Paper by Benjamin H. Detenber: “The city state of Singapore has a long history of social engineering efforts, yet only recently have social scientists and civil servants started to use behavioural insights (BI) to create ‘nudges’ and integrate them into the daily lives of citizens. Colloquially known as a nanny state for its extensive social programmes and sometimes heavy-handed approach to guiding social behaviour, Singapore is often regarded favourably by its neighbours in terms of its cleanliness, efficiency, and productivity. Yet how it manages its populace and the restrictions it imposes on unwanted behaviours are sometimes viewed sceptically by others in Asia and the West. Thus, many in the Singapore Civil Service have come to see nudging as a less coercive way to promote social welfare and well-being. This article reviews some of the latest actions in three areas: finance, health, and the environment. In discussing the range of nudging practices, their effectiveness will be assessed and some of the implications for society and individuals will be addressed. To the extent that Singapore can be considered a bellwether or harbinger, its use of nudges may offer a glimpse of what lies ahead for other countries in the region….(More)”.
Embracing Innovation in Government: Public Provider versus Big Brother
The fourth report in this series by the OECD: “…explores the powerful new technologies and opportunities that governments have at their disposal to let them better understand the needs of citizens. The research shows that governments must balance the tensions of using data harvesting and monitoring, and technologies that can identify individuals, to serve the public interest, with the inevitable concerns and legitimate fears about “big brother” and risks of infringing on freedoms and rights. Through the lens of navigating Public Provider versus Big Brother, innovation efforts fall into two key themes:
Theme 1: Data harvesting and monitoring
Governments have access to more detailed data than ever before, but such access involves risks and considerations which require serious reflection on the part of government.
Theme 2: Biometric technologies and facial recognition
A range of biometric tools offer opportunities to provide tailored services, as well as the unprecedented ability to identify and track individuals’ behaviours and movements….(More)”.
Experimental Games
Book by Patrick Jagoda: “In our unprecedentedly networked world, games have come to occupy an important space in many of our everyday lives. Digital games alone engage an estimated 2.5 billion people worldwide as of 2020, and other forms of gaming, such as board games, role playing, escape rooms, and puzzles, command an ever-expanding audience. At the same time, “gamification”—the application of game mechanics to traditionally nongame spheres, such as personal health and fitness, shopping, habit tracking, and more—has imposed unprecedented levels of competition, repetition, and quantification on daily life.
Drawing from his own experience as a game designer, Patrick Jagoda argues that games need not be synonymous with gamification. He studies experimental games that intervene in the neoliberal project from the inside out, examining a broad variety of mainstream and independent games, including StarCraft, Candy Crush Saga, Stardew Valley, Dys4ia, Braid, and Undertale. Beyond a diagnosis of gamification, Jagoda imagines ways that games can be experimental—not only in the sense of problem solving, but also the more nuanced notion of problem making that embraces the complexities of our digital present. The result is a game-changing book on the sociopolitical potential of this form of mass entertainment….(More)”
Big Data and Democracy
Book edited by Kevin Macnish and Jai Galliott: “Considers the morality of using big data in the political sphere, covering cases from the Snowden leaks to the Brexit referendum
- Investigates theories and recommendations for how to align the modern political process with the exponential rise in the availability of digital information
- Opens new avenues for thinking about the philosophy and morality of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, in the context of political decision-making
- Sets out and objectively assesses the ‘opacity’ framework as an appropriate means of dealing with the challenges associated with big data and democracy
What’s wrong with targeted advertising in political campaigns? Should we be worried about echo chambers? How does data collection impact on trust in society? As decision-making becomes increasingly automated, how can decision-makers be held to account? This collection consider potential solutions to these challenges. It brings together original research on the philosophy of big data and democracy from leading international authors, with recent examples – including the 2016 Brexit Referendum, the Leveson Inquiry and the Edward Snowden leaks. And it asks whether an ethical compass is available or even feasible in an ever more digitised and monitored world….(More)”.
Rethinking Humanity
Open Access Book by RethinkX: “During the 2020s, key technologies will converge to completely disrupt the five foundational sectors that underpin the global economy, and with them every major industry in the world today. In information, energy, food, transportation, and materials, costs will fall by a 10x or more, while production processes an order of magnitude more efficient will use 90% fewer natural resources with 10x-100x less waste.
The knock-on effects for society will be as profound as the extraordinary possibilities that emerge. For the first time in history, we could overcome poverty easily. Access to all our basic needs could become a fundamental human right. But this is just one future outcome. The alternative could see our civilization collapse into a new dark age. Which path we take depends on the choices we make, starting today. The stakes could not be higher….(More)”.
Roadmap for Public Service Reform Rooted in Behavioral Science
Press Release by ideas42 and The Asia Foundation: “….a new report, Official Action: A Roadmap for Using Behavioral Science in Public Administration Reform. The insights in Official Action combine more than a decade of experience applying behavioral science to public policy with a deepening but still relatively new scientific literature.
Complexity is at the heart of public service reform. Such systems are characterized by being underbudgeted, limited by difficult power balances that don’t always lend themselves toward collaboration, hierarchical performance systems that serve the present not future, inter-agency territorial barriers to cooperation, among other issues. In the limited space for feasible reform within this complexity, behavior change may be the nudge required to wiggle open further efficiencies to change-minded alterations with potentially significant knock-on effects.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for innovative approaches to government reform as public institutions around the world struggle to perform basic functions like coordinating timely public information campaigns, steering economic resources to those who need them, and procuring essential medical and protective equipment and supplies. Official Action shows that these failures are not simply due to a lack of resources, accountability, competence, or motivation; but that they may be symptoms of the unique stresses that public servants face which, if left unchecked, can derail even the most dedicated officials.
The report offers new solutions to every day challenges, such as ensuring that all complaints and requests receive equal treatment; helping front-line bureaucrats operate efficiently despite increasing workloads; and fighting corruption within public institutions by demonstrating that governance failures are in large part due to the situations that public servants find themselves in, rather than individual shortcomings.
When barriers like constant changes in work environment, unrealistic workloads, and parallel systems for getting things done exist, the best policies to improve government performance will be those that support better use of public servants’ limited time and realign institutional incentives to encourage behavior change….(More)”.
A nudge in the right direction
Report by Partnership for Public Service and Grant Thornton: “The people of this nation depend on government to perform at the highest level. To optimize performance, some agencies are drawing on knowledge about human behavior to improve how they do business. By understanding how people process information and make decisions, and using that knowledge to inform how programs are designed and administered, those agencies
are producing better results—often quickly and at little cost.
At the Department of Education, staff and a team of outside researchers sent personalized text messages over the summer to high school graduates who had been accepted to college, boosting how many enrolled in the fall. The Department of Defense increased the number of service members who enrolled in the Thrift Savings Plan, the federal government’s retirement program, by nudging them at a “reset” point in their life—as they transferred to a new base. And an easier to understand letter from the Department of Agriculture’s National School Lunch Program asking participants to verify their eligibility led to a higher response rate and fewer
eligible participants losing access to the program.
While the application of behavioral insights has tremendous potential to improve the work of government, the movement is still in early stages.
To encourage more widespread use, the Partnership for Public Service and Grant Thornton hosted five workshops with federal employees between March and September 2020. The sessions examined how behavioral insights could improve processes and programs and deliver better agency performance.
This report presents the findings from those workshops, including insights from workshop presenters, many of whom are applying behavioral insights in their own agencies. It explains how behavioral insights can make government more effective; provides tips for choosing a behavioral insights project and getting leaders to buy in; describes how to test whether a behavioral insights project was successful; and offers guidance on how to build on the results of a test….(More)”.
Steering through capability
Paper by Geoff Mulgan: ‘… shows why governments should steer and how they can show the way for our societies to overcome the transformational challenges that they are facing in the current century, from the climate crisis to aging populations.
The paper’s focus is on “steering through capability” – not using only tools of downward control, but rather enhancing the capabilities and problem-solving skills of other tiers of government, citizens and businesses. To do this, the paper describes how governments can combine direction with experimentation, linking multiple partners through so called ‘constellations’; showing how these can be supported by ‘intelligence assemblies’ that orchestrate rapid learning and mobilization of data, and the curation of knowledge commons. These are summarized in to five keys for the future of steering – potent tools for any government seeking to lead our societies through the challenges ahead….(More)”.
Managing Organizations to Sustain Passion for Public Service
Book by James Perry: “Almost three decades ago, James Perry created the first survey instrument to measure public service motivation. Since then, social and behavioural scientists have intensively studied the motivating power of public service. This research relating to public service motivation, altruism and prosocial motivation and behaviour has overturned widespread assumptions grounded in market-orientated perspectives and produced a critical mass of new knowledge for transforming the motivation of public employees, civil service policies and management practices. This is the first study to look systematically across the different streams of research. Furthermore, it is the first study to synthesize the research across the applied questions that public organizations and their leaders confront, including: how to recruit ethical and committed staff; how to design meaningful public work; how to create work environments that support prosocial behaviour; how to compensate employees to sustain their public service; how to socialise employees for public service missions; and how to lead employees to engage in causes greater than themselves….(More)”
Enhancing Government Effectiveness and Transparency: The Fight Against Corruption
Report by The World Bank: “… has undertaken a fresh assessment of challenges governments face in tackling corruption, what instruments tend to work and why, and how incremental progress is being achieved in specific country contexts. This flagship report shows positive examples of how countries are progressing in their fight against corruption. It is part of a series of initiatives being led by the Equitable Growth, Finance & Institutions (EFI) Vice Presidency to reaffirm the Bank’s commitment to anticorruption. The report follows the Anticorruption Initiatives completed last December. It also informs our pending work on the Bank’s Anticorruption Action Plan – on how we will be implementing anticorruption work going forward.
The report draws on the collective experts of staff across the World Bank to develop ways for enhancing the effectiveness of anti-corruption strategies in selected sectors and through targeted policy instruments. It covers issues, challenges and trends in five key thematic areas: Public Procurement; Public Infrastructure; State Owned Enterprises; Customs Administration; and Delivery of Services in selected sectors. The report also focuses on cross-cutting themes such as transparency, citizen engagement and Gov-tech; selected tools to build integrity; and the role and effectiveness of anticorruption agencies, tax and audit administrations, and justice systems. It features a country case study on Malaysia that traces the history of a country’s anti-corruption efforts over the last few decades…(More)”.