New paper by Ines Mergel in Social Science Computer Review: “Open government initiatives in the U.S. government focus on three main aspects: transparency, participation, and collaboration. Especially the collaboration mandate is relatively unexplored in the literature. In practice, government organizations recognize the need to include external problem solvers into their internal innovation creation processes. This is partly derived from a sense of urgency to improve the efficiency and quality of government service delivery. Another formal driver is the America Competes Act that instructs agencies to search for opportunities to meaningfully promote excellence in technology, education, and science. Government agencies are responding to these requirements by using open innovation (OI) approaches to invite citizens to crowdsource and peer produce solutions to public management problems. These distributed innovation processes occur at all levels of the U.S. government and it is important to understand what design elements are used to create innovative public management ideas. This article systematically reviews existing government crowdsourcing and peer production initiatives and shows that after agencies have defined their public management problem, they go through four different phases of the OI process: (1) idea generation through crowdsourcing, (2) incubation of submitted ideas with peer voting and collaborative improvements of favorite solutions, (3) validation with a proof of concept of implementation possibilities, and (4) reveal of the selected solution and the (internal) implementation of the winning idea. Participation and engagement are incentivized both with monetary and nonmonetary rewards, which lead to tangible solutions as well as intangible innovation outcomes, such as increased public awareness.”
Designing a Citizen Science and Crowdsourcing Toolkit for the Federal Government
In the 2013 Second Open Government National Action Plan, President Obama called on Federal agencies to harness the ingenuity of the public by accelerating and scaling the use of open innovation methods, such as citizen science and crowdsourcing, to help address a wide range of scientific and societal problems.
Citizen science is a form of open collaboration in which members of the public participate in the scientific process, including identifying research questions, collecting and analyzing data, interpreting results, and solving problems. Crowdsourcing is a process in which individuals or organizations submit an open call for voluntary contributions from a large group of unknown individuals (“the crowd”) or, in some cases, a bounded group of trusted individuals or experts.
Citizen science and crowdsourcing are powerful tools that can help Federal agencies:
- Advance and accelerate scientific research through group discovery and co-creation of knowledge. For instance, engaging the public in data collection can provide information at resolutions that would be difficult for Federal agencies to obtain due to time, geographic, or resource constraints.
- Increase science literacy and provide students with skills needed to excel in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Volunteers in citizen science or crowdsourcing projects gain hands-on experience doing real science, and take that learning outside of the classroom setting.
- Improve delivery of government services with significantly lower resource investments.
- Connect citizens to the missions of Federal agencies by promoting a spirit of open government and volunteerism.
To enable effective and appropriate use of these new approaches, the Open Government National Action Plan specifically commits the Federal government to “convene an interagency group to develop an Open Innovation Toolkit for Federal agencies that will include best practices, training, policies, and guidance on authorities related to open innovation, including approaches such as incentive prizes, crowdsourcing, and citizen science.”
On November 21, 2014, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) kicked off development of the Toolkit with a human-centered design workshop. Human-centered design is a multi-stage process that requires product designers to engage with different stakeholders in creating, iteratively testing, and refining their product designs. The workshop was planned and executed in partnership with the Office of Personnel Management’s human-centered design practice known as “The Lab” and the Federal Community of Practice on Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science (FCPCCS), a growing network of more than 100 employees from more than 20 Federal agencies….
The Toolkit will help further the culture of innovation, learning, sharing, and doing in the Federal citizen science and crowdsourcing community: indeed, the development of the Toolkit is a collaborative and community-building activity in and of itself.
The following successful Federal projects illustrate the variety of possible citizen science and crowdsourcing applications:
- The Citizen Archivist Dashboard (NARA) coordinates crowdsourced archival record tagging and document transcription. Recently, more than 170,000 volunteers indexed 132 million names of the 1940 Census in only five months, which NARA could not have done alone.
- Through Measuring Broadband America (FCC), 2 million volunteers collected and provided the FCC with data on their Internet speeds, data that FCC used to create a National Broadband Map revealing digital divides.
- In 2014, Nature’s Notebook (USGS, NSF) volunteers recorded more than 1 million observations on plants and animals that scientists use to analyze environmental change.
- Did You Feel It? (USGS) has enabled more than 3 million people worldwide to share their experiences during and immediately after earthquakes. This information facilitates rapid damage assessments and scientific research, particularly in areas without dense sensor networks.
- The mPING (NOAA) mobile app has collected more than 600,000 ground-based observations that help verify weather models.
- USAID anonymized and opened its loan guarantee data to volunteer mappers. Volunteers mapped 10,000 data points in only 16 hours, compared to the 60 hours officials expected.
- The Air Sensor Toolbox (EPA), together with training workshops, scientific partners, technology evaluations, and a scientific instrumentation loan program, empowers communities to monitor and report local air pollution.
In early 2015, OSTP, in partnership with the Challenges and Prizes Community of Practice, will convene Federal practitioners to develop the other half of the Open Innovation Toolkit for prizes and challenges. Stay tuned!”
Look to Government—Yes, Government—for New Social Innovations
Paper by Christian Bason and Philip Colligan: “If asked to identify the hotbed of social innovation right now, many people would likely point to the new philanthropy of Silicon Valley or the social entrepreneurship efforts supported by Ashoka, Echoing Green, and Skoll Foundation. Very few people, if any, would mention their state capital or Capitol Hill. While local and national governments may have promulgated some of the greatest advances in human history — from public education to putting a man on the moon — public bureaucracies are more commonly known to stifle innovation.
Yet, around the world, there are local, regional, and national government innovators who are challenging this paradigm. They are pioneering a new form of experimental government — bringing new knowledge and practices to the craft of governing and policy making; drawing on human-centered design, user engagement, open innovation, and cross-sector collaboration; and using data, evidence, and insights in new ways.
Earlier this year, Nesta, the UK’s innovation foundation (which Philip helps run), teamed up with Bloomberg Philanthropies to publish i-teams, the first global review of public innovation teams set up by national and city governments. The study profiled 20 of the most established i-teams from around the world, including:
- French Experimental Fund for Youth, which has supported more than 554 experimental projects (such as one that reduces school drop-out rates) that have benefited over 480,000 young people;
- Nesta’s Innovation Lab, which has run 70 open innovation challenges and programs supporting over 750 innovators working in fields as diverse as energy efficiency, healthcare, and digital education;
- New Orleans’ Innovation and Delivery team, which achieved a 19% reduction in the number of murders in the city in 2013 compared to the previous year.
How are i-teams achieving these results? The most effective ones are explicit about the goal they seek – be it creating a solution to a specific policy challenge, engaging citizenry in behaviors that help the commonweal, or transforming the way government behaves. Importantly, these teams are also able to deploy the right skills, capabilities, and methods for the job.
In addition, i-teams have a strong bias toward action. They apply academic research in behavioral economics and psychology to public policy and services, focusing on rapid experimentation and iteration. The approach stands in stark contrast to the normal routines of government.
Take for example, The UK’s Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), often called the Nudge Unit. It sets clear goals, engages the right expertise to prototype means to the end, and tests innovations rapidly in the field, to learn what’s not working and rapidly scales what is.
One of BIT’s most famous projects changed taxpayer behavior. BIT’s team of economists, behavioral psychologists, and seasoned government staffers came up with minor changes to tax letters, sent out by the UK Government, that subtlety introduced positive peer pressure. By simply altering the letters to say that most people in their local area had already paid their taxes, BIT was able to boost repayment rates by around 5%. This trial was part of a range of interventions, which have helped forward over £200 million in additional tax revenue to HM Revenue & Customs, the UK’s tax authority.
The Danish government’s internal i-team, MindLab (which Christian ran for 8 years) has likewise influenced citizen behavior….”
New Frontiers in Open Innovation
New book edited by Henry Chesbrough, Wim Vanhaverbeke, and Joel West: “Companies have to innovate to stay competitive, and they have to collaborate with other organizations to innovate effectively. Although the benefits of “open innovation” have been described in detail before, underlying mechanisms how companies can be successful open innovators have not be understood well. A growing community of innovation management researchers started to develop different frameworks to understand open innovation in a more systematic way.
This book provides a thorough examination of research conducted to date on open innovation, as well as a comprehensive overview of what will be the most important, most promising and most relevant research topics in this area during the next decade. Open Innovation: Researching a new paradigm (OUP 2006) was the first initiative to bring open innovation closer to the academic community. Open innovation research has since then been growing in an exponential way and research has evolved in different and unexpected directions. As the research field is growing, it becomes increasingly difficult for young (and even experienced scholars) to keep an overview of the most important trends in open innovation research, of the research topics that are most promising for the coming years, and of the most interesting management challenges that are emerging in organizations practicing open innovation.
In the spirit of an open approach to innovation, the editors have engaged other scholars and practitioners to contribute some of their interesting insights in this book.”
Announcing New U.S. Open Government Commitments on the Third Anniversary of the Open Government Partnership
US White House Fact Sheet: “Three years ago, President Obama joined with the leaders of seven other nations to launch the Open Government Partnership (OGP), an international partnership between governments and civil society to promote transparency, fight corruption, energize civic engagement, and leverage new technologies to open up governments worldwide. The United States and other founding countries pledged to transform the way that governments serve their citizens in the 21st century. Today, as heads of state of OGP participating countries gather at the UN General Assembly, this partnership has grown from 8 to 65 nations and hundreds of civil society organizations around the world. These countries are embracing the challenge by taking steps in partnership with civil society to increase the ability of citizens to engage their governments, access government data to fuel entrepreneurship and innovation, and promote accountability….
The United States is committed to continuing to lead by example in OGP. Since assuming office, President Obama has prioritized making government more open and accountable and has taken substantial steps to increase citizen participation, collaboration with civil society, and transparency in government. The United States will remain a global leader of international efforts to promote transparency, stem corruption and hold to account those who exploit the public’s trust for private gain. Yesterday, President Obama announced several steps the United States is taking to deepen our support for civil society globally.
Today, to mark the third anniversary of OGP, President Obama is announcing four new and expanded open government initiatives that will advance our efforts through the end of 2015.
1. Promote Open Education to Increase Awareness and Engagement
Open education is the open sharing of digital learning materials, tools, and practices that ensures free access to and legal adoption of learning resources. The United States is committed to open education and will:
- Raise open education awareness and identify new partnerships. The U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy will jointly host a workshop on challenges and opportunities in open education internationally with stakeholders from academia, industry, and government.
- Pilot new models for using open educational resources to support learning. The State Department will conduct three pilots overseas by December 2015 that use open educational resources to support learning in formal and informal learning contexts. The pilots’ results, including best practices, will be made publicly available for interested educators.
- Launch an online skills academy. The Department of Labor (DOL), with cooperation from the Department of Education, will award $25 million through competitive grants to launch an online skills academy in 2015 that will offer open online courses of study, using technology to create high-quality, free, or low-cost pathways to degrees, certificates, and other employer-recognized credentials.
2. Deliver Government Services More Effectively Through Information Technology
The Administration is committed to serving the American people more effectively and efficiently through smarter IT delivery. The newly launched U.S. Digital Service will work to remove barriers to digital service delivery and remake the experience that people and businesses have with their government. To improve delivery of Federal services, information, and benefits, the Administration will:
- Expand digital service delivery expertise in government. Throughout 2015, the Administration will continue recruiting top digital talent from the private and public sectors to expand services across the government. These individuals —who have expertise in technology, procurement, human resources, and financing —will serve as digital professionals in a number of capacities in the Federal government, including the new U.S. Digital Service and 18F digital delivery team within the U.S. General Services Administration, as well as within Federal agencies. These teams will take best practices from the public and private sectors and scale them across agencies with a focus on the customer experience.
- Build digital services in the open. The Administration will expand its efforts to build digital services in the open. This includes using open and transparent processes intended to better understand user needs, testing pilot digital projects, and designing and developing digital services at scale. In addition, building on the recently published Digital Services Playbook, the Administration will continue to openly publish best practices on collaborative websites that enable the public to suggest improvements.
- Adopt an open source software policy. Using and contributing back to open source software can fuel innovation, lower costs, and benefit the public. No later than December 31, 2015, the Administration will work through the Federal agencies to develop an open source software policy that, together with the Digital Services Playbook, will support improved access to custom software code developed for the Federal government.
3. Increase Transparency in Spending
The Administration has made an increasing amount of Federal spending data publicly available and searchable, allowing nationwide stakeholders to perform analysis of Federal spending. The Administration will build on these efforts by committing to:
- Improve USAspending.gov. In 2015, the Administration will launch a refreshed USAspending.gov website that will improve the site’s design and user experience, including better enabling users to explore the data using interactive maps and improving the search functionality and application programming interface.
- Improve accessibility and reusability of Federal financial data. In 2015, as part of implementation of the DATA Act,[2] the Administration will work to improve the accessibility and reusability of Federal financial data by issuing data element definition standards and standards for exchanging financial data. The Administration, through the Office of Management and Budget, will leverage industry data exchange standards to the extent practicable to maximize the sharing and utilization of Federal financial data.
- Explore options for visualization and publication of additional Federal financial data. The Administration, through the Treasury Department, will use small-scale pilots to help explore options for visualizing and publishing Federal financial data from across the government as required by the DATA Act.
- Continue to engage stakeholders. The Administration will continue to engage with a broad group of stakeholders to seek input on Federal financial transparency initiatives including DATA Act implementation, by hosting town hall meetings, conducting interactive workshops, and seeking input via open innovation collaboration tools.
4. Use Big Data to Support Greater Openness and Accountability
President Obama has recognized the growing importance of “big data” technologies for our economy and the advancement of public good in areas such as education, energy conservation, and healthcare. The Administration is taking action to ensure responsible uses of big data to promote greater openness and accountability across a range of areas and sectors. As part of the work it is doing in this area, the Administration has committed to:
- Enhance sharing of best practices on data privacy for state and local law enforcement. Federal agencies with expertise in law enforcement, privacy, and data practices will seek to enhance collaboration and information sharing about privacy best practices among state and local law enforcement agencies receiving Federal grants.
- Ensure privacy protection for big data analyses in health. Big data introduces new opportunities to advance medicine and science, improve health care, and support better public health. To ensure that individual privacy is protected while capitalizing on new technologies and data, the Administration, led by the Department of Health and Human Services, will: (1) consult with stakeholders to assess how Federal laws and regulations can best accommodate big data analyses that promise to advance medical science and reduce health care costs; and (2) develop recommendations for ways to promote and facilitate research through access to data while safeguarding patient privacy and autonomy.
- Expand technical expertise in government to stop discrimination. U.S. Government departments and agencies will work to expand their technical expertise to identify outcomes facilitated by big data analytics that may have a discriminatory impact on protected classes. …”
Journey tracking app will use cyclist data to make cities safer for bikes
Springwise: “Most cities were never designed to cater for the huge numbers of bikes seen on their roads every day, and as the number of cyclists grows, so do the fatality statistics thanks to limited investment in safe cycle paths. While Berlin already crowdsources bikers’ favorite cycle routes and maps them through the Dynamic Connections platform, a new app called WeCycle lets cyclists track their journeys, pooling their data to create heat maps for city planners.
Created by the UK’s TravelAI transport startup, WeCycle taps into the current consumer trend for quantifying every aspect of life, including journey times. By downloading the free iOS app, London cyclists can seamlessly create stats each time they get on their bike. They app runs in the background and uses the device’s accelerometer to smartly distinguish walking or running from cycling. They can then see how far they’ve traveled, how fast they cycle and every route they’ve taken. Additionally, the app also tracks bus and car travel.
Anyone that downloads the app agrees that their data can be anonymously sent to TravelAI, creating an accurate and real-time information resource. It aims to create tools such as heat maps and behavior monitoring for cities and local authorities to learn more about how citizens are using roads to better inform their transport policies.
WeCycle follows in the footsteps of similar apps such as Germany’s Radwende and the Toronto Cycling App — both released this year — in taking a popular trend and turning into data that could help make cities a safer place to cycle….Website: www.travelai.info“
Business Models for Open Innovation: Matching Heterogenous Open Innovation Strategies with Business Model Dimensions
New paper by Saebi, Tina and Foss, Nicolai, available at SSRN: “Research on open innovation suggests that companies benefit differentially from adopting open innovation strategies; however, it is unclear why this is so. One possible explanation is that companies’ business models are not attuned to open strategies. Accordingly, we propose a contingency model of open business models by systematically linking open innovation strategies to core business model dimensions, notably the content, structure, governance of transactions. We further illustrate a continuum of open innovativeness, differentiating between four types of open business models. We contribute to the open innovation literature by specifying the conditions under which business models are conducive to the success of open innovation strategies.”
The city as living labortory: A playground for the innovative development of smart city applications
Paper by Veeckman, Carina and van der Graaf, Shenja: “Nowadays the smart-city concept is shifting from a top-down, mere technological approach towards bottom-up processes that are based on the participation of creative citizens, research organisations and companies. Here, the city acts as an urban innovation ecosystem in which smart applications, open government data and new modes of participation are fostering innovation in the city. However, detailed analyses on how to manage smart city initiatives as well as descriptions of underlying challenges and barriers seem still scarce. Therefore, this paper investigates four, collaborative smart city initiatives in Europe to learn how cities can optimize the citizen’s involvement in the context of open innovation. The analytical framework focuses on the innovation ecosystem and the civic capacities to engage in the public domain. Findings show that public service delivery can be co-designed between the city and citizens, if different toolkits aligned with the specific capacities and skills of the users are provided. By providing the right tools, even ordinary citizens can take a much more active role in the evolution of their cities and generate solutions from which both the city and everyday urban life can possibly benefit.”
App enables citizens to report water waste in drought regions
Springwise: “Rallying citizens to take a part in looking after the community they live in has become easier thanks to smartphones. In the past, the Creek Watch app has enabled anyone to help monitor their local water quality by sending data back to the state water board. Now Everydrop LA wants to use similar techniques to avoid drought in California, encouraging residents to report incidents of water wastage.
According to the team behind the app — which also created the CitySourced platform for engaging users in civic issues — even the smallest amount of water wastage can lead to meaningful losses over time. A faucet that drips just once a minute will lose over 2000 gallons of drinkable water each year. Using the Everydrop LA, citizens can report the location of leaking faucets and fire hydrants as well as occurrences of blatant water wastage. They can also see how much water is being wasted in their local area and learn about what they can do to cut their own water usage. In times when drought is a risk, the app notifies users to conserve. Cities and counties can use the data in their reports and learn more about how water wastage is affecting their jurisdiction.”
Chief Executive of Nesta on the Future of Government Innovation
Interview between Rahim Kanani and Geoff Mulgan, CEO of NESTA and member of the MacArthur Research Network on Opening Governance: “Our aspiration is to become a global center of expertise on all kinds of innovation, from how to back creative business start-ups and how to shape innovations tools such as challenge prizes, to helping governments act as catalysts for new solutions,” explained Geoff Mulgan, chief executive of Nesta, the UK’s innovation foundation. In an interview with Mulgan, we discussed their new report, published in partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies, which highlights 20 of the world’s top innovation teams in government. Mulgan and I also discussed the founding and evolution of Nesta over the past few years, and leadership lessons from his time inside and outside government.
Rahim Kanani: When we talk about ‘innovations in government’, isn’t that an oxymoron?
Geoff Mulgan: Governments have always innovated. The Internet and World Wide Web both originated in public organizations, and governments are constantly developing new ideas, from public health systems to carbon trading schemes, online tax filing to high speed rail networks. But they’re much less systematic at innovation than the best in business and science. There are very few job roles, especially at senior levels, few budgets, and few teams or units. So although there are plenty of creative individuals in the public sector, they succeed despite, not because of the systems around them. Risk-taking is punished not rewarded. Over the last century, by contrast, the best businesses have learned how to run R&D departments, product development teams, open innovation processes and reasonably sophisticated ways of tracking investments and returns.
Kanani: This new report, published in partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies, highlights 20 of the world’s most effective innovation teams in government working to address a range of issues, from reducing murder rates to promoting economic growth. Before I get to the results, how did this project come about, and why is it so important?
Mulgan: If you fail to generate new ideas, test them and scale the ones that work, it’s inevitable that productivity will stagnate and governments will fail to keep up with public expectations, particularly when waves of new technology—from smart phones and the cloud to big data—are opening up dramatic new possibilities. Mayor Bloomberg has been a leading advocate for innovation in the public sector, and in New York he showed the virtues of energetic experiment, combined with rigorous measurement of results. In the UK, organizations like Nesta have approached innovation in a very similar way, so it seemed timely to collaborate on a study of the state of the field, particularly since we were regularly being approached by governments wanting to set up new teams and asking for guidance.
Kanani: Where are some of the most effective innovation teams working on these issues, and how did you find them?
Mulgan: In our own work at Nesta, we’ve regularly sought out the best innovation teams that we could learn from and this study made it possible to do that more systematically, focusing in particular on the teams within national and city governments. They vary greatly, but all the best ones are achieving impact with relatively slim resources. Some are based in central governments, like Mindlab in Denmark, which has pioneered the use of design methods to reshape government services, from small business licensing to welfare. SITRA in Finland has been going for decades as a public technology agency, and more recently has switched its attention to innovation in public services. For example, providing mobile tools to help patients manage their own healthcare. In the city of Seoul, the Mayor set up an innovation team to accelerate the adoption of ‘sharing’ tools, so that people could share things like cars, freeing money for other things. In south Australia the government set up an innovation agency that has been pioneering radical ways of helping troubled families, mobilizing families to help other families.
Kanani: What surprised you the most about the outcomes of this research?
Mulgan: Perhaps the biggest surprise has been the speed with which this idea is spreading. Since we started the research, we’ve come across new teams being created in dozens of countries, from Canada and New Zealand to Cambodia and Chile. China has set up a mobile technology lab for city governments. Mexico City and many others have set up labs focused on creative uses of open data. A batch of cities across the US supported by Bloomberg Philanthropy—from Memphis and New Orleans to Boston and Philadelphia—are now showing impressive results and persuading others to copy them.