case study

Improving journeys by opening data: The case of Transport for London (TfL)

Curated on January 20, 2018July 19, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Merlin Stone and Eleni Aravopoulou in The Bottom Line: “This case study describes how one of the world’s largest public transport operations, Transport for London (TfL), transformed the real-time availability of information for its customers and staff through the open data approach, and what the results of this transformation were. Its purpose is therefore to show what is required for an open data approach to work.

This case study is based mainly on interviews at TfL and data supplied by TfL directly to the researchers. It analyses as far as possible the reported facts of the case, in order to identify the processes required to open data and the benefits thereof.

The main finding is that achieving an open data approach in public transport is helped by having a clear commitment to the idea that the data belongs to the public and that third parties should be allowed to use and repurpose the information, by having a strong digital strategy, and by creating strong partnerships with data management organisations that can support the delivery of high volumes of information.

The case study shows how open data can be used to create commercial and non-commercial customer-facing products and services, which passengers and other road users use to gain a better travel experience, and that this approach can be valued in terms of financial/economic contribution to customers and organisations….(More)”.

Transitioning Towards a Knowledge Society: Qatar as a Case Study

Curated on December 11, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Julia Gremm, Julia Barth, Kaja J. Fietkiewicz and Wolfgang G. Stock: “The book offers a critical evaluation of Qatar’s path from oil- and gas-based industries to a knowledge-based economy. This book gives basic information about the region and the country, including the geographic and demographic data, the culture, the politics and the economy, the health care conditions and the education system. It introduces the concepts of knowledge society and knowledge-based development and adds factual details about Qatar by interpreting indicators of the development status. Subsequently, the research methods that underlie the study are described, which offers information on the eGovernment study analyzing the government-citizen relationship, higher education institutions and systems, its students and the students’ way into the labor market. This book has an audience with economists, sociologists, political scientists, geographers, information scientists and other researchers on the knowledge society, but also all researchers and practitioners interested in the Arab Oil States and their future….(More)”.

Participatory Budgeting: Does Evidence Match Enthusiasm?

Curated on November 10, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Brian Wampler, Stephanie McNulty, and Michael Touchton at Open Government Partnership: “Participatory budgeting (PB) empowers citizens to allocate portions of public budgets in a way that best fits the needs of the people. In turn, proponents expect PB to improve citizens’ lives in important ways, by expanding their participation in politics, providing better public services such as in healthcare, sanitation, or education, and giving them a sense of efficacy.

Below we outline several potential outcomes that emerge from PB. Of course, assessing PB’s potential impact is difficult, because reliable data is rare and PB is often one of several programs that could generate similar improvements at the same time. Impact evaluations for PB are thus at a very early stage. Nevertheless, considerable case study evidence and some broader, comparative studies point to outcomes in the following areas:

Citizens’ attitudes: Early research focused on the attitudes of citizens who participate in PB, and found that PB participants feel empowered, support democracy, view the government as more effective, and better understand budget and government processes after participating (Wampler and Avritzer 2004; Baiocchi 2005; Wampler 2007).

Participants’ behavior: Case-study evidence shows that PB participants increase their political participation beyond PB and join civil society groups. Many scholars also expect PB to strengthen civil society by increasing its density (number of groups), expanding its range of activities, and brokering new partnerships with government and other CSOs. There is some case study evidence that this occurs (Baiocchi 2005; McNulty 2011; Baiocchi, Heller and Silva 2011; Van Cott 2008) as well as evidence from over 100 PB programs across Brazil’s larger municipalities (Touchton and Wampler 2014). Proponents also expect PB to educate government officials surrounding community needs, to increase their support for participatory processes, and to potentially expand participatory processes in complementary areas. Early reports from five counties in Kenya suggest that PB ther is producing at least some of these impacts.

Electoral politics and governance: PB can also promote social change, which may alter local political calculations and the ways that governments operate. PB may deliver votes to the elected officials that sponsor it, improve budget transparency and resource allocation, decrease waste and fraud, and generally improve accountability. However, there is very little evidence in this area because few studies have been able to measure these impacts in any direct way.

Social well-being: Finally, PB is designed to improve residents’ well-being. Implemented PB projects include funding for healthcare centers, sewage lines, schools, wells, and other areas that contribute directly to well-being. These effects may take years to appear, but recent studies attribute improvements in infant mortality in Brazil to PB (Touchton and Wampler 2014; Gonçalves 2014). Beyond infant mortality, the range of potential impacts extends to other health areas, sanitation, education, and poverty in general. We are cautious here because results from Brazil might not appear elsewhere: what works in urban Brazil might not in rural Indonesia….(More)”.

Randomized Controlled Trials: How Can We Know ‘What Works’?

Curated on November 9, 2017October 23, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Nick Cowen et al at Critical Review: “We attempt to map the limits of evidence-based policy through an interactive theoretical critique and empirical case-study. We outline the emergence of an experimental turn in EBP among British policymakers and the limited, broadly inductive, epistemic approach that underlies it. We see whether and how field professionals identify and react to these limitations through a case study of teaching professionals subject to a push to integrate research evidence into their practice. Results suggest that many of the challenges of establishing evidential warrant that EBP is supposed to streamline re-appear at the level of choice of locally effective policies and implementation…(More)”.

Where’s the evidence? Obstacles to impact-gathering and how researchers might be better supported in future

Curated on October 16, 2017October 24, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Clare Wilkinson at the LSE Impact Blog: “…In a recent case study I explore how researchers from a broad range of research areas think about evidencing impact, what obstacles to impact-gathering might stand in their way, and how they might be further supported in future.

Unsurprisingly the research found myriad potential barriers to gathering research impact, such as uncertainty over how impact is defined, captured, judged, and weighted, or the challenges for researchers in tracing impact back to a specific time-period or individual piece of research. Many of these constraints have been recognised in previous research in this area – or were anticipated when impact was first discussed – but talking to researchers in 2015 about their impact experiences of the REF 2014 data-gathering period revealed a number of lingering concerns.

A further hazard identified by the case study is the inequalities in knowledge around research impact and how this knowledge often exists in siloes. Those researchers most likely to have obvious impact-generating activities were developing quite detailed and extensive experience of impact-capturing; while other researchers (including those at early-career stages) were less clear on the impact agenda’s relevance to them or even whether their research had featured in an impact case study. Encouragingly some researchers did seem to increase in confidence once having experience of authoring an impact case study, but sharing skills and confidence with the “next generation” of researchers likely to have impact remains a possible issue for those supporting impact evidence-gathering.

So, how can researchers, across the board, be supported to effectively evidence their impact? Most popular amongst the options given to the 70 or so researchers that participated in this case study were: 1) approaches that offered them more time or funding to gather evidence; 2) opportunities to see best-practice examples; 3) opportunities to learn more about what “impact” means; and 4) the sharing of information on the types of evidence that could be collected….(More)”.

Enhancing Citizen Engagement in the Face of Climate Change Risks: A Case Study of the Flood Early Warning System and Health Information System in Semarang City, Indonesia

Curated on October 3, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Chapter by Aniessa Delima Sari and Nyoman Prayoga in book on Climate Change in Cities: “This case study describes how two climate resilience action projects in Semarang City, Indonesia, were able to provide new mechanisms allowing better engagement between the Semarang city government and its citizens. With the introduction of the Flood Early Warning System (FEWS), flood-prone communities in the Beringin River Basin are now able to evacuate to safe shelters before flood incidents occur. Through the Health Information and Early Warning System (HIEWS), citizens can access real-time information related to dengue fever cases in the city. Although the focus areas are different, both projects aim to help communities become more resilient to the impacts of climate change, specifically floods and vector-borne disease. We find similar patterns in the two cases, in which efforts to enhance community participation are essential to guarantee the success of the projects. Enhanced community engagement is achieved through the thoughtful consideration of local knowledge and social networks, intensive assistance to increase awareness and motivation of the community, and understanding governance structures to ensure that funds are allocated through formal handover processes to continue and expand the results of the interventions. These findings are useful and important to guide any climate change adaptation projects toward better sustainability and ownership, especially in the application of an early warning system or information system that requires technology, sustainable budget allocation from the local government to operate and maintain the system, and buy-in from local communities…(More)”

Co-creating an Open Government Data Driven Public Service: The Case of Chicago’s Food Inspection Forecasting Model

Curated on October 1, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Conference paper by Keegan Mcbride et al: “Large amounts of Open Government Data (OGD) have become available and co-created public services have started to emerge, but there is only limited empirical material available on co-created OGD-driven public services. The authors have built a conceptual model around an innovation process based on the ideas of co-production and agile development for co-created OGD-driven public service. An exploratory case study on Chicago’s use of OGD in a predictive analytics model that forecasts critical safety violations at food serving establishments was carried out to expose the intricate process of how co-creation occurs and what factors allow for it to take place. Six factors were identified as playing a key role in allowing the co-creation of an OGD-driven public service to take place: external funding, motivated stakeholders, innovative leaders, proper communication channels, an existing OGD portal, and agile development practices. The conceptual model was generally validated, but further propositions on co-created OGD-driven public services emerged. These propositions state that the availability of OGD and tools for data analytics have the potential to enable the co-creation of OGD-driven public services, governments releasing OGD are acting as a platform and from this platform the co-creation of new and innovative OGD-driven public services may take place, and that the idea of Government as a Platform (GaaP) does appear to be an idea that allows for the topics of co-creation and OGD to be merged together….(More)”.

Civic Tech for Urban Collaborative Governance

Curated on July 15, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Hollie Russon-Gilman in PS: Political Science & Politics: “This article aims to contribute to a burgeoning field of ‘civic technology’ to identify precise pathways through which multi-stakeholder partnerships can foster, embed, and encourage more collaborative governance, outlining a research agenda to guide next steps. Instead of looking at technology as a civic panacea or, at the other extreme, as an irrelevant force, this article takes seriously both the democratic potential and the political constraints of the use of technology for more collaborative governance. The article begins by delineating contours of a civic definition of technology focused on generating public good, provides case study examples of civic tech deployed in America’s cities, raises research questions to inform future multi-stakeholder partnerships, and concludes with implications for the public sector workforce and ecosystem.”…(More)”.

Computational Propaganda Worldwide

Curated on June 22, 2017August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Executive Summary: “The Computational Propaganda Research Project at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, has researched the use of social media for public opinion manipulation. The team involved 12 researchers across nine countries who, altogether, interviewed 65 experts, analyzed tens of millions posts on seven different social media platforms during scores of elections, political crises, and national security incidents. Each case study analyzes qualitative, quantitative, and computational evidence collected between 2015 and 2017 from Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, Poland, Taiwan, Russia, Ukraine, and the United States.

Computational propaganda is the use of algorithms, automation, and human curation to purposefully distribute misleading information over social media networks. We find several distinct global trends in computational propaganda. •

Social media are significant platforms for political engagement and crucial channels for disseminating news content. Social media platforms are the primary media over which young people develop their political identities.
- In some countries this is because some companies, such as Facebook, are effectively monopoly platforms for public life. o In several democracies the majority of voters use social media to share political news and information, especially during elections.
- In countries where only small proportions of the public have regular access to social media, such platforms are still fundamental infrastructure for political conversation among the journalists, civil society leaders, and political elites.
Social media are actively used as a tool for public opinion manipulation, though in diverse ways and on different topics. o In authoritarian countries, social media platforms are a primary means of social control. This is especially true during political and security crises. o In democracies, social media are actively used for computational propaganda either through broad efforts at opinion manipulation or targeted experiments on particular segments of the public.
In every country we found civil society groups trying, but struggling, to protect themselves and respond to active misinformation campaigns….(More)”.