Essay by Thomas Carothers: “Adverse political developments in both established and newer democracies, especially the abdication by the United States of its traditional leadership role, have cast international democracy support into doubt. Yet international action on behalf of democracy globally remains necessary and possible. Moreover, some important elements of continuity remain, including overall Western spending on democracy assistance. Democracy support must adapt to its changed circumstances by doing more to take new geopolitical realities into account; effacing the boundary between support for democracy in new and in established democracies; strengthening the economic dimension of democracy assistance; and moving technological... (More >)
The promise and perils of big gender data
Essay by Bapu Vaitla, Stefaan Verhulst, Linus Bengtsson, Marta C. González, Rebecca Furst-Nichols & Emily Courey Pryor in Special Issue on Big Data of Nature Medicine: “Women and girls are legally and socially marginalized in many countries. As a result, policymakers neglect key gendered issues such as informal labor markets, domestic violence, and mental health1. The scientific community can help push such topics onto policy agendas, but science itself is riven by inequality: women are underrepresented in academia, and gendered research is rarely a priority of funding agencies. However, the critical importance of better gender data for societal well-being... (More >)
Collective Intelligence in City Design
Idea by Helena Rong and Juncheng Yang: “We propose an interactive design engagement platform which facilitates a continuous conversation between developers, designers and end users from pre-design and planning phases all the way to post-occupancy, adopting a citizen-centric and inclusive-oriented approach which would stimulate trust-building and invite active participation from end users from different age, ethnicity, social and economic background to participate in the design and development process. We aim to explore how collective intelligence through citizen engagement could be enabled by data to allow new collectives to emerge, confronting design as an iterative process involving scalable cooperation of... (More >)
Crossing the Digital Divide: Applying Technology to the Global Refugee Crisis
Report by Shelly Culbertson, James Dimarogonas, Katherine Costello, and Serafina Lanna: “In the past two decades, the global population of forcibly displaced people has more than doubled, from 34 million in 1997 to 71 million in 2018. Amid this growing crisis, refugees and the organizations that assist them have turned to technology as an important resource, and technology can and should play an important role in solving problems in humanitarian settings. In this report, the authors analyze technology uses, needs, and gaps, as well as opportunities for better using technology to help displaced people and improving the operations of... (More >)
Global Fishing Watch: Pooling Data and Expertise to Combat Illegal Fishing
Data Collaborative Case Study by Michelle Winowatan, Andrew Young, and Stefaan Verhulst: “ Global Fishing Watch, originally set up through a collaboration between Oceana, SkyTruth and Google, is an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing responsible stewardship of our oceans through increased transparency in fishing activity and scientific research. Using big data processing and machine learning, Global Fishing Watch visualizes, tracks, and shares data about global fishing activity in near-real time and for free via their public map. To date, the platform tracks approximately 65,000 commercial fishing vessels globally. These insights have been used in a number of academic... (More >)
Copy, Paste, Legislate
The Center for Public Integrity: “Do you know if a bill introduced in your statehouse — it might govern who can fix your shattered iPhone screen or whether you can still sue a pedophile priest years later — was actually written by your elected lawmakers? Use this new tool to find out.Spoiler alert The answer may well be no.Thousands of pieces of “model legislation” are drafted each year by business organizations and special interest groups and distributed to state lawmakers for introduction. These copycat bills influence policymaking across the nation, state by state, often with little scrutiny. This news... (More >)
Dollars for Profs: How to Investigate Professors’ Conflicts of Interest
ProPublica: “When professors moonlight, the income may influence their research and policy views. Although most universities track this outside work, the records have rarely been accessible to the public, potentially obscuring conflicts of interests. That changed last month when ProPublica launched Dollars for Profs, an interactive database that, for the first time ever, allows you to look up more than 37,000 faculty and staff disclosures from about 20 public universities and the National Institutes of Health. We believe there are hundreds of stories in this database, and we hope to tell as many as possible. Already, we’ve revealed how... (More >)
Practical Knowledge: Sustaining Massively-Multiplayer Innovation
Paper by Amar Bhide: “Governments and universities are pouring money into more ‘practical’ research – ‘translational’ medicine and ‘evidence-based’ policies in education, public health and economic development, for instance. But just translating or applying science rarely produces practical advances – and an inflexible adherence to the methods of natural or social scientists can do more harm than good. Instead, I propose a general approach – and specific research topics – to advance practical knowledge and study its distinctive contemporary nature….(More)” ... (More >)
Governing the Plural City
Introduction by Ash Amin: “….More than 50% of the world’s population lives in cities, and this figure is expected to rise to 70% by 2050. World affairs and city affairs have become deeply enmeshed, and what goes on within cities – their economic productivity, environmental footprint, cultural practices, social wellbeing, and political stability – affects the world at large. They shape the weather and are the weathervane of our times, so getting them right matters. But what this involves and how far it is within reach is by no means clear…. Thus, while the international policy community may confidently... (More >)
Missions: A beginner's guide
UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose: “…The 21st century is becoming increasingly defined by the need to respond to major issues facing society, the environment around us and the possibility of developing a prosperous equal economy. Sometimes referred to as ‘grand challenges’, these include climate change, ageing societies, preventative healthcare, and generating sustainable growth for the benefit of all. Innovation has not just a rate but also a direction. How that direction is set — not just by the government but by different actors and socio-political forces — is a key aspect of IIPP’s work. But how should... (More >)
