Transforming government through digitization

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Bjarne Corydon, Vidhya Ganesan, and Martin Lundqvist at McKinsey: “By digitizing processes and making organizational changes, governments can enhance services, save money, and improve citizens’ quality of life.

As companies have transformed themselves with digital technologies, people are calling on governments to follow suit. By digitizing, governments can provide services that meet the evolving expectations of citizens and businesses, even in a period of tight budgets and increasingly complex challenges. Our estimates suggest that government digitization, using current technology, could generate over $1 trillion annually worldwide.

Digitizing a government requires attention to two major considerations: the core capabilities for engaging citizens and businesses, and the organizational enablers that support those capabilities (exhibit). These make up a framework for setting digital priorities. In this article, we look at the capabilities and enablers in this framework, along with guidelines and real-world examples to help governments seize the opportunities that digitization offers.

A digital government has core capabilities supported by organizational enablers.

Governments typically center their digitization efforts on four capabilities: services, processes, decisions, and data sharing. For each, we believe there is a natural progression from quick wins to transformative efforts….(More)”

See also: Digital by default: A guide to transforming government (PDF–474KB) and  “Never underestimate the importance of good government,”  a New at McKinsey blog post with coauthor Bjarne Corydon, director of the McKinsey Center for Government.

The Cost of Cooperating

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

An Edge Conversation With David Rand: “…If you think about the puzzle of cooperation being “why should I incur a personal cost of time or money or effort in order to do something that’s going to benefit other people and not me?” the general answer is that if you can create future consequences for present behavior, that can create an incentive to cooperate. Cooperation requires me to incur some costs now, but if I’m cooperating with someone who I’ll interact with again, it’s worth it for me to pay the cost of cooperating now in order to get the benefit of them cooperating with me in the future, as long as there’s a large enough likelihood that we’ll interact again.

Even if it’s with someone that I’m not going to interact with again, if other people are observing that interaction, then it affects my reputation. It can be worth paying the cost of cooperating in order to earn a good reputation, and to attract new interaction partners.

There’s a lot of evidence to show that this works. There are game theory models and computer simulations showing that if you build these kinds of future consequences, you can get either evolution to lead to cooperative agents dominating populations, and also learning and strategic reasoning leading to people cooperating. There are also lots of behavioral experiments supporting this. These are lab experiments where you bring people into the lab, give them money, and you have them engage in economic cooperation games where they choose whether to keep the money for themselves or to contribute it to a group project that benefits other people. If you make it so that future consequences exist in any of these various ways, it makes people more inclined to cooperate. Typically, it leads to cooperation paying off, and being the best-performing strategy.

In these situations, it’s not altruistic to be cooperative because the interactions are designed in a way that makes cooperating pay off. For example, we have a paper that shows that in the context of repeated interactions, there’s not any relationship between how altruistic people are and how much they cooperate. Basically, everybody cooperates, even the selfish people. Under certain situations, selfish people can even wind up cooperating more because they’re better at identifying that that’s what is going to pay off.

This general class of solutions to the cooperation problem boils down to creating future consequences, and therefore creating a self-interested motivation in the long run to be cooperative. Strategic cooperation is extremely important; it explains a lot of real-world cooperation. From an institution design perspective, it’s important for people to be thinking about how you set up the rules of interaction—interaction structures and incentive structures—in a way that makes working for the greater good a good strategy.

At the same time that this strategic cooperation is important, it’s also clearly the case that people often cooperate even when there’s not a self-interested motive to do so. That willingness to help strangers (or to not exploit them) is a core piece of well-functioning societies. It makes society much more efficient when you don’t constantly have to be watching your back, afraid that people are going to take advantage of you. If you can generally trust that other people are going to do the right thing and you’re going to do the right thing, it makes life much more socially efficient.

Strategic incentives can motivate people to cooperate, but people also keep cooperating even when there are not incentives to do so, at least to some extent. What motivates people to do that? The way behavioral economists and psychologists talk about that is at a proximate psychological level—saying things like, “Well, it feels good to cooperate with other people. You care about others and that’s why you’re willing to pay costs to help them. You have social preferences.” …

Most people, both in the scientific world and among laypeople, are of the former opinion, which is that we are by default selfish—we have to use rational deliberation to make ourselves do the right thing. I try to think about this question from a theoretical principle position and say, what should it be? From a perspective of either evolution or strategic reasoning, which of these two stories makes more sense, and should we expect to observe?

If you think about it that way, the key question is “where do our intuitive defaults come from?” There’s all this work in behavioral economics and psychology on heuristics and biases which suggests that these intuitions are usually rules of thumb for the behavior that typically works well. It makes sense: If you’re going to have something as your default, what should you choose as your default? You should choose the thing that works well in general. In any particular situation, you might stop and ask, “Does my rule of thumb fit this specific situation?” If not, then you can override it….(More)”

Beyond nudging: it’s time for a second generation of behaviourally-informed social policy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Katherine Curchin at LSE Blog: “…behavioural scientists are calling for a second generation of behaviourally-informed policy. In some policy areas, nudges simply aren’t enough. Behavioural research shows stronger action is required to attack the underlying cause of problems. For example, many scholars have argued that behavioural insights provide a rationale for regulation to protect consumers from manipulation by private sector companies. But what might a second generation of behaviourally-informed social policy look like?

Behavioural insights could provide a justification to change the trajectory of income support policy. Since the 1990s policy attention has focused on the moral character of benefits recipients. Inspired by Lawrence Mead’s paternalist philosophy, governments have tried to increase the resolve of the unemployed to work their way out of poverty. More and more behavioural requirements have been attached to benefits to motivate people to fulfil their obligations to society.

But behavioural research now suggests that these harsh policies are misguided. Behavioural science supports the idea that people often make poor decisions and do things which are not in their long term interests.  But the weakness of individuals’ moral constitution isn’t so much the problem as the unequal distribution of opportunities in society. There are circumstances in which humans are unlikely to flourish no matter how motivated they are.

Normal human psychological limitations – our limited cognitive capacity, limited attention and limited self-control – interact with environment to produce the behaviour that advocates of harsh welfare regimes attribute to permissive welfare. In their book Scarcity, Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir argue that the experience of deprivation creates a mindset that makes it harder to process information, pay attention, make good decisions, plan for the future, and resist temptations.

Importantly, behavioural scientists have demonstrated that this mindset can be temporarily created in the laboratory by placing subjects in artificial situations which induce the feeling of not having enough. As a consequence, experimental subjects from middle-class backgrounds suddenly display the short-term thinking and irrational decision making often attributed to a culture of poverty.

Tying inadequate income support to a list of behavioural conditions will most punish those who are suffering most. Empirical studies of welfare conditionality have found that benefit claimants often do not comprehend the complicated rules that apply to them. Some are being punished for lack of understanding rather than deliberate non-compliance.

Behavioural insights can be used to mount a case for a more generous, less punitive approach to income support. The starting point is to acknowledge that some of Mead’s psychological assumptions have turned out to be wrong. The nature of the cognitive machinery humans share imposes limits on how self-disciplined and conscientious we can reasonably expect people living in adverse circumstances to be. We have placed too much emphasis on personal responsibility in recent decades. Why should people internalize the consequences of their behaviour when this behaviour is to a large extent the product of their environment?…(More)”

Portugal has announced the world’s first nationwide participatory budget

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Graça Fonseca at apolitical:”Portugal has announced the world’s first participatory budget on a national scale. The project will let people submit ideas for what the government should spend its money on, and then vote on which ideas are adopted.

Although participatory budgeting has become increasingly popular around the world in the past few years, it has so far been confined to cities and regions, and no country that we know of has attempted it nationwide. To reach as many people as possible, Portugal is also examining another innovation: letting people cast their votes via ATM machines.

‘It’s about quality of life, it’s about the quality of public space, it’s about the quality of life for your children, it’s about your life, OK?’ Graça Fonseca, the minister responsible, told Apolitical. ‘And you have a huge deficit of trust between people and the institutions of democracy. That’s the point we’re starting from and, if you look around, Portugal is not an exception in that among Western societies. We need to build that trust and, in my opinion, it’s urgent. If you don’t do anything, in ten, twenty years you’ll have serious problems.’

Although the official window for proposals begins in January, some have already been submitted to the project’s website. One suggests equipping kindergartens with technology to teach children about robotics. Using the open-source platform Arduino, the plan is to let children play with the tech and so foster scientific understanding from the earliest age.

Proposals can be made in the areas of science, culture, agriculture and lifelong learning, and there will be more than forty events in the new year for people to present and discuss their ideas.

The organisers hope that it will go some way to restoring closer contact between government and its citizens. Previous projects have shown that people who don’t vote in general elections often do cast their ballot on the specific proposals that participatory budgeting entails. Moreover, those who make the proposals often become passionate about them, campaigning for votes, flyering, making YouTube videos, going door-to-door and so fuelling a public discussion that involves ever more people in the process.

On the other side, it can bring public servants nearer to their fellow citizens by sharpening their understanding of what people want and what their priorities are. It can also raise the quality of public services by directing them more precisely to where they’re needed as well as by tapping the collective intelligence and imagination of thousands of participants….

Although it will not be used this year, because the project is still very much in the trial phase, the use of ATMs is potentially revolutionary. As Fonseca puts it, ‘In every remote part of the country, you might have nothing else, but you have an ATM.’ Moreover, an ATM could display proposals and allow people to vote directly, not least because it already contains a secure way of verifying their identity. At the moment, for comparison, people can vote by text or online, sending in the number from their ID card, which is checked against a database….(More)”.

Explore Philanthropy’s Role in U.S. Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
“Foundation Funding for U.S. Democracy is a data visualization platform for funders, nonprofits, journalists, and anyone interested in understanding philanthropy’s role in U.S. democracy

Data visualization platform

Why Is This Tool Unique?

  • Only source of information on how foundations are supporting U.S. democracy
  • Uses a common framework for understanding what activities foundations are funding
  • Provides direct access to available funding data
  • Delivers fresh and timely data every week

How Can You Use It?

  • Understand who is funding what, where
  • Analyze funder and nonprofit networks
  • Compare foundation funding for issues you care about
  • Support your knowledge about the field
  • Discover new philanthropic partners…(More)”

Even in Era of Disillusionment, Many Around the World Say Ordinary Citizens Can Influence Government

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Survey by Pew Global: “Signs of political discontent are increasingly common in many Western nations, with anti-establishment parties and candidates drawing significant attention and support across the European Union and in the United States. Meanwhile, as previous Pew Research Center surveys have shown, in emerging and developing economies there is widespread dissatisfaction with the way the political system is working.

As a new nine-country Pew Research Center survey on the strengths and limitations of civic engagement illustrates, there is a common perception that government is run for the benefit of the few, rather than the many in both emerging democracies and more mature democracies that have faced economic challenges in recent years. In eight of nine nations surveyed, more than half say government is run for the benefit of only a few groups in society, not for all people.1

However, this skeptical outlook on government does not mean people have given up on democracy or the ability of average citizens to have an impact on how the country is run. Roughly half or more in eight nations – Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, the U.S., India, Greece, Italy and Poland – say ordinary citizens can have a lot of influence on government. Hungary, where 61% say there is little citizens can do, is the lone nation where pessimism clearly outweighs optimism on this front.

Many people in these nine nations say they could potentially be motivated to become politically engaged on a variety of issues, especially poor health care, poverty and poor-quality schools. When asked what types of issues could get them to take political action, such as contacting an elected official or taking part in a protest, poor health care is the top choice among the six issues tested in six of eight countries. Health care, poverty and education constitute the top three motivators in all nations except India and Poland….(More)

What We Should Mean When We Talk About Citizen Engagement

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Eric Gordon in Governing: “…But here’s the problem: The institutional language of engagement has been defined by its measurement. Chief engagement officers in corporations are measuring milliseconds on web pages, and clicks on ads, and not relations among people. This is disproportionately influencing the values of democracy and the responsibility of public institutions to protect them.

Too often, when government talks about engagement, it is talking those things that are measurable, but it is providing mandates to employees imbued with ambiguity. For example, the executive order issued by Mayor Murray in Seattle is a bold directive for the “timely implementation by all City departments of equitable outreach and engagement practices that reaffirm the City’s commitment to inclusive participation.”

This extraordinary mayoral mandate reflects clear democratic values, but it lacks clarity of methods. It reflects a need to use digital technology to enhance process, but it doesn’t explain why. This in no way is meant as a criticism of Seattle’s effort; rather, it is simply meant to illustrate the complexity of engagement in practice. Departments are rewarded for quantifiable efficiency, not relationships. Just because something is called engagement, this fundamental truth won’t change.

Government needs to be much more clear about what it really means when it talks about engagement. In 2015, Living Cities and the Citi Foundation launched the City Accelerator on Public Engagement, which was an effort to source and support effective practices of public engagement in city government. This 18-month project, based on a cohort of five cities throughout the United States, is just now coming to an end. Out of it came several lasting insights, one of which I will share here. City governments are institutions in transition that need to ask why people should care.

After the election, who is going to care about government? How do you get people to care about the services that government provides? How do you get people to care about the health outcomes in their neighborhoods? How do you get people to care about ensuring accessible, high-quality public education?

I want to propose that when government talks about civic engagement, it is really talking about caring. When you care about something, you make a decision to be attentive to that thing. But “caring about” is one end of what I’ll call a spectrum of caring. On the other end, there is “caring for,” when, as described by philosopher Nel Noddings, “what we do depends not upon rules, or at least not wholly on rules — not upon a prior determination of what is fair or equitable — but upon a constellation of conditions that is viewed through both the eyes of the one-caring and the eyes of the cared-for.”

In short, caring-for is relational. When one cares for another, the outcomes of an encounter are not predetermined, but arise through relation….(More)”.

The case against democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

 in the New Yorker: “Roughly a third of American voters think that the Marxist slogan “From each according to his ability to each according to his need” appears in the Constitution. About as many are incapable of naming even one of the three branches of the United States government. Fewer than a quarter know who their senators are, and only half are aware that their state has two of them.

Democracy is other people, and the ignorance of the many has long galled the few, especially the few who consider themselves intellectuals. Plato, one of the earliest to see democracy as a problem, saw its typical citizen as shiftless and flighty:

Sometimes he drinks heavily while listening to the flute; at other times, he drinks only water and is on a diet; sometimes he goes in for physical training; at other times, he’s idle and neglects everything; and sometimes he even occupies himself with what he takes to be philosophy.

It would be much safer, Plato thought, to entrust power to carefully educated guardians. To keep their minds pure of distractions—such as family, money, and the inherent pleasures of naughtiness—he proposed housing them in a eugenically supervised free-love compound where they could be taught to fear the touch of gold and prevented from reading any literature in which the characters have speaking parts, which might lead them to forget themselves. The scheme was so byzantine and cockamamie that many suspect Plato couldn’t have been serious; Hobbes, for one, called the idea “useless.”

A more practical suggestion came from J. S. Mill, in the nineteenth century: give extra votes to citizens with university degrees or intellectually demanding jobs. (In fact, in Mill’s day, select universities had had their own constituencies for centuries, allowing someone with a degree from, say, Oxford to vote both in his university constituency and wherever he lived. The system wasn’t abolished until 1950.) Mill’s larger project—at a time when no more than nine per cent of British adults could vote—was for the franchise to expand and to include women. But he worried that new voters would lack knowledge and judgment, and fixed on supplementary votes as a defense against ignorance.

In the United States, élites who feared the ignorance of poor immigrants tried to restrict ballots. In 1855, Connecticut introduced the first literacy test for American voters. Although a New York Democrat protested, in 1868, that “if a man is ignorant, he needs the ballot for his protection all the more,” in the next half century the tests spread to almost all parts of the country. They helped racists in the South circumvent the Fifteenth Amendment and disenfranchise blacks, and even in immigrant-rich New York a 1921 law required new voters to take a test if they couldn’t prove that they had an eighth-grade education. About fifteen per cent flunked. Voter literacy tests weren’t permanently outlawed by Congress until 1975, years after the civil-rights movement had discredited them.

Worry about voters’ intelligence lingers, however. …In a new book, “Against Democracy” (Princeton), Jason Brennan, a political philosopher at Georgetown, has turned Estlund’s hedging inside out to create an uninhibited argument for epistocracy. Against Estlund’s claim that universal suffrage is the default, Brennan argues that it’s entirely justifiable to limit the political power that the irrational, the ignorant, and the incompetent have over others. To counter Estlund’s concern for fairness, Brennan asserts that the public’s welfare is more important than anyone’s hurt feelings; after all, he writes, few would consider it unfair to disqualify jurors who are morally or cognitively incompetent. As for Estlund’s worry about demographic bias, Brennan waves it off. Empirical research shows that people rarely vote for their narrow self-interest; seniors favor Social Security no more strongly than the young do. Brennan suggests that since voters in an epistocracy would be more enlightened about crime and policing, “excluding the bottom 80 percent of white voters from voting might be just what poor blacks need.”…(More)”

The Digital City and Mediated Urban Ecologies

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
 Book by Kristin Scott: “…This book examines the phenomenon of the “digital city” in the US by looking at three case studies: New York City, San Antonio, and Seattle. Kristin Scott considers how digital technologies are increasingly built into the logic and organization of urban spaces and argues that while each city articulates ideals such as those of open democracy, civic engagement, efficient governance, and enhanced security, competing capitalist interests attached to many of these digital technological programs make the “digital city” problematic….(More)”

Design Thinking for Educators

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IDEO: “The Design Thinking for Educators Toolkit gives teachers the tools and methods they need to apply design thinking—discovery, interpretation, ideation, experimentation and evolution—in real-world scenarios….

Why design thinking? Hear firsthand stories about how design thinking can apply to education.

Included in the toolkit are the Designer’s Workbook, workshops and an ongoing free five-week virtual class to help hone skills and empower teachers to create desirable solutions.

The effort is helping teachers become agents of change within their schools, driving new small- and large-scale innovations. Visit the Design Thinking Toolkit for Educators site for stories, case studies, process outlines, engagement opportunities, and more….(More)”