Digital government in developing countries

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Yasodara Córdova and Tiago Peixoto: “According to the World Bank’s Digital Dividends report, fewer than 20 percent of digital government projects are successes. Particularly in developing countries, these numbers are often associated with a number of challenges: limited funding, stretched implementation capacity, and political instability, to name a few. Yet, even in developing countries, despite similar conditions, some projects seem to fare better than others. Why is that? 

The projects we have worked with in the global south have followed a similar pattern. While there were successes, many projects have failed. We have learned a few things along the way, that we think relate directly to the success or failure of digital government projects. These are not scientific conclusions, they’re personal impressions based on what we’ve seen and experienced.   

1. Information first, services afterwards

A basic function of digital government is the provision of actionable information concerning public services, by they online or offline (e.g. opening hours, documents required for services, and so on). Even more so in developing countries, where most public services are in-person, paper-based, and often involve multiple steps. Yet, fueled by international rankings and benchmarks, governments are often eager to skip stages in their digital journey. This leads them to attempt, and often fail, to provide transactional digital services, before they can even learn  how to offer basic information about these services. The first step in effective transformation should be offering information to users in a simple and accessible manner. Done well, that forms a good foundation for the next step: delivering digital services.  

2. Prioritise the things that will make the biggest difference

Remember that public service delivery follows a power law distribution: a small number of services account for the vast majority of transactions with government. Which these services are will vary according to country, level of government, and models of public service delivery. When the time comes to decide where to start, don’t rely on cookie-cutter lists of services to be digitized. Instead, find out which ones are the most used, and will have the greatest impact. Start with the ones that can be delivered faster, and that are most likely to make users’ lives easier. 

3. Don’t digitise the mess

The fact that a process exists doesn’t mean it’s a good process. Transformation is an opportunity to radically rethink how things work. We’ve seen examples including, for instance, requiring multiple copies of a single document, or imposing more procedures on women than men to open a business. When there is inefficiency in a service, map the bottlenecks and think about how to streamline the process. Don’t just digitise the bottlenecks, they will keep on being an expensive problem. Resist the temptation to digitise things that should not exist in the first place. …(More)”.

The Normative Order of the Internet: A Theory of Rule and Regulation Online

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Open access book by Matthias C. Kettemann: “There is order on the internet, but how has this order emerged and what challenges will threaten and shape its future? This study shows how a legitimate order of norms has emerged online, through both national and international legal systems. It establishes the emergence of a normative order of the internet, an order which explains and justifies processes of online rule and regulation. This order integrates norms at three different levels (regional, national, international), of two types (privately and publicly authored), and of different character (from ius cogens to technical standards).

Matthias C. Kettemann assesses their internal coherence, their consonance with other order norms and their consistency with the order’s finality. The normative order of the internet is based on and produces a liquefied system characterized by self-learning normativity. In light of the importance of the socio-communicative online space, this is a book for anyone interested in understanding the contemporary development of the internet….(More)”.

Governance responses to disinformation: How open government principles can inform policy options

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

OECD paper by Craig Matasick, Carlotta Alfonsi and Alessandro Bellantoni: “This paper provides a holistic policy approach to the challenge of disinformation by exploring a range of governance responses that rest on the open government principles of transparency, integrity, accountability and stakeholder participation. It offers an analysis of the significant changes that are affecting media and information ecosystems, chief among them the growth of digital platforms. Drawing on the implications of this changing landscape, the paper focuses on four policy areas of intervention: public communication for a better dialogue between government and citizens; direct responses to identify and combat disinformation; legal and regulatory policy; and media and civic responses that support better information ecosystems. The paper concludes with proposed steps the OECD can take to build evidence and support policy in this space…(More)”.

Terms of Disservice: How Silicon Valley is Destructive by Design

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Dipayan Ghosh: “Designing a new digital social contact for our technological future…High technology presents a paradox. In just a few decades, it has transformed the world, making almost limitless quantities of information instantly available to billions of people and reshaping businesses, institutions, and even entire economies. But it also has come to rule our lives, addicting many of us to the march of megapixels across electronic screens both large and small.

Despite its undeniable value, technology is exacerbating deep social and political divisions in many societies. Elections influenced by fake news and unscrupulous hidden actors, the cyber-hacking of trusted national institutions, the vacuuming of private information by Silicon Valley behemoths, ongoing threats to vital infrastructure from terrorist groups and even foreign governments—all these concerns are now part of the daily news cycle and are certain to become increasingly serious into the future.

In this new world of endless technology, how can individuals, institutions, and governments harness its positive contributions while protecting each of us, no matter who or where we are?

In this book, a former Facebook public policy adviser who went on to assist President Obama in the White House offers practical ideas for using technology to create an open and accessible world that protects all consumers and civilians. As a computer scientist turned policymaker, Dipayan Ghosh answers the biggest questions about technology facing the world today. Proving clear and understandable explanations for complex issues, Terms of Disservice will guide industry leaders, policymakers, and the general public as we think about how we ensure that the Internet works for everyone, not just Silicon Valley….(More)”.

How Philanthropy Can Help Governments Accelerate a Real Recovery

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Michele Jolin and David Medina: “The cracks and design flaws of our nation’s public systems have been starkly exposed as governments everywhere struggle to respond to health and economic crises that disproportionately devastate Black residents and communities of color. As government leaders respond to the immediate emergencies, they also operate within a legacy of government practices, policies and systems that have played a central role in creating and maintaining racial inequity. 

Philanthropy can play a unique and catalytic role in accelerating a real recovery by helping government leaders make smarter decisions, helping them develop and effectively use the data-and-evidence capacity they need to spotlight and understand root causes of community challenges, especially racial disparities, and increase the impact of government investments that could close racial gaps and accelerate economic opportunity. Philanthropy can uniquely support leaders within government who are best positioned to redesign and reimagine public systems to deliver equity and impact.

We are already seeing that the growing number of governments that have built data-driven “Moneyball” muscles are better positioned both to manage through this crisis and to dismantle racist government practices. While we recognize that data and evidence can sometimes reinforce biases, we also know that government decision-makers who have access to more and better information—and who are trained to navigate the nuance and possible bias in this information—can use data to identify disparate racial outcomes, understand the core problems and target resources to close gaps. Government decision-makers who have the skills to test, learn, and improve government programs can prioritize resource allocation toward programs that both deliver better results and address the complexity of social problems.

Philanthropy can accelerate this public sector transformation by supporting change led by internal government champions who are challenging the status quo. By doing so, philanthropic leaders can increase the impact of the trillions of dollars invested by governments each year. Philanthropies such as Ballmer Group, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Blue Meridian Partners, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Arnold Ventures understand this and are already putting their money where their mouths are. By helping governments make smarter budget and policy decisions, they can ensure that public dollars flow toward solutions that make a meaningful, measurable difference on our biggest challenges, whether it’s increasing economic mobility, reducing racial disparities in health and other outcomes, or addressing racial bias in government systems.

We need other donors to join them in prioritizing this kind of systems change….(More)”.

Building and maintaining trust in research

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Daniel Nunan at the International Journal of Market Research: “One of the many indirect consequences of the COVID pandemic for the research sector may be the impact upon consumers’ willingness to share data. This is reflected in concerns that government mandated “apps” designed to facilitate COVID testing and tracking schemes will undermine trust in the commercial collection of personal data (WARC, 2020). For example, uncertainty over the consequences of handing over data and the ways in which it might be used could reduce consumers’ willingness to share data with organizations, and reverse a trend that has seen growing levels of consumer confidence in Data Protection Regulations (Data & Direct Marketing Association [DMA], 2020). This highlights how central the role of trust has become in contemporary research practice, and how fragile the process of building trust can be due to the ever competing demands of public and private data collectors.

For researchers, there are two sides to trust. One relates to building sufficient trust with research participants to be facilitate data collection, and the second is building trust with the users of research. Trust has long been understood as a key factor in effective research relationships, with trust between researchers and users of research the key factor in determining the extent to which research is actually used (Moorman et al., 1993). In other words, a trusted messenger is just as important as the contents of the message. In recent years, there has been growing concern over declining trust in research from research participants and the general public, manifested in declining response rates and challenges in gaining participation. Understanding how to build consumer trust is more important than ever, as the shift of communication and commercial activity to digital platforms alter the mechanisms through which trust is built. Trust is therefore essential both for ensuring that accurate data can be collected, and that insights from research have necessary legitimacy to be acted upon. The two research notes in this issue provide an insight into new areas where the issue of trust needs to be considered within research practice….(More)”.

How the Administrative State Got to This Challenging Place

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Peter Strauss: “This essay has been written to set the context for a future issue of Daedalus, the quarterly of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, addressing the prospects of American administrative law in the Twenty-first Century. It recounts the growth of American government over the centuries since its founding, in response to the profound changes in the technology, economy, and scientific understandings it must deal with, under a Constitution written for the governance of a dispersed agrarian population operating with hand tools in a localized economy. It then suggests profound challenges of the present day facing administrative law’s development: the transition from processes of the paper age to those of the digital age; the steadily growing centralization of decision in an opaque, political presidency, displacing the focused knowledge and expertise of agencies Congress created to pursue particular governmental ends; the thickening, as well, of the political layer within agencies themselves, threatening similar displacements; and the revival in the courts of highly formalized analytic techniques inviting a return to the forms of government those who wrote the Constitution might themselves have imagined. The essay will not be published until months after the November election. While President Trump’s first term in office has sharply illustrated an imbalance in American governance between law and politics and law, reason and unreason, that imbalance is hardly new; it has been growing for decades. There lie the challenges….(More)”

The $100 Million Nudge: Increasing Tax Compliance of Businesses and the Self-Employed using a Natural Field Experiment

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Justin E. Holz et al: “This paper uses a natural field experiment to examine the effectiveness of specific nudges on tax compliance amongst firms and the self-employed in the Dominican Republic. In collaboration with the Dominican Republic’s tax authority, we designed messages for more than 28,000 self-employed workers and over 56,000 firms. Leveraging administrative tax data, we find evidence that our nudges (increasing the salience of prison sentences or public disclosure of tax evaders) have large effects on increasing tax compliance, primarily working through the channel of decreasing claimed tax exemptions. Interestingly, we find that firms are more impacted than the self-employed, and that firm size is critically linked to nudge effectiveness: larger firms are considerably more influenced by nudges than smaller firms. We find this latter result noteworthy given the paucity of evidence showing significant behavioral impacts of nudges amongst the largest players in a market. Overall, our messages increased tax revenue by $193 million (roughly 0.23% of the Dominican Republic’s GDP in 2018), with over $100 million constituting income that the government would not have received without our field experimental nudges….(More)”.

Digital technologies in the public-health response to COVID-19

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Jobie Budd et al in Nature Medicine: “Digital technologies are being harnessed to support the public-health response to COVID-19 worldwide, including population surveillance, case identification, contact tracing and evaluation of interventions on the basis of mobility data and communication with the public. These rapid responses leverage billions of mobile phones, large online datasets, connected devices, relatively low-cost computing resources and advances in machine learning and natural language processing. This Review aims to capture the breadth of digital innovations for the public-health response to COVID-19 worldwide and their limitations, and barriers to their implementation, including legal, ethical and privacy barriers, as well as organizational and workforce barriers. The future of public health is likely to become increasingly digital, and we review the need for the alignment of international strategies for the regulation, evaluation and use of digital technologies to strengthen pandemic management, and future preparedness for COVID-19 and other infectious diseases….(More)”.

Can You Fight Systemic Racism With Design?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Reboot’s “Design With” podcast with Antionette Carroll: “What began as a 24-hour design challenge addressing racial inequality in Ferguson, MO has since grown into a powerful organization fighting inequity with its own brand of collaborative design. Antionette Carroll, founder of Creative Reaction Lab, speaks about Equity-Centered Community Design—and how Black and Latinx youth are using design as their tool of choice to dismantle the very systems designed to exclude them….(More)”.