OECD Report: “Measuring the performance of services and making effective use of the results are critical for designing and delivering policies to improve people’s lives. Improving user satisfaction with public services is an objective in many OECD countries and is one of the indicators in the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal 16 of “Building effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels”. This paper explores the use of satisfaction indicators to monitor citizens’ and users’ experience with public services. It finds that satisfaction indicators provide an accurate aggregate account of the factors driving service performance. At the same time, it shows that additional measures are needed to monitor the access, responsiveness and quality of public services, as well as to identify concrete areas of improvement. This paper provides examples of how countries use performance data in decision making (both subjective users’ experience and objective service outputs). It also highlights common challenges and good practices to strengthen performance measurement and management…(More)”.
Toolkit on Digital Transformation for People-Oriented Cities and Communities
Toolkit by the ITU: “The Toolkit on Digital Transformation for People-Oriented Cities and Communities supports strategizing and planning the digital transformation of cities and communities to promote sustainable, inclusive, resilient and improved quality of life for residents in cities and communities.
The resources contained in this Toolkit include international standards and guidance, the latest research and projections, and cutting-edge reports on a variety of timely topics relevant to the digital transformation of cities and communities. The Toolkit can universally benefit cities and communities, as well as regions and countries regardless of their level of smart or digital development, or their geographical or economic status.
The Toolkit is:
- A one-stop guide containing latest international standards and other ITU and UN resources, publications and reports.
- An endeavour to identify the challenges faced by cities as well as potential solutions that they can leverage for maximum positive impact.
- A comprehensive, yet non-exhaustive collation of information that is meant to inspire and support progress toward the SDGs, especially SDG 11, at the local level...(More)”
Public Data Commons: A public-interest framework for B2G data sharing in the Data Act
Policy Brief by Alek Tarkowski & Francesco Vogelezang: “It is by now a truism that data is a crucial resource in the digital era. Yet today access to data and the capacity to make use of data and to benefit from it are unevenly distributed. A new understanding of data is needed, one that takes into account a society-wide data sharing and value creation. This will solve power asymmetries related to data ownership and the capacity to use it, and fill the public value gap with regard to data-driven growth and innovation.
Public institutions are also in a unique position to safeguard the rule of law, ensure democratic control and accountability, and drive the use of data to generate non-economic value.
The “data sharing for public good” narratives have been presented for over a decade, arguing that privately-owned big data should be used for the public interest. The idea of the commons has attracted the attention of policymakers interested in developing institutional responses that can advance public interest goals. The concept of the data commons offers a generative model of property that is well-aligned with the ambitions of the European data strategy. And by employing the idea of the data commons, the public debate can be shifted beyond an opposition between treating data as a commodity or protecting it as the object of fundamental rights.
The European Union is uniquely positioned to deliver a data governance framework that ensures Business-to-Government (B2G) data sharing in the public interest. The policy vision for such a framework has been presented in the European strategy for data, and specific recommendations for a robust B2G data sharing model have been made by the Commission’s high-level expert group.
There are three connected objectives that must be achieved through a B2G data sharing framework. Firstly, access to data and the capacity to make use of it needs to be ensured for a broader range of actors. Secondly, exclusive corporate control over data needs to be reduced. And thirdly, the information power of the state and its generative capacity should be strengthened.
Yet the current proposal for the Data Act fails to meet these goals, due to a narrow B2G data sharing mandate limited only to situations of public emergency and exceptional need.
This policy brief therefore presents a model for public interest B2G data sharing, aimed to complement the current proposal. This framework would also create a robust baseline for sectoral regulations, like the recently proposed Regulation on the European Health Data Space. The proposal includes the creation of the European Public Data Commons, a body that acts as a recipient and clearinghouse for the data made available…(More)”.
Data for an Inclusive Economic Recovery
Report by the National Skills Coalition: “A truly inclusive economic recovery means that the workers and businesses who were most impacted by this pandemic, as well as workers who have been held back by structural barriers of discrimination or lack of opportunity, are empowered to equitably participate in and benefit from the economy’s expansion and restructuring.
But we need data on how different workers and businesses are faring in the recovery, so
we can hold policymakers accountable to equitable outcomes. Disparities and inequities in skills training programs can only be eliminated if there is high-quality information on program outcomes available to practitioners and policymakers to assess and address equity gaps. Once we have the data – we can use it to drive the change we need!
Data for an Inclusive Economic Recovery provides recommendations on how to measure and report on what really matters to help diminish structural inequities and to shape implementation of federal recovery investments as well as new state and federal workforce investments…
Recommendations Include:
- Requiring that all education and skills training programs include collection of self-reported demographic characteristics of workers and learners so outcomes can be disaggregated by race, ethnicity, gender, English language proficiency, income, and geography ;
- Ensuring participants of skills training programs know what demographic characteristics are being collected about them, who will have access to personally identifiable information, and how their data will be used;
- Establishing common outcomes metrics across federal skills training programs;
- Expanding outcomes to include those that allow policymakers to assess the quality of skills training programs and measure economic mobility along a career pathway;
- Ensuring equitable access to administrative data;
- Mandating public reporting on skills training and workforce investment outcomes; and
Providing sufficient funding for linked education and workforce data systems…(More)”.
The Sky’s Not The Limit: How Lower-Income Cities Can Leverage Drones
Report by UNDP: “Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are playing an important role in last-mile service delivery around the world. However, COVID-19 has highlighted a potentially broader role that UAVs could play – in cities. Higher-income cities are exploring the technology, but there is little documentation of use cases or potential initiatives in a development context. This report provides practical and applied guidance to lower-income cities looking to explore how drones can support key urban objectives…(More)”.
How can digital public technologies accelerate progress on the Sustainable Development Goals?
Report by George Ingram, John W. McArthur, and Priya Vora: “…There is no singular relationship between access to digital technologies and SDG outcomes. Country- and issue-specific assessments are essential. Sound approaches will frequently depend on the underlying physical infrastructure and economic systems. Rwanda, for instance, has made tremendous progress on SDG health indicators despite high rates of income poverty and internet poverty. This contrasts with Burkina Faso, which has lower income poverty and internet poverty but higher child mortality.
We draw from an OECD typology to identify three layers of a digital ecosystem: Physical infrastructure, platform infrastructure, and apps-level products. Physical and platform layers of digital infrastructure provide the rules, standards, and security guarantees so that local market innovators and governments can develop new ideas more rapidly to meet ever-changing circumstances. We emphasize five forms of DPT platform infrastructure that can play important roles in supporting SDG acceleration:
- Personal identification and registration infrastructure allows citizens and organizations to have equal access to basic rights and services;
- Payments infrastructure enables efficient resource transfer with low transaction costs;
- Knowledge infrastructure links educational resources and data sets in an open or permissioned way;
- Data exchange infrastructure enables interoperability of independent databases; and
- Mapping infrastructure intersects with data exchange platforms to empower geospatially enabled diagnostics and service delivery opportunities.
Each of these platform types can contribute directly or indirectly to a range of SDG outcomes. For example, a person’s ability to register their identity with public sector entities is fundamental to everything from a birth certificate (SDG target 16.9) to a land title (SDG 1.4), bank account (SDG 8.10), driver’s license, or government-sponsored social protection (SDG 1.3). It can also ensure access to publicly available basic services, such as access to public schools (SDG 4.1) and health clinics (SDG 3.8).
At least three levers can help “level the playing field” such that a wide array of service providers can use the physical and platform layers of digital infrastructure equally: (1) public ownership and governance; (2) public regulation; and (3) open code, standards, and protocols. In practice, DPTs are typically built and deployed through a mix of levers, enabling different public and private actors to extract benefits through unique pathways….(More)”.
Pandemic X Infodemic: How States Shaped Narratives During COVID-19
Report by Innovation for Change – East Asia (I4C-EA): “The COVID-19 pandemic has left many unprecedented records in the history of the world. The coronavirus crisis was the first large-scale pandemic that began in a time when the internet and social media connect people to each other. It provided the latest information to respond to the COVID-19 and the technology to ask about each other’s well-being. Yet, it spread and amplified disinformation and misinformation that made the situation worse in real-time.
In addition, some countries have had opaque communications with the public about the COVID-19, and some government officials have aided in the dissemination of unconfirmed information. Other countries also created their own narratives on the COVID-19 and were reluctant to disclose important information to the public. This has led to restrictions on freedom of expression. Activists and journalists who tell the different stories from the state-shaped narrative were arrested.
To strengthen civil society’s effort to empower the public with better access to the truth, the Innovation for Change – East Asia Hub initiated “Pandemic X Infodemic: How States Shaped Narratives During COVID-19“; a research to track East Asian governments’ information, disinformation, and misinformation efforts in their respective policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020-21. This research covered four countries – China, Myanmar, Indonesia, and the Philippines – with one thematic focus on migrants in the receiving countries of Thailand and Singapore…(More)”.
“Co-construction” in Deliberative Democracy: Lessons from the French Citizens’ Convention for Climate
Paper by L.G. Giraudet et al: “Launched in 2019, the French Citizens’ Convention for Climate (CCC) tasked 150 randomly-chosen citizens with proposing fair and effective measures to fight climate change. This was to be fulfilled through an “innovative co-construction procedure,” involving some unspecified external input alongside that from the citizens. Did inputs from the steering bodies undermine the citizens’ accountability for the output? Did co-construction help the output resonate with the general public, as is expected from a citizens’ assembly? To answer these questions, we build on our unique experience in observing the CCC proceedings and documenting them with qualitative and quantitative data. We find that the steering bodies’ input, albeit significant, did not impair the citizens’ agency, creativity and freedom of choice. While succeeding in creating consensus among the citizens who were involved, this co-constructive approach however failed to generate significant support among the broader public. These results call for a strengthening of the commitment structure that determines how follow-up on the proposals from a citizens’ assembly should be conducted…(More)”.
Systems thinking for civil servants
UK Gov: “The guidance is intended for civil servants working all over government, regardless of grade, department, background or profession.
The documents include:
- an introduction to systems thinking, a short summary of what systems thinking is, when it is useful and why it can be beneficial to your work
- the systems thinking journey, which expands on the content within the introduction to systems thinking and maps 5 systems thinking principles to different stages of the policy design process
- the systems thinking toolkit, which contains step-by-step instructions on how to use 11 systems thinking tools
- the systems thinking case study bank, which contains a collection of 14 personal testimonials from civil servants on their experiences of using systems thinking in their work
This suite of documents aims to act as a springboard into systems thinking for civil servants unfamiliar with this approach. We introduce a small sample of systems thinking concepts and tools, chosen due to their accessibility and alignment to civil service policy development, but which is by no means comprehensive. We hope this acts as a first step towards using systems thinking approaches to solve complex problems and we strongly encourage the reader to go on to explore the wider systems thinking field further. These documents are ‘beta versions’ which we hope to update in the future in response to user feedback….(More)”.
State of Open Data Policy Repository
The GovLab: “To accompany its State of Open Data Policy Summit, the Open Data Policy Lab announced the release of a new resource to assess recent policy developments surrounding open data, data reuse, and data collaboration around the world: State of Open Data Repository of Recent Developments.
This document examines recent legislation, directives, and proposals that affect open data and data collaboration. Its goal is to capture signals of concerns, direction and leadership as to determine what stakeholders may focus on in the future. The review currently surfaced approximately 50 examples of recent legislative acts, proposals, directives, and other policy documents, from which the Open Data Policy Lab draws findings about the need to promote more innovative policy frameworks.
This collection demonstrates that, while there is growing interest in open data and data collaboration, policy development still remains nascent and focused on open data repositories at the expense of other collaborative arrangements. As we indicated in our report on the Third Wave of Open Data, there is an urgent need for governance frameworks at the local, regional, and national level to facilitate responsible reuse…(More)”.