book – Page 125 – The Living Library

The Populist Signal

Curated on February 17, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Claudia Chwalisz: “The book is about the turbulent political scene unfolding in Britain and across western Europe. It focuses on why large swathes of voters feel that politics does not work, how this fuels support for insurgent parties and actors, and it investigates the power of democratic innovations….

Examples include:

– The Melbourne People’s panel, where 43 randomly selected citizens presented the City council with a 10 year, $4bn plan for Melbourne

– The Flemish minister of culture’s citizens’ cabinet, which advised him on his upcoming legislation before he presented it to parliament

– The G1000 local citizens’ assemblies in the Netherlands, which bring randomly selected members of the community together to deliberate on collective solutions to the challenges being faced

– The Grandview-Woodlands citizens’ assembly on town planning in Vancouver, Canada…(More)

Improving government effectiveness: lessons from Germany

Curated on February 11, 2016July 19, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Tom Gash at Global Government Forum: “All countries face their own unique challenges but advanced democracies also have much in common: the global economic downturn, aging populations, increasingly expensive health and pension spending, and citizens who remain as hard to please as ever.

At an event last week in Bavaria, attended by representatives of Bavaria’s governing party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) and their guests, it also became clear that there is a growing consensus that governments face another common problem. They have relied for too long on traditional legislation and regulation to drive change. The consensus was that simply prescribing in law what citizens and companies can and can’t do will not solve the complex problems governments are facing, that governments cannot legislate their way to improved citizen health, wealth and wellbeing….

…a number of developments …from which both UK and international policymakers and practitioners can learn to improve government effectiveness.

Behavioural economics: The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), which span out of government in 2013 and is the subject of a new book by one of its founders and former IfG Director of Research, David Halpern, is being watched carefully by many countries abroad. Some are using its services, while others – including the New South Wales Government in Australia –are building their own skills in this area. BIT and others using similar principles have shown that using insights from social psychology – alongside an experimental approach – can help save money and improve outcomes. Well known successes include increasing the tax take through changing wording of reminder letters (work led by another IfG alumni Mike Hallsworth) and increasing pension take-up through auto-enrolment.
Market design: There is an emerging field of study which is examining how algorithms can be used to match people better with services they need – particularly in cases where it is unfair or morally repugnant to let allow a free market to operate. Alvin Roth, the Harvard Professor and Nobel prize winner, writes about these ‘matching markets’ in his book Who Gets What and Why – in which he also explains how the approach can ensure that more kidneys reach compatible donors, and children find the right education.
Big data: Large datasets can now be mined far more effectively, whether it is to analyse crime patterns to spot where police patrols might be useful or to understand crowd flows on public transport. The use of real-time information allows far more sophisticated deployment of public sector resources, better targeted at demand and need, and better tailored to individual preferences.
Transparency: Transparency has the potential to enhance both the accountability and effectiveness of governments across the world – as shown in our latest Whitehall Monitor Annual Report. The UK government is considered a world-leader for its transparency – but there are still areas where progress has stalled, including in transparency over the costs and performance of privately provided public services.
New management models: There is a growing realisation that new methods are best harnessed when supported by effective management. The Institute’s work on civil service reform highlights a range of success factors from past reforms in the UK – and the benefits of clear mechanisms for setting priorities and sticking to them, as is being attempted by governments new(ish) Implementation Taskforces and the Departmental Implementation Units currently cropping up across Whitehall. I looked overseas for a different model that clearly aligns government activities behind citizens’ concerns – in this case the example of the single non-emergency number system operating in New York City and elsewhere. This system supports a powerful, highly responsive, data-driven performance management regime. But like many performance management regimes it can risk a narrow and excessively short-term focus – so such tools must be combined with the mind-set of system stewardship that the Institute has long championed in its policymaking work.
Investment in new capability: It is striking that all of these developments are supported by technological change and research insights developed outside government. But to embed new approaches in government, there appear to be benefits to incubating new capacity, either in specialist departmental teams or at the centre of government….(More)”

The Metric Tide

Curated on February 6, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by James Wilsdon: Metrics evoke a mixed reaction from the research community. A commitment to using data and evidence to inform decisions makes many of us sympathetic, even enthusiastic, about the prospect of granular, real-time analysis of our own activities. Yet we only have to look around us, at the blunt use of metrics to be reminded of the pitfalls. Metrics hold real power: they are constitutive of values, identities and livelihoods.

How to exercise that power to positive ends is the focus of this book. Using extensive evidence-gathering, analysis and consultation, the authors take a thorough look at potential uses and limitations of research metrics and indicators. They explore the use of metrics across different disciplines, assess their potential contribution to the development of research excellence and impact and consider the changing ways in which universities are using quantitative indicators in their management systems. Finally, they consider the negative or unintended effects of metrics on various aspects of research culture.

Including an updated introduction from James Wilsdon, the book proposes a framework for responsible metrics and makes a series of targeted recommendations to show how responsible metrics can be applied in research management, by funders, and in the next cycle of the Research Excellence Framework.

The metric tide is certainly rising. Unlike King Canute, we have the agency and opportunity – and in this book, a serious body of evidence – to influence how it washes through higher education and research….(More)”.

Knowing Governance – The Epistemic Construction of Political Order

Curated on February 4, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Jan-Peter Voß and Richard Freeman: “This book is about the making of knowledge about governance and how it shapes political action. In a sense, doing politics has always turned on knowing governance, since political action builds on a certain understanding of what it is to act politically and how to do so effectively. Those seeking power have invariably wanted to know how collective order can be built and maintained: governing implies knowledge about the world to be governed and the resources available to do so, and about the interests and dispositions of the actors involved. What is more, while knowing governance has always been key to ruling effectively, it is at the same time a principal lever for those who seek to challenge authority. Shared knowledge is a precondition of collective action and of the imagined communities of modern politics, whether nations or social movements or issue-based constituencies….(Table of Contents) ”

Design-Led Innovation in the Public Sector

Curated on January 28, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Manuel Sosa at INSEAD Knowledge: “When entering a government permit office, virtually everyone would prepare themselves for a certain amount of boredom and confusion. But resignation may well turn to surprise or even shock, if that office is Singapore’s Employment Pass Service Centre (EPSC), where foreign professionals go to receive their visa to work in the city-state. The ambience more closely resembles a luxury hotel lobby than a grim government agency, an impression reinforced by the roaming reception managers who greet arriving applicants, directing them to a waiting area with upholstered chairs and skyline views.

In a new case study, “Designing the Employment Pass Service Centre for the Ministry of Manpower, Singapore”, Prof. Michael Pich and I explore how even public organizations are beginning to use design to find and tap into innovation opportunities where few have thought to look. In the case of Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower (MOM), a design-led transformation of a single facility was the starting point of a drastic reconsideration of what a government agency could be.

Efficiency is not enough

Prior to opening the EPSC in July 2009, MOM’s Work Pass Division (WPD) had developed hyper-efficient methods to process work permits for foreign workers, who comprise approximately 40 percent of Singapore’s workforce. In fact, it was generally considered the most efficient department of its kind in the world. After 9/11, a mandatory-fingerprinting policy for white-collar workers was introduced, necessitating a standalone centre. The agency saw this as an opportunity to raise the efficiency bar even further.

Giving careful consideration to every aspect of the permit-granting process, the project team worked with a local vendor to overhaul the existing model. The proposal they ultimately presented to MOM assured almost unheard-of waiting times, as well as a more aesthetically pleasing look and feel….

Most public-sector organisations’ prickly interactions with the public can be explained with the simple fact that they lack competition. Government bodies are generally monopolies dispensing necessities, so on the whole they don’t feel compelled to agonise over their public face.

MOM and the Singapore government had a different idea. Aware that they were competing with other countries for top global talent, they recognised that the permit-granting process, in a very real sense, set the tone for foreign professionals’ entire experience of Singapore. Expats would be unlikely to remember precisely how long it took to get processed, but the quality of the service received would resonate in their minds and affect their impression of the country as a whole.

IDEO typically begins by concentrating on the user experience. In this case, in addition to observing and identifying what goes through the mind of a typical applicant during his or her journey in the existing system, the observation stage included talking to foreigners who were arriving in Singapore about their experience. IDEO discovered that professionals newly arrived in Singapore were embarking on an entirely new chapter of their lives, with all the expected stresses. The last thing they needed was more stress when receiving their permit. Hence, the EPSC entry hall is airy and free of clutter to create a sense of calm. The ESPC provides toys to keep kids entertained while their parents meet with agents and register for work passes. Visitors are always called by name, not number. Intimidating interview rooms were done away with in favour of open cabanas….In its initial customer satisfaction survey in 2010, the EPSC scored an average rating of 5.7 out of 6….(More)”

4 reasons why businesses should be more open

Curated on January 25, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Cobus De Swardt at WEF: “Many initiatives in recent years have extolled the virtues of governments becoming more open, but now the focus is turning to whether and how businesses will embrace openness.

Here are four reasons why I think businesses should take openness seriously.

1. Openness enhances stability and lowers risk

In a 2012 report, 70% of business executives said “their companies face extensive risk of corrupt activities when engaging agents/business partners in emerging markets and a significant number (46%) felt there was extensive risk when engaging suppliers”.

In the context of foreign bribery laws, companies need to know who they are doing business with – the real living, breathing individuals behind the companies with which they have relationships. ….

2. Openness reassures companies, consumers and citizens

How can citizens know that they are getting the best deal? Let’s take the way governments spend money by contracting the goods and services of companies. Spending this money at the right time, in the right place, for the right purpose is crucial for taxpayers, the people who stand to win or lose the most. So companies who win public contracts must be those with the best bid – not the best contacts book.

Some governments are moving towards more open contracting arrangements, but businesses should see the benefits too…

3. Openness lowers business costs

A growing number of cases show that when governments publish contracts, the quality and quantity of bids increase. Businesses have a better understanding of what is required; they can also make more targeted bids early on. It’s important to prove that there are no dodgy deals going on behind closed doors, which makes ensuring full transparency around who actually owns and controls the bidding companies crucial…

4. Openness demonstrates that businesses are part of the solution

Finally, being open to sharing more information and engaging with stakeholders in a more open manner helps demonstrate that companies can be part of the solution. Businesses are often seen, and sometimes deservedly so, as the perpetrators of corruption – but they can also be its victim. Responsible companies have a role to play in calling for higher standards, publishing information beyond the standards required of them, embracing openness and not fighting lawsuits to lock the information up….

So, how to open up?

It may take a while for the business world to see openness as something more than a compliance or administrative burden, but those that do so are sure to gain. Governments should find ways to incentivize companies to publish information such as their ownership and control structures. ….(More)

What a Million Syllabuses Can Teach Us

Curated on January 23, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Joe Karaganis and David McClure at the New York Times: “College course syllabuses are curious documents. They represent the best efforts by faculty and instructors to distill human knowledge on a given subject into 14-week chunks. They structure the main activity of colleges and universities. And then, for the most part, they disappear….

Until now. Over the past two years, we and our partners at the Open Syllabus Project (based at the American Assembly at Columbia) have collected more than a million syllabuses from university websites. We have also begun to extract some of their key components — their metadata — starting with their dates, their schools, their fields of study and the texts that they assign.

This past week, we made available online a beta version of our Syllabus Explorer, which allows this database to be searched. Our hope and expectation is that this tool will enable people to learn new things about teaching, publishing and intellectual history.

At present, the Syllabus Explorer is mostly a tool for counting how often texts are assigned over the past decade. There is something for everyone here. The traditional Western canon dominates the top 100, with Plato’s “Republic” at No. 2, “The Communist Manifesto” at No. 3, and “Frankenstein” at No. 5, followed by Aristotle’s “Ethics,” Hobbes’s “Leviathan,” Machiavelli’s “The Prince,” “Oedipus” and “Hamlet.”….

Top articles? Garrett Hardin’s “The Tragedy of the Commons” and Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History.” And so on. Altogether, the Syllabus Explorer tracks about 933,000 works. Nearly half of these are assigned only once.

Such data has many uses. For academics, for example, it offers a window onto something they generally know very little about: how widely their work is read.

It also allows us to introduce a new publication metric based on the frequency with which works are taught, which we call the “teaching score.” The score is derived from the ranking order of the text, not the raw number of citations, such that a book or article that is used in four or five classes gets a score of 1, while “The Republic,” which is assigned 3,500 times, gets a score of 100….

Because of a complex mix of privacy and copyright issues concerning syllabuses, the Open Syllabus Project publishes only metadata, not the underlying documents or any personally identifying material (even though these documents can be viewed on university websites). But we think that it is important for schools to move toward a more open approach to curriculums. As universities face growing pressure to justify their teaching and research missions, we doubt that curricular obscurity is helpful.

We think that the Syllabus Explorer demonstrates how more open strategies can support teaching, diversify evaluation practices and offer new perspectives on publishing, scholarship and intellectual traditions. But as with any newly published work, that judgment now passes out of our hands and into yours…(More)”

Hacking the streets: ‘Smart’ writing in the smart city

Curated on January 19, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Spencer Jordan at FirstMonday: “Cities have always been intimately bound up with technology. As important nodes within commercial and communication networks, cities became centres of sweeping industrialisation that affected all facets of life (Mumford, 1973). Alienation and estrangement became key characteristics of modernity, Mumford famously noting the “destruction and disorder within great cities” during the long nineteenth century. The increasing use of digital technology is yet another chapter in this process, exemplified by the rise of the ‘smart city’. Although there is no agreed definition, smart cities are understood to be those in which digital technology helps regulate, run and manage the city (Caragliu,et al., 2009). This article argues that McQuire’s definition of ‘relational space’, what he understands as the reconfiguration of urban space by digital technology, is critical here. Although some see the impact of digital technology on the urban environment as deepening social exclusion and isolation (Virilio, 1991), others, such as de Waal perceive digital technology in a more positive light. What is certainly clear, however, is that the city is once again undergoing rapid change. As Varnelis and Friedberg note, “place … is in a process of a deep and contested transformation”.

If the potential benefits from digital technology are to be maximised it is necessary that the relationship between the individual and the city is understood. This paper examines how digital technology can support and augment what de Certeau calls spatial practice, specifically in terms of constructions of ‘home’ and ‘belonging’ (de Certeau, 1984). The very act of walking is itself an act of enunciation, a process by which the city is instantiated; yet, as de Certeau and Bachelard remind us, the city is also wrought from the stories we tell, the narratives we construct about that space (de Certeau, 1984; Bachelard, 1994). The city is thus envisioned both through physical exploration but also language. As Turchi has shown, the creative stories we make on these voyages can be understood as maps of that world and those we meet (Turchi, 2004). If, as the situationists Kotányi and Vaneigem stated, “Urbanism is comparable to the advertising propagated around Coca-Cola — pure spectacular ideology”, there needs to be a way by which the hegemony of the market, Benjamin’s phantasmagoria, can be challenged. This would wrestle control from the market forces that are seen to have overwhelmed the high street, and allow a refocusing on the needs of both the individual and the community.

This article argues that, though anachronistic, some of the situationists’ ideas persist within hacking, what Himanen (2001) identified as the ‘hacker ethic’. As Taylor argues, although hacking is intimately connected to the world of computers, it can refer to the unorthodox use of any ‘artefact’, including social ‘systems’ . In this way, de Certeau’s urban itineraries, the spatial practice of each citizen through the city, can be understood as a form of hacking. As Wark states, “We do not lack communication. On the contrary, we have too much of it. We lack creation. We lack resistance to the present.” If the city itself is called into being through our physical journeys, in what de Certeau called ‘spaces of enunciation’, then new configurations and possibilities abound. The walker becomes hacker, Wark’s “abstractors of new worlds”, and the itinerary a deliberate subversion of an urban system, the dream houses of Benjamin’s arcades. This paper examines one small research project, Waterways and Walkways, in its investigation of a digitally mediated exploration across Cardiff, the Welsh capital. The article concludes by showing just one small way in which digital technology can play a role in facilitating the re-conceptualisation of our cities….(More)”