Using Linked Open Statistical Data to enhance executive decision making in Greek Public Administration

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

OpenGovIntelligence: “Imagine an executive Government Department that needs to manage resources and make decisions on a daily basis without possessing any data to support them. This is the case in the supervising department of Government Vehicles, which is part of the Greek Ministry of Administrative Reconstruction. This department is in charge of the supervision and management of the whole fleet of Greek Government Vehicles….In an attempt to solve this problem, the Greek Ministry of Administrative Reconstruction joined the OpenGovernmentIntelligence project as a pilot partner to exploit statistical data for this purpose. Preliminary findings of the project team were very encouraging, to the surprise of Greek Ministry executives. There was a plethora of Government Vehicle data owned by other governmental and non-governmental bodies. Interestingly, the Ministry of Transport even had record level data of all vehicles, including governmental ones. Other data providers included the Hellenic Statistical Authority and the Hellenic Association of Motor Vehicle Importers-Representatives that provided fuel consumption and gas emissions data. Even more impressively, before the end of the first year of the project, a new web-based platform was built by means of the OGI toolkit. Its goal was to provide visualisations and statistical metrics to enhance executive decision making. For the first time, decision makers could acquire knowledge on metrics such as the average age, cubic capacity or daily fuel consumptions of a Government Agency fleet.

Screenshot from the Greek pilot in the OpenGovIntelligence project

However, a lot still needs to be done. The primary concern of the Greek Pilot team members is now data quality, as the Ministry of Administrative Reconstruction does not own any of these data. Next steps include data validation and cleansing, as well as collaboration with other agencies serving as intermediates for government fleet management regarding service co-production. Executives in the Greek Ministry of Administrative Reconstruction are now pleased to have access to data that will enhance their ability to make rational decisions regarding Government Vehicles. This is a small, but at the same time essential, step for a country struggling with economic recession….(More)”.

The Public, the Political System and American Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Pew Research Center: “Most say ‘design and structure’ of government need big changes…At a time of growing stress on democracy around the world, Americans generally agree on democratic ideals and values that are important for the United States. But for the most part, they see the country falling well short in living up to these ideals, according to a new study of opinion on the strengths and weaknesses of key aspects of American democracy and the political system.

The public’s criticisms of the political system run the gamut, from a failure to hold elected officials accountable to a lack of transparency in government. And just a third say the phrase “people agree on basic facts even if they disagree politically” describes this country well today.

The perceived shortcomings encompass some of the core elements of American democracy. An overwhelming share of the public (84%) says it is very important that “the rights and freedoms of all people are respected.” Yet just 47% say this describes the country very or somewhat well; slightly more (53%) say it does not.

Despite these criticisms, most Americans say democracy is working well in the United States – though relatively few say it is working very well. At the same time, there is broad support for making sweeping changes to the political system: 61% say “significant changes” are needed in the fundamental “design and structure” of American government to make it work for current times.

The public sends mixed signals about how the American political system should be changed, and no proposals attract bipartisan support. Yet in views of how many of the specific aspects of the political system are working, both Republicans and Democrats express dissatisfaction.

To be sure, there are some positives. A sizable majority of Americans (74%) say the military leadership in the U.S. does not publicly support one party over another, and nearly as many (73%) say the phrase “people are free to peacefully protest” describes this country very or somewhat well.

In general, however, there is a striking mismatch between the public’s goals for American democracy and its views of whether they are being fulfilled. On 23 specific measures assessing democracy, the political system and elections in the United States – each widely regarded by the public as very important – there are only eight on which majorities say the country is doing even somewhat well….(More)”.

Data for Public Benefit

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Carnegie Trust: “Public services are essential to our lives. Collecting, using and sharing data better could help deliver these services more effectively. But as well as delivering many public benefits the sharing of personal data can also involve risks.

‘Data for Public Benefit’ is a joint initiative with Involve and Understanding Patient Data. The report presents new research from across six local authority areas in England and has found that there are big differences in how public services currently define and weigh up public benefits and risks of data sharing.

We’ve developed a framework to help organisations make better decisions about when data should and shouldn’t be shared. This framework will help professionals weigh up the purpose of sharing data against the potential for harm and help public service providers have conversations with the public about data sharing….(More)“.

5 Tips for Launching (and Sustaining) a City Behavioral Design Team

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Playbook by ideas42: “…To pave the way for other municipalities to start a Behavioral Design Team, we distilled years of rigorously tested results and real-world best practices into an open-source playbook for public servants at all levels of government. The playbook introduces readers to core concepts of behavioral design, indicates why and where a BDT can be effective, lays out the fundamental competencies and structures governments will need to set up a BDT, and provides guidance on how to successfully run one. It also includes several applicable examples from our New York and Chicago teams to illustrate the tangible impact behavioral science can have on citizens and outcomes.

Thinking about starting a BDT? Here are five tips for launching (and sustaining) a city behavioral design team. For more insights, read the full playbook.

Compose your team with care

While there is no exact formula, a well-staffed BDT needs expertise in three key areas: behavioral science, research and evaluation, and public policies and programs. You’ll rarely find all three in one person—hence the need to gather a team of people with complementary skills. Some key things to look for as you assemble your team: background in behavioral economics or social psychology, formal training in impact evaluation and statistics, and experience working in government positions or nonprofits that implement government programs.

Choose an anchor agency

To more quickly build momentum, consider identifying an “anchor” agency. A high profile partner can help you establish credibility and can facilitate interactions with different departments across your government. Having an anchor agency legitimizes the BDT and helps reduce any apprehension among other agencies. The initial projects with the anchor agency will help others understand both what it means to work with the BDT and what kinds of outcomes to expect.

Establish your criteria for selecting projects

Once you get people bought-in and excited about innovating with behavioral science, the possible problems to tackle can seem limitless. Before selecting projects, set up clear criteria for prioritizing which problems need attention the most and which ones are best suited to behavioral solutions. While it is natural for the exact criteria to vary from place to place, in the playbook we share the criteria the New York and Chicago BDTs use to prioritize and determine the viability of potential undertakings that other teams can use as a starting place.

Build buy-in with a mix of project types

If you run only RCTs, which require implementation and data collection, it may be challenging to generate the buy-in and enthusiasm a BDT needs to thrive in its early days. That’s why incorporating some shorter engagements, including projects that are design-only, or pre-post evaluations can help sustain momentum by quickly generating evidence—and demonstrate that your BDT gets results.

Keep learning and growing

Applying behavioral design within government programs is still relatively novel. This open-source playbook provides guidance for starting a BDT, but constant learning and iterating should be expected! As BDTs mature and evolve, they must also become more ambitious in their scope, particularly when the low-hanging-fruit or other more obvious problems that can be helpful for building buy-in and establishing proof-of-concept have been addressed. The long-term goal of any successful BDT is to tackle the most challenging and impactful problems in government programs and policies head-on and use the solutions to help the people who need it most…(More)”

What Is Human-Centric Design?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Zack Quaintance at GovTech: “…Government services, like all services, have historically used some form of design to deploy user-facing components. The design portion of this equation is nothing new. What Olesund says is new, however, is the human-centric component.

“In the past, government services were often designed from the perspective and need of the government institution, not necessarily with the needs or desires of residents or constituents in mind,” said Olesund. “This might lead, for example, to an accumulation of stats and requirements for residents, or utilization of outdated technology because the government institution is locked into a contract.”

Basically, government has never set out to design its services to be clunky or hard to use. These qualities have, however, grown out of the legally complex frameworks that governments must adhere to, which can subsequently result in a failure to prioritize the needs of the people using the services rather than the institution.

Change, however, is underway. Human-centric design is one of the main priorities of the U.S. Digital Service (USDS) and 18F, a pair of organizations created under the Obama administration with missions that largely involve making government services more accessible to the citizenry through efficient use of tech.

Although the needs of state and municipal governments are more localized, the gov tech work done at the federal level by the USDS and 18F has at times served as a benchmark or guidepost for smaller government agencies.

“They both redesign services to make them digital and user-friendly,” Olesund said. “But they also do a lot of work creating frameworks and best practices for other government agencies to adopt in order to achieve some of the broader systemic change.”

One of the most tangible examples of human-centered design at the state or local level can be found at Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services, which recently worked with the Detroit-based design studio Civillato reduce its paper services application from 40 pages, 18,000-some words and 1,000 questions, down to 18 pages, 3,904 words and 213 questions. Currently, Civilla is working with the nonprofit civic tech group Code for America to help bring the same massive level of human-centered design progress to the state’s digital services.

Other work is underway in San Francisco’s City Hall and within the state of California. A number of cities also have iTeams funded through Bloomberg Philanthropies, and their missions are to innovate in ways that solve ongoing municipal problems, a mission that often requires use of human-centric design….(More)”.

Data rights are civic rights: a participatory framework for GDPR in the US?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Elena Souris and Hollie Russon Gilman at Vox: “…While online rights are coming into question, it’s worth considering how those will overlap with offline rights and civic engagement.

The two may initially seem completely separate, but democracy itself depends on information and communication, and a balance of privacy (secret ballot) and transparency. As communication moves almost entirely to networked online technology platforms, the governance questions surrounding data and privacy have far-reaching civic and political implications for how people interact with all aspects of their lives, from commerce and government services to their friends, families, and communities. That is why we need a conversation about data protections, empowering users with their own information, and transparency — ultimately, data rights are now civic rights…

What could a golden mean in the US look like? Is it possible to take principles of the GDPR and apply a more community based, citizen-centric approach across states and localities in the United States? Could a US version of the GDPR be designed in a way that included public participation? Perhaps there could be an ongoing participatory role? Most of all, the questions underpinning data regulation need to serve as an impetus for an honest conversation about equity across digital access, digital literacy, and now digital privacy.

Across the country, we’re already seeing successful experiments with a more citizen-inclusive democracy, with localities and cities rising as engines of American re-innovationand laboratories of participatory democracy. Thanks to our federalist system, states are already paving the way for greater electoral reform, from public financing of campaigns to experiments with structures such as ranked-choice voting.

In these local federalist experiments, civic participation is slowly becoming a crucial tool. Innovations from participatory budgeting to interactive policy co-production sessions are giving people in communities a direct say in public policies. For example, the Rural Climate Dialogues in Minnesota empower rural residents to impact policy on long-term climate mitigation. Bowling Green, Kentucky, recently used the online deliberation platform Polisto identify common policy areas for consensus building. Scholars have been writing about various potential participatory models for our digital lives as well, including civic trusts.

Can we take these principles and begin a serious conversation for how to translate the best privacy practices, tools, and methods to ensure that people’s valuable online and offline resources — including their trust, attention span, and vital information — are also protected and honored? Since the people are a primary stakeholder in the conversation about civic data and data privacy, they should have a seat at the table.

Including citizens and residents in these conversations could have a big policy impact. First, working toward a participatory governance framework for civic data would enable people to understand the value of their data in the open market. Second, it would provide greater transparency to the value of networks — an individual’s social graph, a valuable asset, which, until now, people are generating in aggregate without anything in return. Third, it could amplify concerns of more vulnerable data users, including elderly or tech-illiterate citizens — and even refugees and international migrants, as Andrew Young and Stefaan Verhulst recently argued in the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

There are already templates and road maps for responsible data, but talking to those users themselves with a participatory governance approach could make them even more effective. Finally, citizens can help answer tough questions about what we value and when and how we need to make ethical choices with data.

Because data-collecting organizations will have to comply abroad soon, the GDPR is a good opportunity for the American social sector to consider data rights as civic rights and incorporate a participatory process to meet this challenge. Instead of simply assuming regulatory agencies will pave the way, a more participatory data framework could foster an ongoing process of civic empowerment and make the outcome more effective. It’s too soon to know the precise forms or mechanisms new data regulation should take. Instead of a rigid, predetermined format, the process needs to be community-driven by design — ensuring traditionally marginalized communities are front and center in this conversation, not only the elites who already hold the microphone.

It won’t be easy. Building a participatory governance structure for civic data will require empathy, compromise, and potentially challenging the preconceived relationship between people, institutions, and their information. The interplay between our online and offline selves is a continuous process of learning error. But if we simply replicate the top-down structures of the past, we can’t evolve toward a truly empowered digital democratic future. Instead, let’s use the GDPR as an opening in the United States for advancing the principles of a more transparent and participatory democracy….(More)”.

Friends with Academic Benefits

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
Paper by Janice McCabe at Contexts: “Sometimes it’s a good thing to be like your friends, and sometimes it isn’t. . . . If they’re getting all As, of course I want to be like them,” said Valerie, an 18-year-old college student during her first year at “MU,” a large, public, four-year university in the Midwestern United States. Like Valerie, many college students use their friends as academic motivation, finding support among a close-knit group surrounding them. Other students view only certain groups of friends as academically helpful. Betsy explained that the friends on her dorm floor constantly help each other with schoolwork, but her friends from home do not. Still others desired more support and encouragement than they received from friends. Steve told me, “I’m doing it myself… I want [help], but at the same time I don’t really need it.” All three students graduated from MU within four years, yet reflect some of the wide array of experiences students have with their friend networks.

The new or interesting story isn’t just that Valerie, Betsy, and Steve’s friends had different social and academic impacts, but that they had various types of friendship networks. My research points to the importance of network structure—that is, the relationships among their friends—for college students’ success. Different network structures result from students’ experiences—such as race- and class-based marginalization on this predominantly White campus—and shape students’ experiences by helping or hindering them academically and socially.

I used social network techniques to analyze the friendship networks of 67 MU students and found they clumped into three distinctive types—tight-knitters, compartmentalizers, and samplers. Tight-knitters have one densely woven friendship group in which nearly all their friends are friends with one another. Compartmentalizers’ friends form two to four clusters, where friends know each other within clusters but rarely across them. And samplers make a friend or two from a variety of places, but the friends remain unconnected to each other. As shown in the figures, tight-knitters’ networks resemble a ball of yarn, compartmentalizers’ a bow-tie, and samplers’ a daisy. In these network maps, the person I interviewed is at the center and every other dot represents a friend, with lines representing connections among friends (that is, whether the person I interviewed believed that the two people knew each other). During the interviews, participants defined what friendship meant to them and listed as many friends as they liked (ranging from three to 45).

The students’ friendship network types influenced how friends matter for their academic and social successes and failures. Like Valerie, most Black and Latina/o students were tight-knitters. Their dense friendship networks provided a sense of home as a minority on a predominantly White campus. Tight-knit networks could provide academic support and motivation (as they did for Valerie) or pull students down academically if their friends lacked academic skills and motivation. Most White students were compartmentalizers like Betsy, and they succeeded with moderate levels of social support from friends and with social support and academic support from different clusters. Samplers came from a range of class and race backgrounds. Like Steve, samplers typically succeeded academically without relying on their friends. Friends were fun people who neither help nor hurt them academically. Socially, however, samplers reported feeling lonely and lacking social support….(More)”.

Participatory Budgeting: Step to Building Active Citizenship or a Distraction from Democratic Backsliding?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

David Sasaki: “Is there any there there? That’s what we wanted to uncover beneath the hype and skepticism surrounding participatory budgeting, an innovation in democracy that began in Brazil in 1989 and has quickly spread to nearly every corner of the world like a viral hashtag….We ended up selecting two groups of consultants for two phases of work. The first phase was led by three academic researchers — Brian Wampler, Mike Touchton and Stephanie McNulty — to synthesize what we know broadly about PB’s impact and where there are gaps in the evidence. mySociety led the second phase, which originally intended to identify the opportunities and challenges faced by civil society organizations and public officials that implement participatory budgeting. However, a number of unforeseen circumstances, including contested elections in Kenya and a major earthquake in Mexico, shifted mySociety’s focus to take a global, field-wide perspective.

In the end, we were left with two reports that were similar in scope and differed in perspective. Together they make for compelling reading. And while they come from different perspectives, they settle on similar recommendations. I’ll focus on just three: 1) the need for better research, 2) the lack of global coordination, and 3) the emerging opportunity to link natural resource governance with participatory budgeting….

As we consider some preliminary opportunities to advance participatory budgeting, we are clear-eyed about the risks and challenges. In the face of democratic backsliding and the concern that liberal democracy may not survive the 21st century, are these efforts to deepen local democracy merely a distraction from a larger threat, or is this a way to build active citizenship? Also, implementing PB is expensive — both in terms of money and time; is it worth the investment? Is PB just the latest checkbox for governments that want a reputation for supporting citizen participation without investing in the values and process it entails? Just like the proliferation of fake “consultation meetings,” fake PB could merely exacerbate our disappointment with democracy. What should we make of the rise of participatory budgeting in quasi-authoritarian contexts like China and Russia? Is PB a tool for undemocratic central governments to keep local governments in check while giving citizens a simulacrum of democratic participation? Crucially, without intentional efforts to be inclusive like we’ve seen in Boston, PB could merely direct public resources to those neighborhoods with the most outspoken and powerful residents.

On the other hand, we don’t want to dismiss the significant opportunities that come with PB’s rapid global expansion. For example, what happens when social movements lose their momentum between election cycles? Participatory budgeting could create a civic space for social movements to pursue concrete outcomes while engaging with neighbors and public officials. (In China, it has even helped address the urban-rural divide on perspectives toward development policy.) Meanwhile, social media have exacerbated our human tendency to complain, but participatory budgeting requires us to shift our perspective from complaints to engaging with others on solutions. It could even serve as a gateway to deeper forms of democratic participation and increased trust between governments, civil society organizations, and citizens. Perhaps participatory budgeting is the first step we need to rebuild our civic infrastructure and make space for more diverse voices to steer our complex public institutions.

Until we have more research and evidence, however, these possibilities remain speculative….(More)”.

Behavioral Economics: Are Nudges Cost-Effective?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Carla Fried at UCLA Anderson Review: “Behavioral science does not suffer from a lack of academic focus. A Google Scholar search for the term delivers more than three million results.

While there is an abundance of research into how human nature can muck up our decision making process and the potential for well-placed nudges to help guide us to better outcomes, the field has kept rather mum on a basic question: Are behavioral nudges cost-effective?

That’s an ever more salient question as the art of the nudge is increasingly being woven into public policy initiatives. In 2009, the Obama administration set up a nudge unit within the White House Office of Information and Technology, and a year later the U.K. government launched its own unit. Harvard’s Cass Sunstein, co-author of the book Nudge, headed the U.S. effort. His co-author, the University of Chicago’s Richard Thaler — who won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Economics — helped develop the U.K.’s Behavioral Insights office. Nudge units are now humming away in other countries, including Germany and Singapore, as well as at the World Bank, various United Nations agencies and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Given the interest in the potential for behavioral science to improve public policy outcomes, a team of nine experts, including UCLA Anderson’s Shlomo Benartzi, Sunstein and Thaler, set out to explore the cost-effectiveness of behavioral nudges relative to more traditional forms of government interventions.

In addition to conducting their own experiments, the researchers looked at published research that addressed four areas where public policy initiatives aim to move the needle to improve individuals’ choices: saving for retirement, applying to college, energy conservation and flu vaccinations.

For each topic, they culled studies that focused on both nudge approaches and more traditional mandates such as tax breaks, education and financial incentives, and calculated cost-benefit estimates for both types of studies. Research used in this study was published between 2000 and 2015. All cost estimates were inflation-adjusted…

The study itself should serve as a nudge for governments to consider adding nudging to their policy toolkits, as this approach consistently delivered a high return on investment, relative to traditional mandates and policies….(More)”.

A New Model for Industry-Academic Partnerships

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Working Paper by Gary King and Nathaniel Persily: “The mission of the academic social sciences is to understand and ameliorate society’s greatest challenges. The data held by private companies holds vast potential to further this mission. Yet, because of its interaction with highly politicized issues, customer privacy, proprietary content, and differing goals of firms and academics, these data are often inaccessible to university researchers.

We propose here a new model for industry-academic partnerships that addresses these problems via a novel organizational structure: Respected scholars form a commission which, as a trusted third party, receives access to all relevant firm information and systems, and then recruits independent academics to do research in specific areas following standard peer review protocols organized and funded by nonprofit foundations.

We also report on a partnership we helped forge under this model to make data available about the extremely visible and highly politicized issues surrounding the impact of social media on elections and democracy. In our partnership, Facebook will provide privacy-preserving data and access; seven major politically and substantively diverse nonprofit foundations will fund the research; and the Social Science Research Council will oversee the peer review process for funding and data access….(More)”.