case study

Push, Pull, and Spill: A Transdisciplinary Case Study in Municipal Open Government

Curated on November 7, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Jan Whittington et al: “Cities hold considerable information, including details about the daily lives of residents and employees, maps of critical infrastructure, and records of the officials’ internal deliberations. Cities are beginning to realize that this data has economic and other value: If done wisely, the responsible release of city information can also release greater efficiency and innovation in the public and private sector. New services are cropping up that leverage open city data to great effect.

Meanwhile, activist groups and individual residents are placing increasing pressure on state and local government to be more transparent and accountable, even as others sound an alarm over the privacy issues that inevitably attend greater data promiscuity. This takes the form of political pressure to release more information, as well as increased requests for information under the many public records acts across the country.

The result of these forces is that cities are beginning to open their data as never before. It turns out there is surprisingly little research to date into the important and growing area of municipal open data. This article is among the first sustained, cross-disciplinary assessments of an open municipal government system. We are a team of researchers in law, computer science, information science, and urban studies. We have worked hand-in-hand with the City of Seattle, Washington for the better part of a year to understand its current procedures from each disciplinary perspective. Based on this empirical work, we generate a set of recommendations to help the city manage risk latent in opening its data….(More)”

Digital Continuity 2020

Curated on October 28, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

National Archives of Australia: “The Digital Continuity 2020 Policy is a whole-of-government approach to digital information governance. It complements the Australian Government’s digital transformation agenda and underpins the digital economy. The policy aims to support efficiency, innovation, interoperability, information re-use and accountability by integrating robust digital information management into all government business processes.

The policy is based on three principles, and for each of them identifies what success looks like and the targets that agencies should reach by 2020. All Digital Continuity 2020 targets are expected to be achieved as part of normal business reviews and ongoing technology maintenance and investment cycles.

The principles

Principle 1 – Information is valued

Focus on governance and people

Agencies will manage their information as an asset, ensuring that it is created, stored and managed for as long as it is required, taking into account business requirements and other needs and risks.
Case study – Parliamentary Budget Office

Principle 2 – Information is managed digitally

Focus on digital assets and processes

Agencies will transition to entirely digital work processes, meaning business processes including authorisations and approvals are completed digitally, and that information is created and managed in digital format.
Case study – Federal Court of Australia

Principle 3 – Information, systems and processes are interoperable

Focus on metadata and standards

Agencies will have interoperable information, systems and processes to improve information quality and enable information to be found, managed, shared and re-used easily and efficiently.
Case study – Opening government data with the NationalMap

View the Digital Continuity 2020 Policy. (More)“

How open company data was used to uncover the powerful elite benefiting from Myanmar’s multi-billion dollar jade industry

Curated on October 28, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

OpenCorporates: “Today, we’re pleased to release a white paper on how OpenCorporates data was used to uncover the powerful elite benefiting from Myanmar’s multi-billion dollar jade industry, in a ground-breaking report from Global Witness. This investigation is an important case study on how open company data and identifiers are critical tool to uncover corruption and the links between companies and the real people benefitting from it.

This white paper shows how not only was it critical that OpenCorporates had this information (much of the information was removed from the official register during the investigation), but that the fact that it was machine-readable data, available via an API (data service), and programmatically combinable with other data was essential to discover the hidden connections between the key actors and the jade industry. Global Witness was able to analyse this data with the help of Open Knowledge.

In this white paper, we make recommendations about the collection and publishing of statutory company information as open data to facilitate the creation of a hostile environment for corruption by providing a rigorous framework for public scrutiny and due diligence.

You can find the white paper here or read it on Medium.”

A new model to explore non-profit social media use for advocacy and civic engagement

Curated on October 11, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

David Chapman, Katrina Miller-Stevens, John C Morris, and Brendan O’Hallarn in First Monday: “In an age when electronic communication is ubiquitous, non-profit organizations are actively using social media platforms as a way to deliver information to end users. In spite of the broad use of these platforms, little scholarship has focused on the internal processes these organizations employ to implement these tools. A limited number of studies offer models to help explain an organization’s use of social media from initiation to outcomes, yet few studies address a non-profit organization’s mission as the driver to employ social media strategies and tactics. Furthermore, the effectiveness of social media use is difficult for non-profit organizations to measure. Studies that attempt to address this question have done so by viewing social media platform analytics (e.g., Facebook analytics) or analyzing written content by users of social media (Nah and Saxton, 2013; Auger, 2013; Uzunoğlu and Misci Kip, 2014; or Guo and Saxton, 2014). The value added of this study is to present a model for practice (Weil, 1997) that explores social media use and its challenges from a non-profit organization’s mission through its desired outcome, in this case an outcome of advocacy and civic engagement.

We focus on one non-profit organization, Blue Star Families, that actively engages in advocacy and civic engagement. Blue Star Families was formed in 2009 to “raise the awareness of the challenges of military family life with our civilian communities and leaders” (Blue Star Families, 2010). Blue Star Families is a virtual organization with no physical office location. Thus, the organization relies on its Web presence and social media tools to advocate for military families and engage service members and their families, communities, and citizens in civic engagement activities (Blue Star Families, 2010).

The study aims to provide organizational-level insights of the successes and challenges of working in the social media environment. Specifically, the study asks: What are the processes non-profit organizations follow to link organizational mission to outcomes when using social media platforms? What are the successes and challenges of using social media platforms for advocacy and civic engagement purposes? In our effort to answer these questions, we present a new model to explore non-profit organizations’ use of social media platforms by building on previous models and frameworks developed to explore the use of social media in the public, private, and non-profit sectors.

This research is important for three reasons. First, most previous studies of social media tend to employ models that focus on the satisfaction of the social media tools for organizational members, rather than the utility of social media as a tool to meet organizational goals. Our research offers a means to explore the utility of social media from an organization perspective. Second, the exemplar case for our research, Blue Star Families, Inc., is a non-profit organization whose mission is to create and nurture a virtual community spread over a large geographical — if not global — area. Because Blue Star Families was founded as an online organization that could not exist without social media, it provides a case for which social media is a critical component of the organization’s activity. Finally, we offer some “lessons learned” from our case to identify issues for other organizations seeking to create a significant social media presence.

This paper is organized as follows: first, the growth of social media is briefly addressed to provide background context. Second, previous models and frameworks exploring social media are discussed. This is followed by a presentation of a new model exploring the use of social media from an organizational perspective, starting with the driver of a non-profit organization’s mission, to its desired outcomes of advocacy and civic engagement. Third, the case study methodology is explained. Next, we present an analysis and discussion applying the new model to Blue Star Families’ use of social media platforms. We conclude by discussing the challenges of social media revealed in the case study analysis, and we offer recommendations to address these challenges….(More)”

Can the crowd deliver more open government?

Curated on September 8, 2015October 10, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Marie Sansom at GovernmentNews: “…Crowdsourcing and policy making was the subject of a lecture by visiting academic Dr Tanja Aitamurto at Victoria’s Swinburne University of Technology earlier this month. Dr Aitamurto wrote “Crowdsourcing for Democracy: New Era in Policy-Making” and led the design and implementation of the Finnish Experiment, a pioneering case study in crowdsourcing policy making.

She spoke about how Scandinavian countries have used crowdsourcing to “tap into the collective intelligence of a large and diverse crowd” in an “open ended knowledge information search process” in an open call for anybody to participate online and complete a task.

It has already been used widely and effectively by companies such as Proctor and Gamble who offer a financial reward for solutions to their R&D problems.

The Finnish government recently used crowdsourcing when it came to reform the country’s Traffic Act following a rash of complaints to the Minister of the Environment about it. The Act, which regulates issues such as off-road traffic, is an emotive issue in Finland where snow mobiles are used six months of the year and many people live in remote areas.

The idea was for people to submit problems and solutions online, covering areas such as safety, noise, environmental protection, the rights of snowmobile owners and landowners’ rights. Everyone could see what was written and could comment on it.

Dr Aitamurto said crowdsourcing had four stages:

• The problem mapping space, where people were asked to outline the issues that needed solving
• An appeal for solutions
• An expert panel evaluated the comments received based on the criteria of: effectiveness, cost efficiency, ease of implementation and fairness. The crowd also had the chance to evaluate and rank solutions online
• The findings were then handed over to the government for the law writing process

Dr Aitamurto said active participation seemed to create a strong sense of empowerment for those involved.

She said some people reported that it was the first time in their lives they felt they were really participating in democracy and influencing decision making in society. They said it felt much more real than voting in an election, which felt alien and remote.

“Participation becomes a channel for advocacy, not just for self-interest but a channel to hear what others are saying and then also to make yourself heard. People expected a compromise at the end,” Dr Aitamurto said.

Being able to participate online was ideal for people who lived remotely and turned crowdsourcing into a democratic innovation which brought citizens closer to policy and decision making between elections.

Other benefits included reaching out to tap into new pools of knowledge, rather than relying on a small group of homogenous experts to solve the problem.

“When we use crowdsourcing we actually extend our knowledge search to multiple, hundreds of thousands of distant neighbourhoods online and that can be the power of crowdsourcing: to find solutions and information that we wouldn’t find otherwise. We find also unexpected information because it’s a self-selecting crowd … people that we might not have in our networks already,” Dr Aitamurto said.

The process can increase transparency as people interact on online platforms and where the government keeps feedback loops going.

Dr Aitamurto is also a pains to highlight what crowdsourcing is not and cannot be, because participants are self-selecting and not statistically representative.

“The crowd doesn’t make decisions, it provides information. It’s not a method or tool for direct democracy and it’s not a public opinion poll either”.

Crowdsourcing has fed into policy in other countries too, for example, during Iceland’s constitutional reform and in the United States where the federal Emergency Management Agency overhauled its strategy after a string of natural disasters.

Australian government has been getting in on the act using cloud-based software Citizen Space to gain input into a huge range of topics. While much of it is technically consultation, rather than feeding into actual policy design, it is certainly a step towards more open government.

British company Delib, which is behind the software, bills it as “managing, publicising and archiving all of your organisation’s consultation activity”.

One council who has used Citizens Space is Wyong Shire on the NSW Central Coast. The council has used the consultation hub to elicit ratepayers’ views on a number of topics, including a special rate variation, community precinct forums, strategic plans and planning decisions.

One of Citizen Space’s most valuable features is the section ‘we asked, you said, we did’….(More)”

Push, Pull, and Spill: A Transdisciplinary Case Study in Municipal Open Government

Curated on August 13, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

New paper by Jan Whittington et al: “Cities hold considerable information, including details about the daily lives of residents and employees, maps of critical infrastructure, and records of the officials’ internal deliberations. Cities are beginning to realize that this data has economic and other value: If done wisely, the responsible release of city information can also release greater efficiency and innovation in the public and private sector. New services are cropping up that leverage open city data to great effect.

Tracking Employment Shocks Using Mobile Phone Data

Curated on May 28, 2015October 24, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Jameson L. Toole et al.: “Can data from mobile phones be used to observe economic shocks and their consequences at multiple scales? Here we present novel methods to detect mass layoffs, identify individuals affected by them, and predict changes in aggregate unemployment rates using call detail records (CDRs) from mobile phones. Using the closure of a large manufacturing plant as a case study, we first describe a structural break model to correctly detect the date of a mass layoff and estimate its size. We then use a Bayesian classification model to identify affected individuals by observing changes in calling behavior following the plant’s closure. For these affected individuals, we observe significant declines in social behavior and mobility following job loss. Using the features identified at the micro level, we show that the same changes in these calling behaviors, aggregated at the regional level, can improve forecasts of macro unemployment rates. These methods and results highlight promise of new data resources to measure micro economic behavior and improve estimates of critical economic indicators….(More)”

A Repository of Open Data Repositories: Open Data Impact Case Studies and Examples

Curated on May 28, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

“As part of its core mission, the GovLab has been engaged in a series of ongoing efforts to build awareness and gather evidence about the value, use, and impact of open data around the world – including the GovLab’s Open Data 500.

The GovLab is currently scoping a project with Omidyar Network to build a repository of in-depth, global case studies on existing examples of open data demand, use and impact. The goal of the project is to develop a more nuanced understanding of the various processes and factors underlying the value chain of open data.

As a part of our literature review in undertaking this scoping project, and in time for the 3rd International Open Data Conference, we first mapped several repositories of open data cases and examples that may serve as an empirical foundation for further case-studies.

Below is a non-exhaustive list of organizations that have compiled open data case study repositories in a complementary fashion.

LET US KNOW if you are aware of other compilations of open data examples and case studies we should include as to complete the below overview… by emailing Stefaan Verhulst (stefaan at thegovlab.org).

1. Open Data Case Study Repositories
2. Open Data Portal Repositories
3. Open Data Intermediary Repositories“

Legislation Lab

Curated on May 19, 2015May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

“Legislation Lab is a platform for encouraging public awareness and discussion of upcoming legislation. We offer citizens easy access to legislation and provide a participatory model to collect their feedback,

Citizen can read through the different sections of the legislation, compare it to related international experiences.
Participants voice their opinions through voting, commenting and proposing changes.
Real-time, automated data analysis provides visibility into the opinions and demographics of participants.
Legislation Lab works on a transparent participation model, proving authenticity through transparency. All contributions are clearly identified with their source and aggregate demographics are provided clearly and openly.

All law documents in Legislation Lab are under the stewardship of a law facilitator. Law facilitators come from a variety of backgrounds including government, organizations, or even the general public. GovRight works with law facilitators to help them import legislation and to promote a meaningful discussion with citizens….

Legislation Lab is the product of years of experience by GovRight in the implementation of meaningful public discourse and participation in government.

Case Study: Reforme.ma

In early 2011 citizens of Morocco took to the streets to denounce social injustice, unemployment, and corruption and to call for a genuine constitutional monarchy. In March, King Mohammed VI announced the launch of constitutional reforms, but for the average citizen of Morocco there was little opportunity to voice their opinion on the content or direction of these reforms.

To address this, Tarik Nesh-Nash (GovRight co-founder & CEO) launched with a partner Reforme.ma, a participatory platform to collect the opinions of average Moroccan citizens on changes to the constitution. Within two months Reforme.ma was visited by more than 200,000 visitors and received more than 10,000 comments and proposals. Contributors were a broad demographic of Moroccan citizens ranging from all regions of the country…(More)”

Slacktivism and the social benefits of social video: Sharing a video to ‘help’ a cause

Curated on May 14, 2015October 23, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Cat Jones at FirstMonday: “Interest in online ‘slacktivism’ is high both within and outside academia, and the online sharing of cause-related campaigns is increasing, but research into the extent to which ‘slacktivism’ applies to the act of sharing online content to ‘help’ a cause is limited. Slacktivism, as used in much of today’s popular discourse, is defined as ‘feel-good online activism [with] zero political or social impact’ (Morozov, 2009). Here, a survey-based analysis investigates social videos’ impacts on U.K. and U.S. viewers. Results show that the stronger viewers’ motivations are to share to help a cause, the stronger their motivations are to find out more afterwards. Further, a case study shows that social videos that motivate viewers to share the video ‘because it’s for a good cause, and I want to help’ (cause-related sharing versus, for example, to appear knowledgeable about a subject), can also prompt real-life actions, including donations. These results indicate that cause-related video sharing does have an impact, and therefore is not slacktivism by Morozov’s definition. Preliminary analysis suggests that of viewers sharing to ‘help’ causes, those discriminating in their choice of sharing audience (narrow vs. broad) are more likely to further engage than indiscriminate sharers. Result patterns from U.S. narrowcast sharers differ from those of other groups, indicating that tie strength and cultural differences may play a role in modifying slacktivist behaviors….(More)”