Increasing The “Policy Readiness” Of Ideas

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Tom Kalil: “NASA and the Defense Department have developed an analytical framework called the “technology readiness level” for assessing the maturity of a technology – from basic research to a technology that is ready to be deployed.  

A policy entrepreneur (anyone with an idea for a policy solution that will drive positive change) needs to realize that it is also possible to increase the “policy readiness” level of an idea by taking steps to increase the chances that a policy idea is successful, if adopted and implemented.  Given that policy-makers are often time constrained, they are more likely to consider ideas where more thought has been given to the core questions that they may need to answer as part of the policy process.

A good first step is to ask questions about the policy landscape surrounding a particular idea:

1. What is a clear description of the problem or opportunity?  What is the case for policymakers to devote time, energy, and political capital to the problem?

2. Is there a credible rationale for government involvement or policy change?  

Economists have developed frameworks for both market failure (such as public goods, positive and negative externalities, information asymmetries, and monopolies) and government failure (such as regulatory capture, the role of interest groups in supporting policies that have concentrated benefits and diffuse costs, limited state capacity, and the inherent difficulty of aggregating timely, relevant information to make and implement policy decisions.)

3. Is there a root cause analysis of the problem? …(More)”.

What does a ‘mission-driven’ approach to government mean and how can it be delivered?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the Institute for Government and Nesta: “… set out a recommended approach for how government could effectively organise itself to deliver missions. It should act as a guide for public servants at the start of a new administration that has pledged to do things differently.

Missions are designed to set bold visions for change, inspiring collaboration across the system and society to break down silos and work towards a common goal. They represent the ultimate purpose of the Government, and the story it aims to tell by the end of the Parliament.

To succeed, government will need to adopt three key roles: driving public service innovation, shaping markets and harnessing collective intelligence to improve decision-making. Achieving these missions will require strong foundations and well-recognised enablers of good government, pursued in a specific manner to bring about a cultural change in Whitehall…(More)”.

Against Elections: The Lottocratic Alternative

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Alexander A. Guerrero: “It is widely accepted that electoral representative democracy is better — along a number of different normative dimensions — than any other alternative lawmaking political arrangement. It is not typically seen as much of a competition: it is also widely accepted that the only legitimate alternative to electoral representative democracy is some form of direct democracy, but direct democracy — we are told — would lead to bad policy. This article makes the case that there is a legitimate alternative system — one that uses lotteries, not elections, to select political officials — that would be better than electoral representative democracy. Part I diagnoses two significant failings of modern-day systems of electoral representative government: the failure of responsiveness and the failure of good governance. The argument offered suggests that these flaws run deep, so that even significant and politically unlikely reforms with respect to campaign finance and election law would make little difference. Although my distillation of the argument is novel, the basic themes will likely be familiar. I anticipate the initial response to the argument may be familiar as well: the Churchillian shrug. Parts II, III, and IV of this article represent the beginning of an effort to move past that response, to think about alternative political systems that might avoid some of the problems with the electoral representative system without introducing new and worse problems. In the second and third parts of the article, I outline an alternative political system, the lottocratic system, and present some of the virtues of such a system. In the fourth part of the article, I consider some possible problems for the system. The overall aims of this article are to raise worries for electoral systems of government, to present the lottocratic system and to defend the view that this system might be a normatively attractive alternative, removing a significant hurdle to taking a non-electoral system of government seriously as a possible improvement to electoral democracy…(More)”

Finding, distinguishing, and understanding overlooked policy entrepreneurs

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Gwen Arnold, Meghan Klasic, Changtong Wu, Madeline Schomburg & Abigail York: “Scholars have spent decades arguing that policy entrepreneurs, change agents who work individually and in groups to influence the policy process, can be crucial in introducing policy innovation and spurring policy change. How to identify policy entrepreneurs empirically has received less attention. This oversight is consequential because scholars trying to understand when policy entrepreneurs emerge, and why, and what makes them more or less successful, need to be able to identify these change agents reliably and accurately. This paper explores the ways policy entrepreneurs are currently identified and highlights issues with current approaches. We introduce a new technique for eliciting and distinguishing policy entrepreneurs, coupling automated and manual analysis of local news media and a survey of policy entrepreneur candidates. We apply this technique to the empirical case of unconventional oil and gas drilling in Pennsylvania and derive some tentative results concerning factors which increase entrepreneurial efficacy…(More)”.

The Digital Economy Report 2024

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by UNCTAD: “…underscores the urgent need for environmentally sustainable and inclusive digitalization strategies.

Digital technology and infrastructure depend heavily on raw materials, and the production and disposal of more and more devices, along with growing water and energy needs are taking an increasing toll on the planet.

For example, the production and use of digital devices, data centres and information and communications technology (ICT) networks account for an estimated 6% to 12% of global electricity use.

Developing countries bear the brunt of the environmental costs of digitalization while reaping fewer benefits. They export low value-added raw materials and import high value-added devices, along with increasing digital waste. Geopolitical tensions over critical minerals, abundant in many of these countries, complicate the challenges.

The report calls for bold action from policymakers, industry leaders and consumers. It urges a global shift towards a circular digital economy, focusing on circularity by design through durable products, responsible consumption, reuse and recycling, and sustainable business models…(More)”.

Fixing frictions: ‘sludge audits’ around the world

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

OECD Report: “Governments worldwide are increasingly adopting behavioural science methodologies to address “sludge” – the unjustified frictions impeding people’ access to government services and exacerbating psychological burdens. Sludge audits, grounded in behavioural science, provide a structured approach for identifying, quantifying, and preventing sludge in public services and government processes. This document delineates Good Practice Principles, derived from ten case studies conducted during the International Sludge Academy, aimed at promoting the integration of sludge audit methodologies into public governance and service design. By enhancing government efficiency and bolstering public trust in government, these principles contribute to the broader agenda on administrative simplification, digital services, and public sector innovation…(More)”.

The Economic Case for Reimagining the State

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the Tony Blair Institute: “The new government will need to lean in to support the diffusion of AI-era tech across the economy by adopting a pro-innovation, pro-technology stance, as advocated by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change in our paper Accelerating the Future: Industrial Strategy in the Era of AI.

AI-era tech can also transform public services, creating a smaller, lower-cost state that delivers better outcomes for citizens. New TBI analysis suggests:

  • Adoption of AI across the public-sector workforce could save around one-fifth of workforce time at a comparatively low cost. If the government chooses to bank these time savings and reduce the size of the workforce, this could result in annual net savings of £10 billion per year by the end of this Parliament and £34 billion per year by the end of the next – enough to pay for the entire defence budget.
  • AI-era tech also offers significant potential to improve the UK’s health services. We envisage a major expansion of the country’s preventative-health-care system, including: a digital health record for every citizen; improved access to health checks online, at home and on the high street; and a wider rollout of preventative treatments across the population. This programme could lead to the triple benefit of a healthier population, a healthier economy (with more people in work) and healthier public finances (since more workers mean more tax revenues). Even a narrow version of this programme – focused only on cardiovascular disease – could lead to 70,000 more people in work and generate net savings to the Exchequer worth £600 million by the end of this parliamentary term, and £1.2 billion by the end of the next. Much larger gains are possible – worth £6 billion per year by 2040 – if medical treatments continue to advance and the programme expands to cover a wider range of conditions, including obesity and cancer.
  • Introducing a digital ID could significantly improve the way that citizens interact with government, in terms of saving them time, easing access and creating a more personalised service. A digital ID could also generate a net gain of about £2 billion per year for the Exchequer by helping to reduce benefit fraud, improve the efficiency of tax-revenue collection and better target welfare payments in a crisis. Based on international experience, we think it is achievable for the government to implement a digital ID within three years and generate cumulative net savings of almost £4 billion during this Parliament, and nearly £10 billion during the next term.
  • AI could also lead to a 6 per cent boost in educational attainment by helping to improve the quality of teaching, save teacher time and improve the ability of students to absorb lesson content. These gains would take time to materialise but could eventually raise UK GDP by up to 6 per cent in the long run and create more than £30 billion in fiscal space per year.

The four public-sector use cases outlined above could create substantial fiscal savings for the new government worth £12 billion a year (0.4 per cent of GDP) by the end of this parliamentary term, £37 billion (1.3 per cent of GDP) by the end of the next, and more than £40 billion (1.5 per cent of GDP) by 2040…(More)”.

United Nations Global Principles for Information Integrity

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

United Nations: “Technological advances have revolutionized communications, connecting people on a previously unthinkable scale. They have supported communities in times of crisis, elevated marginalized voices and helped mobilize global movements for racial justice and gender equality.

Yet these same advances have enabled the spread of misinformation, disinformation and hate speech at an unprecedented volume, velocity and virality, risking the integrity of the information ecosystem.

New and escalating risks stemming from leaps in AI technologies have made strengthening information integrity one of the urgent tasks of our time.

This clear and present global threat demands coordinated international action.

The United Nations Global Principles for Information Integrity show us another future is possible…(More)”

Doing science backwards

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Stuart Ritchie: “…Usually, the process of publishing such a study would look like this: you run the study; you write it up as a paper; you submit it to a journal; the journal gets some other scientists to peer-review it; it gets published – or if it doesn’t, you either discard it, or send it off to a different journal and the whole process starts again.

That’s standard operating procedure. But it shouldn’t be. Think about the job of the peer-reviewer: when they start their work, they’re handed a full-fledged paper, reporting on a study and a statistical analysis that happened at some point in the past. It’s all now done and, if not fully dusted, then in a pretty final-looking form.

What can the reviewer do? They can check the analysis makes sense, sure; they can recommend new analyses are done; they can even, in extreme cases, make the original authors go off and collect some entirely new data in a further study – maybe the data the authors originally presented just aren’t convincing or don’t represent a proper test of the hypothesis.

Ronald Fisher described the study-first, review-later process in 1938:

To consult the statistician [or, in our case, peer-reviewer] after an experiment is finished is often merely to ask him to conduct a post mortem examination. He can perhaps say what the experiment died of.

Clearly this isn’t the optimal, most efficient way to do science. Why don’t we review the statistics and design of a study right at the beginning of the process, rather than at the end?

This is where Registered Reports come in. They’re a new (well, new-ish) way of publishing papers where, before you go to the lab, or wherever you’re collecting data, you write down your plan for your study and send it off for peer-review. The reviewers can then give you genuinely constructive criticism – you can literally construct your experiment differently depending on their suggestions. You build consensus—between you, the reviewers, and the journal editor—on the method of the study. And then, once everyone agrees on what a good study of this question would look like, you go off and do it. The key part is that, at this point, the journal agrees to publish your study, regardless of what the results might eventually look like…(More)”.

Water Shortages in Latin America: How Can Behavioral Science Help?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Juan Roa Duarte: “Today in 2024, one of Latin America’s largest cities, Bogota, is facing significant challenges due to prolonged droughts exacerbated by El Niño. As reservoir levels plummet, local governments have implemented water rationing measures to manage the crisis. However, these rationing measures have remained unsuccessful after one month of implementation—in fact, water usage increased during the first week.1 But why? What solution can finally help solve this crisis?

In this article, we will explore how behavioral science can help Latin American cities mitigate their water shortages—and how, surprisingly, a method my hometown Bogota used back in the ‘90s can shed some light on this current issue. We’ll also explore some modern behavioral science strategies that can be used in parallel…(More)”