Embracing Innovation in Government: Global trends 2023

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the OECD: “Governments worldwide have faced unprecedented challenges in the last few years, and the global mood remains far from optimistic. The world had little time to recover from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic before the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation dealt the global economy a series of shocks. The culminative effect of these catastrophes has been the destruction of lives and livelihoods, and growing humanitarian, economic and governance crises. Millions of people have been displaced, energy and food markets have been severely disrupted, inflation continues to surge, and many countries are on the brink of recession. Governments must cope with and respond to these emerging threats while already grappling with issues such as climate change, digital disruption and low levels of trust. The challenges they face in ensuring positive outcomes for their people seem to be increasing dramatically.

Yet, despite compounding challenges, governments have been able to adapt and innovate to transform their societies and economies, and more specifically to the focus of this work, to transform themselves and how they design policies, deliver services and manage the business of government. If anything, recent and ongoing crises have catalysed public sector innovation and reinstated the critical role of the state. While the overall tone may be pessimistic, public sector innovation has provided bright spots and room for hope.

The search for these bright spots and entry points for change is the driving force behind this report, and the research that underpins it. As part of the MENA-OECD Governance Programme, the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OPSI) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Mohammed Bin Rashid Centre for Government Innovation (MBRCGI) have collaborated since 2016 to explore how governments are working to understand, test and embed new ways of doing things. These efforts have culminated in 12 reports on Global Trends in government innovation, including this one, as well as a deep-dive effort on achieving Cross-Border Government Innovation to tackle global challenges.

To take the pulse of public sector innovation this year, OPSI and the MBRCGI have identified and analysed 1 084 innovative initiatives from 94 countries around the world (download CSV)…(More)”

Managing Intellectual Property Rights in Citizen Science: A Guide for Researchers and Citizen Scientists

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Report by Teresa Scassa & Haewon Chung: “IP issues arise in citizen science in a variety of different ways. Indeed, the more broadly the concept of citizen science is cast, the more diverse the potential IP interests. Some community-based projects, for example, may well involve the sharing of traditional knowledge, whereas open innovation projects are ones that are most likely to raise patent issues and to do so in a context where commercialization is a project goal. Trademark issues may also arise, particularly where a project gains a certain degree of renown. In this study we touch on issues of patenting and commercialization; however, we also recognize that most citizen science projects do not have commercialization as an objective, and have IP issues that flow predominantly from copyright law. This guide navigates these issues topically and points the reader towards further research and law in this area should they wish to gain an even more comprehensive understanding of the nuances. It accompanies a prior study conducted by the same authors that created a Typology of Citizen Science Projects from an Intellecutal Property Perspective…(More)”.

Data Brokers and the Sale of Americans’ Mental Health Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Joanne Kim: “This report includes findings from a two-month-long study of data brokers and data on U.S. individuals’ mental health conditions. The report aims to make more transparent the data broker industry and its processes for selling and exchanging mental health data about depressed and anxious individuals. The research is critical as more depressed and anxious individuals utilize personal devices and software-based health-tracking applications (many of which are not protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), often unknowingly putting their sensitive mental health data at risk. This report finds that the industry appears to lack a set of best practices for handling individuals’ mental health data, particularly in the areas of privacy and buyer vetting. It finds that there are data brokers which advertise and are willing and able to sell data concerning Americans’ highly sensitive mental health information. It concludes by arguing that the largely unregulated and black-box nature of the data broker industry, its buying and selling of sensitive mental health data, and the lack of clear consumer privacy protections in the U.S. necessitate a comprehensive federal privacy law or, at the very least, an expansion of HIPAA’s privacy protections alongside bans on the sale of mental health data on the open market…(More)”.

Data for emergencies

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the Royal Society: “As evidenced throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists and decision-makers benefit from rapid access to high quality data in a fast-changing, emergency environment. Enabling this for future pandemics, and other events which threaten serious damage to human welfare or the environment, will require a robust data infrastructure and a continuous process of public engagement.

Creating resilient and trusted data systems (PDF) sets out five high level recommendations for the UK Government to achieve this. This project, chaired by Professor Chris Dye FRS FMedSci, builds on a public dialogue commissioned by the Royal Society and a workshop held in October 2022, the recommendations call for action on public engagement; data protection; stress testing; standardisation; and trusted research environments.

The Royal Society commissioned the public facilitation agency Hopkins Van Mil to deliver a public dialogue to explore the public’s views on data systems during emergencies and non-emergencies. The dialogue format was chosen to facilitate an immersive and informed discussion, where a full range of viewpoints could be shared, exploring nuanced views, trade-offs and ‘least-regret’ options. The public dialogue addressed the following questions:

a) Do the current systems in place support a trusted and effective response to emergencies?

b) Have the systems been established in ways that enable them to be used in a trusted way outside of emergencies?

c) Are we any better placed to put in place a data-led response to other emergencies?

There are seven key findings from the dialogue, covering the complexity of emotions, confidence in data protection enforcement, and expectations for emergency preparedness…(More)”.

UN Guide on Privacy-Enhancing Technologies for Official Statistics

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UN Guide: “This document presents methodologies and approaches to mitigating privacy risks when using sensitive or confidential data, which are collectively referred to as privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs). National Statistics Offices (NSOs) are entrusted with data that has the potential to drive innovation and improve national services, research, and social benefit. Yet, there has been a rise in sustained cyber threats, complex networks of intermediaries motivated to procure sensitive data, and advances in methods to re-identify and link data to individuals and across multiple data sources. Data breaches erode public trust and can have serious negative consequences for individuals, groups, and communities. This document focuses on PETs that protect data during analysis and dissemination of sensitive information so that the benefits of using data for official statistics can be realized while minimizing privacy risks to those entrusting sensitive data to NSOs…(More)”.

Conspiracy Theory: On Certain Misconceptions About the Uses of Behavioral Science in Government

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Cass R. Sunstein: “In some circles, there is a misconception that within government, the only or principal uses of behavioral science consist of efforts to nudge individual behavior (sometimes described, pejoratively and unfairly, as “tweaks”). Nothing could be further from the truth. Behavioral science has been used, and is being used, to help inform large-scale reforms, including mandates and bans directed at companies (as, for example, in the cases of fuel-economy mandates and energy efficiency mandates). Behavioral science has been used, and is being used, to help inform taxes and subsidies (as, for example, in the cases of cigarette taxes, taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages, and subsides for electric cars). Behavioral science has been used, and is being used, to help inform nudges imposed on companies (with such goals as reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving occupational safety, and protecting personal privacy). Some important interventions are indeed aimed at individuals (as with fuel economy labels, nutrition labels, and calorie labels, and automatic enrollment in savings plans); sometimes such interventions have significant positive effects, and there is no evidence that they make more aggressive reforms less likely. It is preposterous to suggest that choice-preserving interventions, such as nudges, “crowd out” more aggressive approaches…(More)”.

Democracy Index 2022

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Economist Intelligence Report: “The average global index score stagnated in 2022. Despite expectations of a rebound after the lifting of pandemic-related restrictions, the score was almost unchanged, at 5.29 (on a 0-10 scale), compared with 5.28 in 2021. The positive effect of the restoration of individual freedoms was cancelled out by negative developments globally. The scores of more than half of the countries measured by the index either stagnated or declined. Western Europe was a positive outlier, being the only region whose score returned to pre-pandemic levels.

Alongside an explanation of the changes in the global rankings and an in-depth regional review, the latest edition of EIU’s Democracy Index report explores why democracy failed in Russia, how this led to the current war and why democracy in Ukraine is tied to its fight for sovereignty…(More)”.

Leveraging Data for Racial Equity in Workforce Opportunity

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Report by CODE: “Across many decades, obstacles to gainful employment have limited the ability of Black Americans and other people of color to obtain well-paying jobs that create wealth and contribute to health and well-being.

A dearth of opportunity in the job market is related to inequalities in education, bias in hiring, and other forms of systemic inequality in the U.S.

Over time, federal efforts have addressed the need to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in the government workforce, and promoted similar changes in the broader society. While these efforts have brought progress, they have not been entirely effective. At the same time, federal action has made new kinds of data available—data that can shed light on some of the historic drivers of workforce inequity and help inform solutions to their ongoing impact.

This report explores a number of current opportunities to strengthen longstanding data-driven tools to address workforce inequity. The report shows how the effects of workforce discrimination and other historic practices are still being felt today. At the same time, it outlines opportunities to apply data to increase equity in many areas related to the workforce gap, including disparities in health and wellbeing, socioeconomic status, and housing insecurity…(More)”.

Engineering Personal Data Sharing

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Report by ENISA: “This report attempts to look closer at specific use cases relating to personal data sharing, primarily in the health sector, and discusses how specific technologies and considerations of implementation can support the meeting of specific data protection. After discussing some challenges in (personal) data sharing, this report demonstrates how to engineer specific technologies and techniques in order to enable privacy preserving data sharing. More specifically it discusses specific use cases for sharing data in the health sector, with the aim of demonstrating how data protection principles can be met through the proper use of technological solutions relying on advanced cryptographic techniques. Next it discusses data sharing that takes place as part of another process or service, where the data is processed through some secondary channel or entity before reaching its primary recipient. Lastly, it identifies challenges, considerations and possible architectural solutions on intervenability aspects (such as the right to erasure and the right to rectification when sharing data)…(More)”.

Rethinking the impact of open data: A first step towards a European impact assessment for open data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report for data.europa.eu: “This report is the first in a series of four that aims to establish a standard methodology for open data impact assessments that can be used across Europe. This exercise is key because a consistent definition of the impact of open data does not exist. The lack of a robust, conceptual foundation has made it more difficult for data portals to demonstrate their value through empirical evidence. It also challenges the EU’s ability to understand and compare performance across Member States. Most academic articles that look to explore the impact of data refer to existing open data frameworks, with the open data maturity (ODM) and open data barometer (ODB) ones most frequently represented. These two frameworks distinguish between different kinds of impact, and both mention social, political and economic impacts in particular. The ODM also includes the environmental impact in its framework.

Sometimes, these frameworks diverge from the European Commission’s own recommendations of how best to measure impact, as explained in specific sections of the better regulation guidelines and the better regulation toolbox. They help to answer a critical question for policymakers: do the benefits provided outweigh the costs of assembling and distributing (open) data? Future reports in this series will further explore how to better align existing frameworks, such as the ODM, with these critically important guidelines…(More)”.