Citizen Needs – To Be Considered

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Franzisca Maas, Sara Wolf, Anna Hohm and Jörn Hurtienne outlining “Requirements for Local Civic Participation Tools. In this paper, we argue for and present an empirical study of putting citizens into focus during the early stages of designing tools for civic participation in a mid-sized German town. Drawing on Contextual and Participatory Design, we involved 105 participants by conducting interviews, using Photovoice and participating in a local neighbourhood meeting.

Together with citizens, we built an Affinity Diagram, consolidated the data and identified key insights. As a result, we present and discuss different participation identities such as Motivated Activists, Convenience Participants or Companions and a collection of citizen needs for local civic participation, e. g., personal contact is irreplaceable for motivation, trust and mutual understanding, and some citizens preferred to “stumble across” information rather than actively searching for it. We use existing participation tools to demonstrate how individual needs could be addressed. Finally, we apply our insights to an example in our local context. We conclude that if we want to build digital tools that go beyond tokenistic, top-down ways of civic participation and that treat citizens as one homogeneous group, citizens need to be part of the design process right from the start. Supplemental material can be retrieved from https://osf.io/rxd7h/….(More)”

Afyanet

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

About: “Afyanet is a voluntary, non-profit network of National Health Institutes and Research Centers seeking to leverage crowdsourced health data for disease surveillance and forecasting. Participation in AfyaNet for countries is free.

We aim to use technology and digital solutions to radically enhance how traditional disease surveillance systems function and the ways we can model epidemics.

Our vision is to create a common framework to collect standardized real-time data from the general population, allowing countries to leapfrog existing hurdles in disease surveillance and information sharing.

Our solution is an Early Warning System for Health based on participatory data gathering. A common, real-time framework for disease collection will help countries identify and forecast outbreaks faster and more effectively.

Crowdsourced data is gathered directly from citizens, then aggregated, anonymized, and processed in a cloud-based data lake. Our high-performance computing architecture analyzes the data and creates valuable disease spread models, which in turn provide alerts and notifications to participating countries and helps public health authorities make evidence-based decisions….(More)”

Participatory data stewardship

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the Ada Lovelace Institute: “Well-managed data can support organisations, researchers, governments and corporations to conduct lifesaving health research, reduce environmental harms and produce societal value for individuals and communities. But these benefits are often overshadowed by harms, as current practices in data collection, storage, sharing and use have led to high-profile misuses of personal data, data breaches and sharing scandals.

These range from the backlash to Care.Data, to the response to Cambridge Analytica and Facebook’s collection and use of data for political advertising. These cumulative scandals have resulted in ‘tenuous’ public trust in data sharing, which entrenches public concern about data and impedes its use in the public interest. To reverse this trend, what is needed is increased legitimacy, and increased trustworthiness, of data and AI use.

This report proposes a ‘framework for participatory data stewardship’, which rejects practices of data collection, storage, sharing and use in ways that are opaque or seek to manipulate people, in favour of practices that empower people to help inform, shape and – in some instances – govern their own data.

As a critical component of good data governance, it proposes data stewardship as the responsible use, collection and management of data in a participatory and rights-preserving way, informed by values and engaging with questions of fairness.

Drawing extensively from Sherry Arnstein’s ‘ladder of citizen participation’ and its more recent adaptation into a spectrum, this new framework is based on an analysis of over 100 case studies of different methods of participatory data stewardship. It demonstrates ways that people can gain increasing levels of control and agency over their data – from being informed about what is happening to data about themselves, through to being empowered to take responsibility for exercising and actively managing decisions about data governance….(More)”.

Public engagement and net zero

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Tom Sasse, Jill Rutter, and Sarah Allan: “The government must do more to involve the public in designing policies to help the UK transition to a zero-carbon economy.

This report, published in partnership with Involve, sets out recommendations for when and how policy makers should engage with citizens and residents – such as on designing taxes and subsidies to support the replacement of gas boilers or encouraging changes in diet – to deliver net zero.

But it warns there is limited government capability and expertise on public engagement and little co-ordination of activities across government. In many departments, engaging the public is not prioritised as a part of policy making.

Climate Assembly UK, organised in 2020 by parliament (not government), involved over a hundred members of the public, informed by experts, deliberating over the choices involved in the UK meeting its net zero target. But the government has not built on its success. It has yet to commit to making public engagement part of its net zero strategy, nor set out a clear plan for how it might go about it.

The report recommends that:

  • departments invest in strengthening the public engagement expertise needed to plan and commission exercises effectively
  • either the Cabinet Office or the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) take increased responsibility for co-ordinating net zero public engagement across government
  • the government use its net zero strategy, due in the autumn of this year, to set out how it intends to use public engagement to inform the design of net zero policies
  • the independent Climate Change Committee should play a greater role in advising government on what public engagement to commission….(More)”.

Citizen science—discovering (new) solutions to wicked problems

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Ian R. Hodgkinson, Sahar Mousavi & Paul Hughes: “The article explores the role citizen science can play in discovering new solutions to pressing wicked problems. Using illustrations of citizen science projects to show how and where citizens have been fundamental in creating solutions and driving change, the article calls for wider recognition and use of citizen science in public administration and management research. For wider utilization of citizens’ active co-participation in research design, delivery and dissemination, the article presents a set of citizen science pathways….(More)”.

Kansas City expands civic engagement with data stories, virtual ‘lunch-and-learns’

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Ryan Johnston at Statescoop: “…The city is currently running a series of virtual “lunch-and-learns,” as well as publishing data-driven “stories” using Socrata software to improve civic engagement, said Kate Bender, a senior management analyst in the city’s data division.

The work is especially important in reaching residents that aren’t equipped with digital literacy or data analysis skills, Bender said. The free lunch-and-learns — managed under the new Office of Citizen Engagement — teaches residents how to use digital tools like the city’s open data portal and 311 mobile app.

New data stories, meanwhile, published on the city’s open data portal, allow residents to see the context behind raw data around COVID-19, 311 requests or city hiring practices that they might not otherwise be able to parse themselves. They’re both part of an effort to reach residents that aren’t already plugged in to the city’s digital channels, Bender said.

“Knowing that we have more digital options and we have good engagement, how can we open up residents’ exposure to other things, and specifically tools, that we make available, that we put on our website or that we tweet about?” Bender said. “Unless you’re already pretty engaged, you might not know or think to download the city’s 311 app, or you might have heard of open data, but not really know how it pertains to you. So that was our concept.”

Bender’s office, DataKC, has “always been pretty closely aligned in working with 311 and advising on citizen engagement,” Bender said. But when COVID-19 hit and people could no longer gather in-person for citizen engagement events, like the city’s “Community Engagement University,” a free, 8-week, in-person program that taught residents about how various city agencies work, Bender and her team decided to take the education component virtual….(More)”.

If Humans Evolved to Cooperate, Why Is Cooperation So Hard?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Interview by Jill Suttie: “Humans have a long history of cooperating together, which has helped us survive and thrive for hundreds of thousands of years in places around the world. But we don’t always cooperate well, even when doing so could help us overcome a worldwide pandemic or solve our climate crisis. The question is why?

In Nichola Raihani’s new book, The Social Instinct: How Cooperation Shaped the World, we find some answers to this question. Raihani, a professor of evolution and behavior at University College London, provides an in-depth treatise on how cooperation evolved, noting its benefits as well as its downsides in human and non-human social groups. By taking a deeper dive into what it means to cooperate, she hopes to illuminate how cooperation can help us solve collective problems, while encouraging some humility in us along the way.

Greater Good spoke to Raihani about her book. Below is an edited version of our conversation….

JS: Are you optimistic about us being able to cooperate to solve big world problems?

NR: I feel we definitely can; it’s not out of the realm of possibility. But having watched how the response to the pandemic has played out so far emphasizes that it won’t be easy.

If you think about it, there are many features of the pandemic that should make it way easier to effectively cooperate. There’s no ambiguity about it being an active disease; most people would like to avoid catching it. The economic incentives to tackle it are aligned with mitigation strategies, so if we managed to solve the pandemic crisis, the economy would recover. And the pandemic isn’t some future generation’s problem; it’s all of our problem, here and now. So, compared to the climate crisis, a pandemic should be much easier to focus people’s minds on and get them to organize around collective solutions.
 
And yet our response to the pandemic so far has been rather parochial and piecemeal. Think about the way vaccines have been distributed around the world. We are really interdependent, and we’re not going to get out of the pandemic until we’re all out of the pandemic. But this doesn’t seem to be the thinking of various governments around the world.
 
So, when you think about climate change, even though it’s increasingly a here-and-now issue, it’s still something we don’t treat as a collective problem. The economic costs of climate action are perceived by many to be greater than the costs of organizing collective action. And, since not all countries will experience the cost of climate change in the same way or to the same extent, there is a disparity of concern around climate change that makes it difficult to tackle it.

Having said all that, I think there is still room for optimism. The pandemic has shown us that the vast majority of people are willing to accept massive constraints on their lifestyle to help produce a collective outcome that we all desire. It has also shown us how quickly some of the tipping points in behavior can be achieved, when the situation demands it. Over the course of six months, a vast proportion of the country’s workforce has transitioned to remote working—a behavioral shift that, under normal circumstances, might have taken a decade.

We now need to find those similar tipping points in our response to the climate crisis, and we are starting to see signs that they might appear. To give just one example, the proportion of renewable energy that was cheaper than fossil fuels doubled in 2020, and 62% of renewable energy options were cheaper than fossil fuels. This aligning of economic and ecological incentives helps to reveal the path we might take to tackling the climate crisis. And, although it sounds a little perverse, the fact that rich Western countries are increasingly experiencing the negative impacts of climate change themselves might also help to focus the minds of leaders to take action….(More)”.

Looking to the future? Including children, young people and future generations in deliberations on climate action: Ireland’s Citizens’Assembly 2016–2018

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Clodagh Harris: “The effects of climate change are multiple and fundamental. Decisions made today may result in irreversible damage to the planet’s biodiversity and ecosystems, the detrimental impacts of which will be borne by today’s children, young people and those yet unborn (future generations). The use of citizens’ assemblies (CAs) to tackle the issue of climate change is growing. Their remit is future focused. Yet is the future in the room? Focusing on a single case study, the recent Irish CA and Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action (JOCCA) deliberations on climate action, this paper explores the extent to which children, young people and future generations were included. Its systemic analysis of the membership of both institutions, the public submissions to them and the invited expertise presented, finds that the Irish CA was ‘too tightly coupled’ on this issue. This may have been beneficial in terms of impact, but it came at the expense of input legitimacy and potentially intergenerational justice. Referring to international developments, it suggests how these groups may be included through enclave deliberation, institutional innovations, design experiments and future-oriented practice…(More)”

The Resilience of Ritual

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Sara Frueh at the National Academies: “Even among those who share the same faith or ethnic background, small differences in rituals can seem insurmountable, added Legare, relaying the example of a friend’s deep disagreement with her new husband over whether presents should be opened on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. “There was a lot of family strife surrounding something that seems pretty trivial.”

Why do these small differences matter so much? Rituals help support group identity and preserve communities over time – which means they aren’t easily altered, said Legare. “Resisting change is part of the structural fabric of ritual.”

Reshaping Rituals Big and Small

If rituals are built to resist change, what happens when massive change — like a pandemic — is forced upon them?

We responded not by scrapping our rituals but by modifying them, which attests to their importance, said Legare. “The functions that these rituals serve are still things that humans need, that we crave.” For example, rites of passage — birthday parties, baby showers, funerals — have moved online. “We still need these critical life events to be commemorated, to be respected.”

One reason the pandemic has been uniquely difficult is that it’s a normal reaction to gather together in times of uncertainty and hardship — something made difficult or impossible by the social distancing needed to slow the spread of disease, said Legare. “It explains why rather than just omitting a lot of these rituals, we have changed and transformed them.”

Rituals are particularly helpful in situations of uncertainty or danger; they can help us reestablish a feeling of control, explained Legare, and theories hold that rituals support our physiological and psychological drive to reach homeostasis — a feeling of stability and balance. Reading or praying together in collective settings, for example, can have powerful psychological effects in reducing anxiety. “It’s a big part of why we find engaging in synchronous, collective activity so soothing,” she said.

In addition, Legare noted, anthropologists believe that rituals may be part of a hazard-precaution system — a psychological system geared toward responding to threats in the environment, such as pathogens and contamination. “Since reducing contamination and promoting hygiene is essential to human health and survival, using rituals to spread these practices is really useful,” she said. “So it’s absolutely not a surprise that we ritualize hand-washing.” This is nothing new, she added; for very functional reasons, hygiene is part of both secular and religious rituals around the world…(More)”.

Do Voters Trust Deliberative Minipublics? Examining the Origins and Impact of Legitimacy Perceptions for the Citizens’ Initiative Review

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Kristinn Már & John Gastil: “Deliberative theorists argue that democracies face an increasing legitimacy crisis for lack of effective representation and robust decision-making processes. To address this problem, democratic reformers designed minipublics, such as Citizens Juries, Citizens Assemblies, and Deliberative Polls. Little is known, however, about who trusts minipublics and why. We use survey experiments to explore whether minipublics in three US states were able to influence the electorate’s policy knowledge and voting choices and whether such influences hinged on legitimacy. On average, respondents were uncertain or tilted towards distrust of these minipublics. We found higher levels of trust among people of color compared to Whites, poor compared to rich, and young compared to old. Specific information about minipublic design features did not boost their perceived legitimacy. In fact, one result suggests that awareness of balanced partisan testimony decreased trust. Finally, results show that minipublics can sway voters and improve knowledge, above and beyond the effects of a conventional voter pamphlet, but these effects were largely independent of minipublic trust….(More)”