Paper by Gabriela Manrique Rueda et al: “Science is essential for cities to understand and intervene on the increasing global risks. However, challenges in effectively utilizing scientific knowledge in decision-making processes limit cities’ abilities to address these risks. This scoping review examines the development of science for urban policy, exploring the contextual factors, organizational structures, and mechanisms that facilitate or hinder the integration of science and policy. It investigates the challenges faced and the outcomes achieved. The findings reveal that science has gained influence in United Nations (UN) policy discourses, leading to the expansion of international, regional, and national networks connecting science and policy. Boundary-spanning organizations and collaborative research initiatives with stakeholders have emerged, creating platforms for dialogue, knowledge sharing, and experimentation. However, cultural differences between the science and policy realms impede the effective utilization of scientific knowledge in decision-making. While efforts are being made to develop methods and tools for knowledge co-production, translation, and mobilization, more attention is needed to establish science-for-policy organizational structures and address power imbalances in research processes that give rise to ethical challenges…(More)”.
Reimagining Our High-Tech World
Essay by Mike Kubzansky: “…Channeling the power of technology for the good of society requires a shared vision of an ideal society. Despite the country’s increasing polarization, most Americans agree on the principles of a representative democracy and embrace the three quintessential rights inscribed in the Declaration of Independence—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Freedom and individual liberty, including freedom of speech, religion, and assembly and the right to privacy, are fundamental to most people’s expectations for this country, as are equality for all citizens, a just legal system, and a strong economy. Widespread consensus also exists around giving children a strong start in life; ensuring access to basic necessities like health care, food, and housing; and taking care of the planet.
By deliberately building a digital tech system guided by these values, society has an opportunity to advance its interests and future-proof the digital tech system for better outcomes.
Such collective action requires a broad conversation about what kind of society Americans want and how digital technology fits into that vision. To initiate this discussion, I suggest five questions philanthropists, technologists, entrepreneurs, policy makers, academics, advocates, movement leaders, students, consumers, investors, and everyone else who has a stake in the nation’s future need to start asking—now….(More)”.
To measure social impact, we could start by using the tools we already have
Article by Shamina Singh: “…To measure social impact, we could start by using the tools we already have.
In the environmental context, companies have adopted the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol, which tracks the full spectrum of a company’s carbon emissions. The first scope accounts for direct emissions from its operations, the second relates to indirect emissions from energy purchased by the company, and the third tracks indirect emissions from a company’s entire value chain.
At the Center for Inclusive Growth, we have been thinking about how to capture social impact in a similarly methodical way. Just as the environmental framework is tied to the level of control over the source of emissions, we could account for the level of control in social impact. I’ll offer up the following framework to show how our team is thinking about this challenge, so we can help spark a dialogue using the following as a conceptual starting point.
The first scope could cover each company’s approach toward its own employees, since companies have a direct influence on this stakeholder group through workplace investments, programs, and corporate culture. This category could assess pay equity, diversity within leadership ranks, talent development and career progression for underrepresented groups, labor standards, and more. Many companies already track these metrics.
Then, the second scope could look at how companies leverage their core competencies, deploy their products and services and work within their supply chains to help address societal challenges. Companies have skills, technologies, and capital that can create widespread social benefits, and many are already leading the way. The activity in this second category involves stakeholders at a level of control that is less direct than the first, such as customers and suppliers.
Finally, philanthropic giving, volunteering, and other community investments would comprise the third scope. This level of control is distinct from the second scope because company resources are entrusted to other entities that make decisions about how it’s spent. These efforts, while indirect, can strengthen a company’s brand and reputation, cultivate innovation and opportunity, and generate significant societal value.
From there, it’s about measuring the outputs of our investments in all three scopes. A system of accountability for follow-through is vital because when it comes to improving people’s lives, communities, and futures, outcomes matter-not just effort.
There is so much good work happening in the social impact space, but much more work to be done to measure it. To incentivize continued progress, we have to start quantifying the impact, even if the best way to do that looks different across companies or industries…(More)”
The Design of Digital Democracy
Book by Gianluca Sgueo: “Ever-stronger ties between technology, entertainment and design are transforming our relationship with democratic decision-making. When we are online, or when we use digital products and services, we tend to focus more on certain factors like speed of service and user-friendliness, and to overlook the costs – both for ourselves and others. As a result, a widening gap separates our expectations of everything related to digitalization – including government – and the actual practice of democratic governance. Democratic regulators, unable to meet citizens’ demands for tangible, fast and gratifying returns, are seeing the poorest results ever recorded in terms of interest, engagement and retention, despite using the most cutting-edge technologies.
This book explores various aspects of the relationship between democracy, technology and entertainment. These include, on the one hand, the role that digital technology has in strengthening our collective intelligence, nurturing empathic relations between citizens and democratic institutions, and supporting processes of political aggregation, deliberation and collaboration. On the other hand, they comprise the challenges accompanying digital technology for representation, transparency and inclusivity in democratic decision-making.
The book’s main argument is that digital democratic spaces should be redesigned to narrow the gap between the expectations and outcomes of democratic decision-making. It suggests abandoning the notion of digital participatory rights as being fast and easy to enjoy. It also refutes the notion that digital democratic decision-making can only be effective when it delivers rapid and successful responses to the issues of the day, regardless of their complexity.
Ultimately, the success or failure of digital democracy will depend on the ability of public regulators to design digital public spaces with a commitment to complexity, so as to make them appealing, but also effective at engaging citizens…(More)”.
The adoption of innovation in international development organisations
OECD Report: “Addressing 21st century development challenges requires investments in innovation, including the use of new approaches and technologies. Currently, many development organisations prioritise investments in isolated innovation pilots that leverage a specific approach or technology rather than pursuing a strategic approach to expand the organisation’s toolbox with innovations that have proven their comparative advantage over what is currently used. This Working Paper addresses this challenge of adopting innovations. How can development organisations institutionalise a new way of working, bringing what was once novel to the core of how business is done? Analysing successful adoption efforts across five DAC agencies, the paper lays out a proposed process for the adoption of innovations. The paper features five case-studies and concludes with a set of lessons and recommendations for policy makers on innovation management generally, and adoption of innovation in particular…(More)”.
No app, no entry: How the digital world is failing the non tech-savvy
Article by Andrew Anthony: “Whatever the word is for the opposite of heartwarming, it certainly applies to the story of Ruth and Peter Jaffe. The elderly couple from Ealing, west London, made headlines last week after being charged £110 by Ryanair for printing out their tickets at Stansted airport.
Even allowing for the exorbitant cost of inkjet printer ink, 55 quid for each sheet of paper is a shockingly creative example of punitive pricing.
The Jaffes, aged 79 and 80, said they had become confused on the Ryanair website and accidentally printed out their return tickets instead of their outbound ones to Bergerac. It was the kind of error anyone could make, although octogenarians, many of whom struggle with the tech demands of digitalisation, are far more likely to make it.
But as the company explained in a characteristically charmless justification of the charge: “We regret that these passengers ignored their email reminder and failed to check-in online.”…
The shiny, bright future of full computerisation looks very much like a dystopia to someone who either doesn’t understand it or have the means to access it. And almost by definition, the people who can’t access the digitalised world are seldom visible, because absence is not easy to see. What is apparent is that improved efficiency doesn’t necessarily lead to greater wellbeing.
From a technological and economic perspective, the case for removing railway station ticket offices is hard to refute. A public consultation process is under way by train operators who present the proposed closures as means of bringing “station staff closer to customers”.
The RMT union, by contrast, believes it’s a means of bringing the staff closer to unemployment and has mounted a campaign heralding the good work done by ticket offices across the network. Whatever the truth, human interaction is in danger of being undervalued in the digital landscape…(More)”.
Tools of digital innovation in public affairs management: A practice-oriented analysis
Paper by Alberto Bitonti: “While the literature on digital transformation is growing in several fields, research on the effects of digital innovation in the practice of public affairs is still scattered and unsystematic, mostly focusing on interest groups’ social media strategies. However, digital innovation has begun to change the practice of public affairs management in many areas, especially in the form of datafication, AI analytics, and cloud-based knowledge management platforms. Growing possibilities in the use of data science and evidence-informed strategic decision-making have arisen in domains traditionally shaped by intuitions and non-codified professional experience. Based on desk research of case studies and hands-on analyses of three increasingly popular public affairs management software platforms (FiscalNote, Quorum, KMIND), this article develops a practice-oriented analysis of various digital tools and functionalities available to public affairs practitioners today, tackling a gap in the literature on how digital innovation can impact the management of several activities along the different phases of a public affairs campaign (monitoring and analysis, strategy design, action, assessment). The article thus highlights how digital innovation goes way beyond the sheer use of social media in communication activities, impacting the practice of public affairs on a deeper and more strategic level…(More)”.
Experimentation spaces for regulatory learning
Staff Working Document by the European Commission: “..one of the actions of the New European Innovation Agenda sets out available experimentation tools (especially regulatory sandboxes, but also testbeds and living labs) and showcases existing examples from Europe and beyond on how the European Union and national governments can support and engage innovators in the regulatory process.
Experimentation is a key-component of innovation. European innovators are facing new challenges, also in terms of different or limited experimentation spaces and related regulations.
The Staff Working Document presents a general overview on these experimentation spaces and includes a special focus on the energy sector, in line with the RePowerEU Communication.
The New European Innovation Agenda, adopted on 5 July 2022, aims to position Europe at the forefront of the new wave of deep tech innovation and start-ups. It will help Europe to develop new technologies to address the most pressing societal challenges, and to bring them on the market. Europe wants to be the place where the best talent work hand in hand with the best companies and where deep tech innovation thrives and creates breakthrough innovative solutions across the continent.
One of the five flagships of the New European Innovation Agenda refers to “enabling deep tech innovation through experimentation spaces and public procurement. It includes this guidance document on experimentation spaces as one of the main deliverables, together with a revised state aid framework for Research and Development, experimentation facilities for AI innovation and the setting-up of an “Innovation Friendly Regulations Advisory Group” working on virtual worlds.
Regulatory sandboxes are schemes that enable testing innovations in a controlled real world environment, that may include temporary loosening of applicable rules while safeguarding regulatory objectives such as safety and consumer protection.
Test beds are experimentation spaces with a technological focus that do not necessarily have a regulatory component.
Living labs are based on co-creation and on the experience and involvement of users and citizens…(More)”.
Tyranny of the Minority
Book by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt: “America is undergoing a massive experiment: It is moving, in fits and starts, toward a multiracial democracy, something few societies have ever done. But the prospect of change has sparked an authoritarian backlash that threatens the very foundations of our political system. Why is democracy under assault here, and not in other wealthy, diversifying nations? And what can we do to save it?
With the clarity and brilliance that made their first book, How Democracies Die, a global bestseller, Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt offer a coherent framework for understanding these volatile times. They draw on a wealth of examples—from 1930s France to present-day Thailand—to explain why and how political parties turn against democracy. They then show how our Constitution makes us uniquely vulnerable to attacks from within: It is a pernicious enabler of minority rule, allowing partisan minorities to consistently thwart and even rule over popular majorities. Most modern democracies—from Germany and Sweden to Argentina and New Zealand—have eliminated outdated institutions like elite upper chambers, indirect elections, and lifetime tenure for judges. The United States lags dangerously behind.
In this revelatory book, Levitsky and Ziblatt issue an urgent call to reform our politics. It’s a daunting task, but we have remade our country before—most notably, after the Civil War and during the Progressive Era. And now we are at a crossroads: America will either become a multiracial democracy or cease to be a democracy at all…(More)”.
Should Computers Decide How Much Things Cost?
Article by Colin Horgan: “In the summer of 2012, the Wall Street Journal reported that the travel booking website Orbitz had, in some cases, been suggesting to Apple users hotel rooms that cost more per night than those it was showing to Windows users. The company found that people who used Mac computers spent as much as 30 percent more a night on hotels. It was one of the first high-profile instances where the predictive capabilities of algorithms were shown to impact consumer-facing prices.
Since then, the pool of data available to corporations about each of us (the information we’ve either volunteered or that can be inferred from our web browsing and buying histories) has expanded significantly, helping companies build ever more precise purchaser profiles. Personalized pricing is now widespread, even if many consumers are only just realizing what it is. Recently, other algorithm-driven pricing models, like Uber’s surge or Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing for concerts, have surprised users and fans. In the past few months, dynamic pricing—which is based on factors such as quantity—has pushed up prices of some concert tickets even before they hit the resale market, including for artists like Drake and Taylor Swift. And while personalized pricing is slightly different, these examples of computer-driven pricing have spawned headlines and social media posts that reflect a growing frustration with data’s role in how prices are dictated.
The marketplace is said to be a realm of assumed fairness, dictated by the rules of competition, an objective environment where one consumer is the same as any other. But this idea is being undermined by the same opaque and confusing programmatic data profiling that’s slowly encroaching on other parts of our lives—the algorithms. The Canadian government is currently considering new consumer-protection regulations, including what to do to control algorithm-based pricing. While strict market regulation is considered by some to be a political risk, another solution may exist—not at the point of sale but at the point where our data is gathered in the first place.
In theory, pricing algorithms aren’t necessarily bad…(More)”.