The World Happiness Report 2021

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network: “There has been surprising resilience in how people rate their lives overall. The Gallup World Poll data are confirmed for Europe by the separate Eurobarometer surveys and several national surveys.

  • The change from 2017-2019 to 2020 varied considerably among countries, but not enough to change rankings in any significant fashion materially. The same countries remain at the top.
  • Emotions changed more than did life satisfaction during the first year of COVID-19, worsening more during lockdown and recovering faster, as illustrated by large samples of UK data. For the world as a whole, based on the annual data from the Gallup World Poll, there was no overall change in positive affect, but there was a roughly 10% increase in the number of people who said they were worried or sad the previous day.
  • Trust and the ability to count on others are major supports to life evaluations, especially in the face of crises. To feel that your lost wallet would be returned if found by a police officer, by a neighbour, or a stranger, is estimated to be more important for happiness than income, unemployment, and major health risks (see Figure 2.4 in chapter 2)
  • Trust is even more important in explaining the very large international differences in COVID-19 death rates, which were substantially higher in the Americas and Europe than in East Asia, Australasia, and Africa, as shown here (see Figure 2.5 of chapter 2). These differences were almost half due to differences in the age structure of populations (COVID-19 much more deadly for the old), whether the country is an island, and how exposed each country was, early in the pandemic, to large numbers of infections in nearby countries. Whatever the initial circumstances, the most effective strategy for controlling COVID-19 was to drive community transmission to zero and to keep it there. Countries adopting this strategy had death rates close to zero, and were able to avoid deadly second waves, and ended the year with less loss of income and lower death rates.
  • Factors supporting successful COVID-19 strategies include
    • confidence in public institutions. Trusted public institutions were more likely to choose the right strategy and have their populations support the required actions. For example, Brazil’s death rate was 93 per 100,000, higher than in Singapore, and of this difference, over a third could be explained by the difference in public trust….(More)”

Building Behavioral Science in an organization

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
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Report by Action Design Network in conjunction with UPenn Master of Behavioral and Decision Sciences: “Behavioral science can be applied to a variety of practice areas within an organization via a range of design and measurement tactics. It can influence strategy and design throughout an organization, including product design, marketing and communications, employee and customer engagement, and strategic decision making. Applied behavioral science includes both designing for the moment (the domain of nudges and cognitive biases) as well as creating the broader context for shaping the thoughts, emotions, and behavioral patterns of employees and customers. 

This book draws on the collective wisdom of applied behavioral scientists with deep experience within their respective practice areas to provide practical guidance on building a behavioral science function that has a meaningful impact on your organization….(More)”.

A New Portal for the Decentralized Web and its Guiding Principles

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Internet Archive: “For a long time, we’ve felt that the growing, diverse, global community interested in building the decentralized Web needed an entry point. A portal into the events, concepts, voices, and resources critical to moving the Decentralized Web forward.

This is why we created, getdweb.net, to serve as a portal, a welcoming entry point for people to learn and share strategies, analysis, and tools around how to build a decentralized Web.

Screenshot of https://getdweb.net/

It began at DWeb Camp 2019, when designer Iryna Nezhynska of Jolocom led a workshop to imagine what form that portal should take. Over the next 18 months, Iryna steered a dedicated group of DWeb volunteers through a process to create this new website. If you are new to the DWeb, it should help you learn about its core concepts. If you are a seasoned coder, it should point you to opportunities nearby. For our nine local nodes, it should be a clearinghouse and archive for past and future events.

Above all, the new website was designed to clearly state the principles we believe in as a community, the values we are trying to build right into the code.

At our February DWeb Meetup, our designer Iryna took us on a tour of the new website and the design concepts that support it.

Then John Ryan and I (Associate Producer of DWeb Projects) shared the first public version of the Principles of the DWeb and described the behind-the-scenes process that went into developing them. It was developed in consultation with dozens of community members, including technologists, organizers, academics, policy experts, and artists. These DWeb Principles are a starting point, not an end point — open for iteration.

As stewards, we felt that we needed to crystallize the shared vision of this community, to demonstrate how and why we are building a Decentralized Web. Our aim is to identify our guiding principles through discussion and distill them into a living document that we can point to. It is to create a set of practical guiding values as we design and build the Web of the future….(More)”.

The speed of science

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Saloni Dattani & Nathaniel Bechhofer: “The 21st century has seen some phenomenal advances in our ability to make scientific discoveries. Scientists have developed new technology to build vaccines swiftly, new algorithms to predict the structure of proteins accurately, new equipment to sequence DNA rapidly, and new engineering solutions to harvest energy efficiently. But in many fields of science, reliable knowledge and progress advance staggeringly slowly. What slows it down? And what can we learn from individual fields of science to pick up the pace across the board – without compromising on quality?

By and large, scientific research is published in journals in the form of papers – static documents that do not update with new data or new methods. Instead of sharing the data and the code that produces their results, most scientists simply publish a textual description of their research in online publications. These publications are usually hidden behind paywalls, making it harder for outsiders to verify their authenticity.

On the occasion when a reader spots a discrepancy in the data or an error in the methods, they must read the intricate details of a study’s method scrupulously, and cross-check the statistics manually. When scientists don’t share the data to produce their results openly, the task becomes even harder. The process of error correction – from scientists publishing a paper, to readers spotting errors, to having the paper corrected or retracted – can take years, assuming those errors are spotted at all.

When scientists reference previous research, they cite entire papers, not specific results or values from them. And although there is evidence that scientists hold back from citing papers once they have been retracted, the problem is compounded over time – consider, for example, a researcher who cites a study that itself derives its data or assumptions from prior research that has been disputed, corrected or retracted. The longer it takes to sift through the science, to identify which results are accurate, the longer it takes to gather an understanding of scientific knowledge.

What makes the problem even more challenging is that flaws in a study are not necessarily mathematical errors. In many situations, researchers make fairly arbitrary decisions as to how they collect their data, which methods they apply to analyse them, and which results they report – altogether leaving readers blind to the impact of these decisions on the results.

This murkiness can result in what is known as p-hacking: when researchers selectively apply arbitrary methods in order to achieve a particular result. For example, in a study that compares the well-being of overweight people to that of underweight people, researchers may find that certain cut-offs of weight (or certain subgroups in their sample) provide the result they’re looking for, while others don’t. And they may decide to only publish the particular methods that provided that result…(More)”.

Governance Innovation ver.2: A Guide to Designing and Implementing Agile Governance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Draft report by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI): “Japan has been aiming at the realization of “Society 5.0,” a policy for building a human-centric society which realizes both economic development and solutions to social challenges by taking advantage of a system in which cyberspaces, including AI, IoT and big data, and physical spaces are integrated in a sophisticated manner (CPSs: cyber-physical systems). In advancing social implementation of innovative technologies toward the realization of the Society 5.0, it is considered necessary to fundamentally reform governance models in view of changes in social structures which new technologies may bring about.

Triggered by this problem awareness, at the G20 Ministerial Meeting on Trade and Digital Economy, which Japan hosted in June 2019, the ministers declared in the ministerial statement the need for “governance innovation” tailored to social changes which will be brought about by digital technologies and social implementation thereof.

In light of this, METI inaugurated its Study Group on a New Governance Model in Society 5.0 (hereinafter referred to as the “study group”) and in July 2020, the study group published a report titled “GOVERNANCE INNOVATION: Redesigning Law and Architecture for Society 5.0” (hereinafter referred to as the “first report”). The first report explains ideal approaches to cross-sectoral governance by multi-stakeholders, including goal-based regulations, importance for businesses to fulfill their accountability, and enforcement of laws with an emphasis on incentives.

Against this backdrop, the study group, while taking into consideration the outcomes of the first report, presented approaches to “agile governance” as an underlying idea of the governance shown in the Society 5.0 policy, and then prepared the draft report titled “Governance Innovation ver.2: A Guide to Designing and Implementing Agile Governance” as a compilation presenting a variety of ideal approaches to governance mechanisms based on agile governance, including corporate governance, regulations, infrastructures, markets and social norms.

In response, METI opened a call for public comments on this draft report in order to receive opinions from a variety of people. As the subjects shown in the draft report are common challenges seen across the world and many parts of the subjects require international cooperation, METI wishes to receive wide-ranging, frank opinions not only from people in Japan but also from those in overseas countries….(More)”.

Coming wave of video games could build empathy on racism, environment and aftermath of war

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Mike Snider at USA Today: “Some of the newest video games in development aren’t really games at all, but experiences that seek to build empathy for others.

Among the five such projects getting funding grants and support from 3D software engine maker Unity is “Our America,” in which the player takes the role of a Black man who is driving with his son when their car is pulled over by a police officer.

The father worries about getting his car registration from the glove compartment because the officer “might think it’s a gun or something,” the character says in the trailer.

On the project’s website, the developers describe “Our America” as “an autobiographical VR Experience” in which “the audience must make quick decisions, answer questions – but any wrong move is the difference between life and death.”…

The other Unity for Humanity winners include:

  • Ahi Kā Rangers: An ecological mobile game with development led by Māori creators. 
  • Dot’s Home: A game that explores historical housing injustices faced by Black and brown home buyers. 
  • Future Aleppo: A VR experience for children to rebuild homes and cities destroyed by war. 
  • Samudra: A children’s environmental puzzle game that takes the player across a polluted sea to learn about pollution and plastic waste.

While “Our America” may serve best as a VR experience, other projects such as “Dot’s Home” may be available on mobile devices to expand its accessibility….(More)”.

How can we measure productivity in the public sector?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Ravi Somani at the World Bank: “In most economies, the public sector is a major purchaser of goods, services and labor. According to the Worldwide Bureaucracy Indicators, globally the public sector accounts for around 25% of GDP and 38% of formal employment. Generating efficiency gains in the public sector can, therefore, have important implications for a country’s overall economic performance.  

Public-sector productivity measures the rate with which inputs are converted into desirable outputs in the public sector. Measures can be developed at the level of the employee, organization, or overall public sector, and can be tracked over time. Such information allows policymakers to identify good and bad performers, understand what might be correlated with good performance, and measure the returns to different types of public expenditures. This knowledge can be used to improve the allocation of public resources in the future and maximize the impact of the public purse.

But how can we measure it?

However, measuring productivity in the public sector can be tricky because:

  • There are often no market transactions for public services, or they are distorted by subsidies and other market imperfections.
  • Many public services are complex, requiring (often immeasurable) inputs from multiple individuals and organizations.
  • There is often a substantial time lag between investments in inputs and the realization of outputs and outcomes.

This recent World Bank publication provides a summary of the different approaches to measuring productivity in the public sector, presented in the table below.  For simplicity, the approaches are separated into: ‘macro’ approaches, which provide aggregate information at the level of an organization, sector, or service as a whole; and ‘micro’ approaches, which can be applied to the individual employee, task, project, and process.   
 

Macro and Micro Approaches to measure public-sector productivity

There is no silver bullet for accurately measuring public-sector productivity – each approach has its own limitations.  For example, the cost-weighted-output approach requires activity-level data, necessitates different approaches for different sectors, and results in metrics with difficult-to-interpret absolute levels.  Project-completion rates require access to project-level data and may not fully account for differences in the quality and complexity of projects. The publication includes a list of the pros, cons, and implementation requirements for each approach….(More)”.

Wikipedia Is Finally Asking Big Tech to Pay Up

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Noam Cohen at Wired: “From the start, Google and Wikipedia have been in a kind of unspoken partnership: Wikipedia produces the information Google serves up in response to user queries, and Google builds up Wikipedia’s reputation as a source of trustworthy information. Of course, there have been bumps, including Google’s bold attempt to replace Wikipedia with its own version of user-generated articles, under the clumsy name “Knol,” short for knowledge. Knol never did catch on, despite Google’s offer to pay the principal author of an article a share of advertising money. But after that failure, Google embraced Wikipedia even tighter—not only linking to its articles but reprinting key excerpts on its search result pages to quickly deliver Wikipedia’s knowledge to those seeking answers.

The two have grown in tandem over the past 20 years, each becoming its own household word. But whereas one mushroomed into a trillion-dollar company, the other has remained a midsize nonprofit, depending on the generosity of individual users, grant-giving foundations, and the Silicon Valley giants themselves to stay afloat. Now Wikipedia is seeking to rebalance its relationships with Google and other big tech firms like Amazon, Facebook, and Apple, whose platforms and virtual assistants lean on Wikipedia as a cost-free virtual crib sheet.

Today, the Wikimedia Foundation, which operates the Wikipedia project in more than 300 languages as well as other wiki-projects, is announcing the launch of a commercial product, Wikimedia Enterprise. The new service is designed for the sale and efficient delivery of Wikipedia’s content directly to these online behemoths (and eventually, to smaller companies too)….(More)”.

The Handbook: How to regulate?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Handbook edited by the Regulatory Institute: “…presents an inventory of regulatory techniques from over 40 jurisdictions and a basic universal method. The Handbook is based on the idea that officials with an inventory of regulatory techniques have more choices and can develop better regulations. The same goes for officials using methodological knowledge. The Handbook is made available free of charge because better regulations benefit us all….

The purpose of the Handbook is to assist officials involved in regulatory activities. Readers can draw inspiration from it, can learn how colleagues have tackled a certain regulatory challenge and can even develop a tailor-made systematic approach to improve their regulation. The Handbook can also be used as a basis for training courses or for self-training.

The Handbook is not intended to be read from A to Z. Instead, readers are invited to pick and choose the sections that are relevant to them. The Handbook was not developed to be the authoritative source of how to regulate, but to offer in the most neutral and objective way possibilities for improving regulation…

The Handbook explores the empty space between:

  • the constitution or similar documents setting the legal frame,
  • the sector-specific policies followed by the government, administration, or institution,
  • the impact assessment, better regulation, simplification, and other regulatory policies,
  • applicable drafting instructions or recommendations, and
  • the procedural settings of the respective jurisdiction….(More)”.

Thinking systems

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Geoff Mulgan: “…describes methods for understanding how vital everyday systems work, and how they could work better, through improved shared cognition – observation, memory, creativity and judgement – organised as commons.

Much of our life we depend on systems: interconnected webs of activity that link many organisations, technologies and people. These bring us food and clothing; energy for warmth and light; mobility including rail, cars and global air travel; care, welfare and handling of waste. Arguably the biggest difference between the modern world and the world of a few centuries ago is the thickness and complexity of these systems. These have brought huge gains.

But one of their downsides is that they have made the world around us harder to understand or shape. A good example is the Internet: essential to much of daily life but largely obscure and opaque to its users. Its physical infrastructures, management, protocols and flows are almost unknown except to specialists, as are its governance structures and processes (if you are in any doubt, just ask a random sample of otherwise well-informed people). Other vital systems like those for food, energy or care are also hardly visible to those within them as well as those dependent on them. This makes it much harder to hold them to account, or to ensure they take account of more voices and needs. We often feel that the world is much more accessible thanks to powerful search engines and ubiquitous data. But try to get a picture of the systems around you and you quickly discover just how much is opaque and obscure.

If you think seriously about these systems it’s also hard not to be struck by another feature. Our systems generally use much more data and knowledge than their equivalents in the past. But this progress also highlights what’s missing in the data they use (often including the most important wants and needs). Moreover, huge amounts of potentially relevant data is lost immediately or never captured and how much that is captured is then neither organised nor shared. The result is a strangely lop-sided world: vast quantities of data are gathered and organised at great expense for some purposes (notably defense or click-through advertising)

So how could we recapture our systems and help them make the most of intelligence of all kinds? The paper shares methods and approaches that could make our everyday systems richer in intelligence and also easier to guide. It advocates:

· A cognitive approach to systems – focusing on how they think, and specifically how they observe, analyse, create and remember. It argues that this approach can help to bridge the often abstract language of systems thinking and practical action

· It advocates that much of this systems intelligence needs to be organised as a commons – which is very rarely the case now

· And it advocates new structures and roles within government and other organisations, and the growth of a practice of systems architects with skills straddling engineering, management, data and social science – who are adept at understanding, designing and improving intelligent systems that are transparent and self-aware.

The background to the paper is the great paradox of systems right now: there is a vast literature, a small industry of consultancies and labs, and no shortage of rhetorical commitment in many fields. Yet these have had at best uneven impact on how decisions are made or large organisations are run….(More)”.