonstration or pilot projects. More importantly, statutes often demand that both top administrators and frontline workers reassess and adjust their practices continuously. This approach is the central and explicit thrust of Race to the Top’s “instructional improvement systems,” and it recurs prominently in all the statutes mentioned so far.”

Participatory Democracy in the New Millenium

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New literature review in Contemporary Sociology by Francesca Polletta: “By the 1980s, experiments in participatory democracy seemed to have been relegated by scholars to the category of quixotic exercises in idealism, undertaken by committed (and often aging) activists who were unconcerned with political effectiveness or economic efficiency. Today, bottom-up decision making seems all the rage. Crowdsourcing and Open Source, flat management in business, horizontalism in protest politics, collaborative governance in policymaking—these are the buzzwords now and they are all about the virtues of nonhierarchical and participatory decision making.

What accounts for this new enthusiasm for radical democracy? Is it warranted? Are champions of this form understanding key terms like equality and consensus differently than did radical democrats in the 1960s and 70s? And is there any reason to believe that today’s radical democrats are better equipped than their forebears to avoid the old dangers of endless meetings and rule by friendship cliques? In this admittedly selective review, I will take up recent books on participatory democracy in social movements, non- and for-profit organizations, local governments, and electoral campaigning. These are perhaps not the most influential books on participatory democracy since 2000—after all, most of them are brand new—but they speak interestingly to the state of participatory democracy today. Taken together, they suggest that, on one hand, innovations in technology and in activism have made democratic decision making both easier and fairer. On the other hand, the popularity of radical democracy may be diluting its force. If radical democracy comes to mean simply public participation, then spectacles of participation may be made to stand in for mechanisms of democratic accountability.”

Infoglut: How Too Much Information Is Changing the Way We Think and Know

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
New book by Mark Andrejevic: “Today, more mediated information is available to more people than at any other time in human history. New and revitalized sense-making strategies multiply in response to the challenges of “cutting through the clutter” of competing narratives and taming the avalanche of information. Data miners, “sentiment analysts,” and decision markets offer to help bodies of data “speak for themselves”—making sense of their own patterns so we don’t have to. Neuromarketers and body language experts promise to peer behind people’s words to see what their brains are really thinking and feeling. New forms of information processing promise to displace the need for expertise and even comprehension—at least for those with access to the data.
Infoglut explores the connections between these wide-ranging sense-making strategies for an era of information overload and “big data,” and the new forms of control they enable. Andrejevic critiques the popular embrace of deconstructive debunkery, calling into question the post-truth, post-narrative, and post-comprehension politics it underwrites, and tracing a way beyond them.”

Capitol Words

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

CaptureAbout Capitol Words: “For every day Congress is in session, Capitol Words visualizes the most frequently used words in the Congressional Record, giving you an at-a-glance view of which issues lawmakers address on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis. Capitol Words lets you see what are the most popular words spoken by lawmakers on the House and Senate floor.

Methodology

The contents of the Congressional Record are downloaded daily from the website of the Government Printing Office. The GPO distributes the Congressional Record in ZIP files containing the contents of the record in plain-text format.

Each text file is parsed and turned into an XML document, with things like the title and speaker marked up. The contents of each file are then split up into words and phrases — from one word to five.

The resulting data is saved to a search engine. Capitol Words has data from 1996 to the present.”