New paper by Beth Simone Noveck, The GovLab, for Democracy: “In the early 2000s, the Air Force struggled with a problem: Pilots and civilians were dying because of unusual soil and dirt conditions in Afghanistan. The soil was getting into the rotors of the Sikorsky UH-60 helicopters and obscuring the view of its pilots—what the military calls a “brownout.” According to the Air Force’s senior design scientist, the manager tasked with solving the problem didn’t know where to turn quickly to get help. As it turns out, the man practically sitting across from him had nine years of experience flying these Black Hawk helicopters in the field, but the manager had no way of knowing that. Civil service titles such as director and assistant director reveal little about skills or experience.
In the fall of 2008, the Air Force sought to fill in these kinds of knowledge gaps. The Air Force Research Laboratory unveiled Aristotle, a searchable internal directory that integrated people’s credentials and experience from existing personnel systems, public databases, and users themselves, thus making it easy to discover quickly who knew and had done what. Near-term budgetary constraints killed Aristotle in 2013, but the project underscored a glaring need in the bureaucracy.
Aristotle was an attempt to solve a challenge faced by every agency and organization: quickly locating expertise to solve a problem. Prior to Aristotle, the DOD had no coordinated mechanism for identifying expertise across 200,000 of its employees. Dr. Alok Das, the senior scientist for design innovation tasked with implementing the system, explained, “We don’t know what we know.”
This is a common situation. The government currently has no systematic way of getting help from all those with relevant expertise, experience, and passion. For every success on Challenge.gov—the federal government’s platform where agencies post open calls to solve problems for a prize—there are a dozen open-call projects that never get seen by those who might have the insight or experience to help. This kind of crowdsourcing is still too ad hoc, infrequent, and unpredictable—in short, too unreliable—for the purposes of policy-making.
Which is why technologies like Aristotle are so exciting. Smart, searchable expert networks offer the potential to lower the costs and speed up the process of finding relevant expertise. Aristotle never reached this stage, but an ideal expert network is a directory capable of including not just experts within the government, but also outside citizens with specialized knowledge. This leads to a dual benefit: accelerating the path to innovative and effective solutions to hard problems while at the same time fostering greater citizen engagement.
Could such an expert-network platform revitalize the regulatory-review process? We might find out soon enough, thanks to the Food and Drug Administration…”
EU: GLOW (Global Legislative Openness Week)
GLOW is a celebration of open, participatory legislative processes around the world as well as an opportunity for diverse stakeholders to collaborate with one another and make progress toward adopting and implementing open-government commitments. The week is being led by the Legislative Openness Working Group of the Open Government Partnership, which is co-anchored by the National Democratic Institute and the Congress of Chile.
The campaign kicks off with the International Day of Democracy on September 15, and throughout the 10 days you are invited to share your ideas and experiences, kickstart new transparency tools and engage members of your community in dialogue. Learn more about the global open government movement at OGP, and stay tuned into GLOW events by following this site and #OpenParl2014.
Where will GLOW be happening?
GLOW will connect a range of legislative openness activities, organized independently by civil society organizations and parliaments around the world. You can follow the action on Twitter by using the hashtag #OpenParl2014. We hope the GLOW campaign will inspire you to design and organize your own event or activity during this week. If you’d like to share your event and collaborate with others during GLOW, please send us a note.
The week’s festivities will be anchored by two Working Group meetings of civil society and parliamentary members. Beginning on the International Day of Democracy, September 15, the Working Group will host a regional meeting on expanding civic engagement through parliamentary openness in Podgorica, Montenegro, hosted in partnership with the Parliament of Montenegro. The week will conclude with the Working Group’s annual meeting in Chile, on September 25 and 26, 2014, where members will discuss progress made in the year since the Working Group’s launch. This meeting coincides with the 11th Plenary Assembly of ParlAmericas, an independent network composed of the national legislatures of the 35 independent states of the Americas, which will also consider issues of legislative openness as part of its meeting….” (More)
Bridging Distant Worlds: Innovation in the Civic Space
A digital white paper by Public Innovation: “In an increasingly complex world, today’s challenges are interconnected. Many have argued that our civic institutions are not equipped to respond with the same velocity at which technology is advancing other sectors of the economy. While this may, in fact, be a fair criticism of our electoral, fiscal, and policy structures, a new mindset is emerging at government’s service delivery layer.
Civic innovation offers a new approach to solving community problems that is emergent, generative, resilient, participatory, human-centered, and driven by a process of validated learning where core assumptions are tested quickly and iteratively – and lead to better solutions that are both impactful and durable. And perhaps most surprisingly, new markets are being created that enable creative problem solvers to sustain their social impact through activities that don’t rely on traditional models of grant funding.
While the Sacramento region is making significant progress in this space, our civic innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem has yet to reach its full potential. The purpose of this white paper is to make the case for why now is the time for a Regional Civic Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Agenda.
The paper concludes with a set of recommendations for collective action among the region’s public, private, nonprofit organizations, and, of course, our fellow citizens. Appendix A articulates this agenda in the form of a resolution to be adopted by as many cities and counties the region as possible.
A recurring theme in this paper is that technology is fundamentally changing the way humans interact with organizations and each other. In order for regional leaders and residents to be honest with ourselves, we must consciously choose whether or not we are going to raise our expectations and co-create a new civic experience.
Because the future is now and the opportunities are infinite…”
Making Policy Public: Participatory Bureaucracy in American Democracy
New book by Susan L. Moffitt: “This book challenges the conventional wisdom that government bureaucrats inevitably seek secrecy and demonstrates how and when participatory bureaucracy manages the enduring tension between bureaucratic administration and democratic accountability. Looking closely at federal level public participation in pharmaceutical regulation and educational assessments within the context of the vast system of American federal advisory committees, this book demonstrates that participatory bureaucracy supports bureaucratic administration in ways consistent with democratic accountability when it focuses on complex tasks and engages diverse expertise. In these conditions, public participation can help produce better policy outcomes, such as safer prescription drugs. Instead of bureaucracy’s opposite or alternative, public participation can work as its complement.
- Argues that public participation through FDA drug review advisory committees leads to safer drug experiences on the market: fewer boxed warnings and fewer drug withdrawals
- Suggests that the American system of public committees is truly vast, involving upwards of 70,000 committee members across 1,000 different committees
- Details that public committees can be a source of transparency in government operations”
The Decalogue of Policy Making 2.0: Results from Analysis of Case Studies on the Impact of ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling
Paper by Sotirios Koussouris, Fenareti Lampathaki, Gianluca Misuraca, Panagiotis Kokkinakos, and Dimitrios Askounis: “Despite the availability of a myriad of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) based tools and methodologies for supporting governance and the formulation of policies, including modelling expected impacts, these have proved to be unable to cope with the dire challenges of the contemporary society. In this chapter we present the results of the analysis of a set of promising cases researched in order to understand the possible impact of what we define ‘Policy Making 2.0’, which refers to ‘a set of methodologies and technological solutions aimed at enabling better, timely and participative policy-making’. Based on the analysis of these cases we suggest a bouquet of (mostly ICT-related) practical and research recommendations that are relevant to researchers, practitioners and policy makers in order to guide the introduction and implementation of Policy Making 2.0 initiatives. We argue that this ‘decalogue’ of Policy Making 2.0 could be an operational checklist for future research and policy to further explore the potential of ICT tools for governance and policy modelling, so to make next generation policy making more ‘intelligent’ and hopefully able to solve or anticipate the societal challenges we are (and will be) confronted today and in the future.
Using Crowds for Evaluation Tasks: Validity by Numbers vs. Validity by Expertise
Paper by Christoph Hienerth and Frederik Riar: “Developing and commercializing novel ideas is central to innovation processes. As the outcome of such ideas cannot fully be foreseen, the evaluation of them is crucial. With the rise of the internet and ICT, more and new kinds of evaluations are done by crowds. This raises the question whether individuals in crowds possess necessary capabilities to evaluate and whether their outcomes are valid. As empirical insights are not yet available, this paper deals with the examination of evaluation processes and general evaluation components, the discussion of underlying characteristics and mechanism of these components affecting evaluation outcomes (i.e. evaluation validity). We further investigate differences between firm- and crowd-based evaluation using different cases of applications, and develop a theoretical framework towards evaluation validity, i.e. validity by numbers vs. the validity by expertise. The identified factors that influence the validity of evaluations are: (1) the number of evaluation tasks, (2) complexity, (3) expertise, (4) costs, and (5) time to outcome. For each of these factors, hypotheses are developed based on theoretical arguments. We conclude with implications, proposing a model of evaluation validity.”
Rethinking Democracy
Dani Rodrik at Project Syndicate: “By many measures, the world has never been more democratic. Virtually every government at least pays lip service to democracy and human rights. Though elections may not be free and fair, massive electoral manipulation is rare and the days when only males, whites, or the rich could vote are long gone. Freedom House’s global surveys show a steady increase from the 1970s in the share of countries that are “free” – a trend that the late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington dubbed the “third wave” of democratization….
A true democracy, one that combines majority rule with respect for minority rights, requires two sets of institutions. First, institutions of representation, such as political parties, parliaments, and electoral systems, are needed to elicit popular preferences and turn them into policy action. Second, democracy requires institutions of restraint, such as an independent judiciary and media, to uphold fundamental rights like freedom of speech and prevent governments from abusing their power. Representation without restraint – elections without the rule of law – is a recipe for the tyranny of the majority.
Democracy in this sense – what many call “liberal democracy” – flourished only after the emergence of the nation-state and the popular upheaval and mobilization produced by the Industrial Revolution. So it should come as no surprise that the crisis of liberal democracy that many of its oldest practitioners currently are experiencing is a reflection of the stress under which the nation-state finds itself….
In developing countries, it is more often the institutions of restraint that are failing. Governments that come to power through the ballot box often become corrupt and power-hungry. They replicate the practices of the elitist regimes they replaced, clamping down on the press and civil liberties and emasculating (or capturing) the judiciary. The result has been called “illiberal democracy” or “competitive authoritarianism.” Venezuela, Turkey, Egypt, and Thailand are some of the better-known recent examples.
When democracy fails to deliver economically or politically, perhaps it is to be expected that some people will look for authoritarian solutions. And, for many economists, delegating economic policy to technocratic bodies in order to insulate them from the “folly of the masses” almost always is the preferred approach.
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Effective institutions of restraint do not emerge overnight; and it might seem like those in power would never want to create them. But if there is some likelihood that I will be voted out of office and that the opposition will take over, such institutions will protect me from others’ abuses tomorrow as much as they protect others from my abuses today. So strong prospects for sustained political competition are a key prerequisite for illiberal democracies to turn into liberal ones over time.
Optimists believe that new technologies and modes of governance will resolve all problems and send democracies centered on the nation-state the way of the horse-drawn carriage. Pessimists fear that today’s liberal democracies will be no match for the external challenges mounted by illiberal states like China and Russia, which are guided only by hardnosed realpolitik. Either way, if democracy is to have a future, it will need to be rethought.”
City 72 Toolkit
“An effective preparedness platform customizable to your city. City72 is an open-source emergency preparedness platform that promotes community resilience and connection. This Toolkit is designed specifically for emergency preparedness organizations and provides the information and resources to create a customized City72 site for any city or region. It includes: how to create localized content, access to the code to build and install your City72 website, and tips for how to manage and promote your site.”
The Behavioral Change Matrix – A Tool for Evidence-Based Policy Making
FehrAdvice (Switzerland):” Der im “Behavioral Economics Guide 2014″ erschienene Beitrag von FehrAdvice zur Behavioral Change Matrix steht Ihnen nun auch als Einzeldokument zum Download zur Verfügung”. Download (PDF, 487KB) (English)
In democracy and disaster, emerging world embraces 'open data'
Jeremy Wagstaff’ at Reuters: “Open data’ – the trove of data-sets made publicly available by governments, organizations and businesses – isn’t normally linked to high-wire politics, but just may have saved last month’s Indonesian presidential elections from chaos.
Data is considered open when it’s released for anyone to use and in a format that’s easy for computers to read. The uses are largely commercial, such as the GPS data from U.S.-owned satellites, but data can range from budget numbers and climate and health statistics to bus and rail timetables.
It’s a revolution that’s swept the developed world in recent years as governments and agencies like the World Bank have freed up hundreds of thousands of data-sets for use by anyone who sees a use for them. Data.gov, a U.S. site, lists more than 100,000 data-sets, from food calories to magnetic fields in space.
Consultants McKinsey reckon open data could add up to $3 trillion worth of economic activity a year – from performance ratings that help parents find the best schools to governments saving money by releasing budget data and asking citizens to come up with cost-cutting ideas. All the apps, services and equipment that tap the GPS satellites, for example, generate $96 billion of economic activity each year in the United States alone, according to a 2011 study.
But so far open data has had a limited impact in the developing world, where officials are wary of giving away too much information, and where there’s the issue of just how useful it might be: for most people in emerging countries, property prices and bus schedules aren’t top priorities.
But last month’s election in Indonesia – a contentious face-off between a disgraced general and a furniture-exporter turned reformist – highlighted how powerful open data can be in tandem with a handful of tech-smart programmers, social media savvy and crowdsourcing.
“Open data may well have saved this election,” said Paul Rowland, a Jakarta-based consultant on democracy and governance…”