Agile research

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Michael Twidale and Preben Hansen at First Monday: “Most of us struggle when starting a new research project, even if we have considerable prior experience. It is a new topic and we are unsure about what to do, how to do it and what it all means. We may not have reflected much on our research process. Furthermore the way that research is described in the literature can be rather disheartening. Those papers describe what seems to be a nice, clear, linear, logical, even inevitable progression through a series of stages. It seems like proper researchers carefully plan everything out in advance and then execute that plan. How very different from the mess, the bewilderment, the false starts, the dead ends, the reversions and changes that we make along the way. Are we just doing research wrong? If it feels like that to established researchers with decades of experience and a nice publication record, how much worse must it feel to a new researcher, such as a Ph.D. student? If they are lucky they may have a good mentoring experience, effectively serving an apprenticeship with a wise and nurturing adviser in a supportive group of fellow researchers. Even so, it can be all too easy to feel like an imposter who must be doing it all wrong because what you are doing is not at all like what you read about what others are doing.

In the light of these confusions, fears, doubts and mismatches with what you experience while doing research and what you think is the right and proper way as alluded to in all the papers you read, we want to explore ideas around a title, or at least a provocative metaphor of “agile research”. We want to ask the question: “how might we take the ideas, the methods and the underlying philosophy behind agile software development and explore how these might be applied in the context of doing research?” This paper is not about sharing a set of methods that we have developed but more about provoking a discussion about the issue: What might agile research be like? How might it work? When might it be useful? When might it be problematic? Is it worth trying? Are people doing it already?

We are not claiming that this idea is wholly new. Many people have been using small scale rapid iterative methods within the research process for a long time. Rather we think that it can be useful to consider all these and other possible methods in the light of the successful deployment of agile software development processes, and to contrast them with more conventional research processes that rely more on careful advance planning. That is not to say that the latter methods are bad, just that other methods that might be characterized as more agile can be useful in particular circumstances.

We believe that it is worth exploring this idea as a way of addressing the problems that arise in trying to do a new research project, especially where an exploratory approach is useful. This could be in a domain that is new to the researcher, or where the domain is new in some way, such as involving new use contexts, new ways of interacting, new technologies, novel technology combinations, or new appropriations of existing technologies. We suspect this may be especially useful in helping new researchers such as PhD students get a better understanding of the research process in a less daunting manner. This work builds on prior thinking about how agile may be applied in university teaching and administration (Twidale and Nichols, 2013)….(More)”.

The Paradox of Police Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Stacy Wood in KULA: knowledge creation, dissemination, and preservation studies: “This paper considers the history and politics of ‘police data.’ Police data, I contend, is a category of endangered data reliant on voluntary and inconsistent reporting by law enforcement agencies; it is also inconsistently described and routinely housed in systems that were not designed with long-term strategies for data preservation, curation or management in mind. Moreover, whereas US law enforcement agencies have, for over a century, produced and published a great deal of data about crime, data about the ways in which police officers spend their time and make decisions about resources—as well as information about patterns of individual officer behavior, use of force, and in-custody deaths—is difficult to find. This presents a paradoxical situation wherein vast stores of extant data are completely inaccessible to the public. This paradoxical state is not new, but the continuation of a long history co-constituted by technologies, epistemologies and context….(More)”.

Efficacious and Ethical Public Paternalism

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Daniel M. Hausman in the Review of Behavioral Economics (Special Issue on Behavioral Economics and New Paternalism): “People often make bad judgments. A big brother or sister who was wise, well-informed, and properly-motivated could often make better decisions for almost everyone. But can governments, which are not staffed with ideal big brothers or sisters, improve upon the mediocre decisions individuals make? If so, when and how? The risks of extending the reach of government into guiding individual lives must also be addressed. This essay addresses three questions concerning when paternalistic policies can be efficacious, efficient, and safe: 1. In what circumstances can policy makers be confident that they know better than individuals how individuals can best promote their own well-being? 2. What are the methods governments can use to lead people to make decision that are better for themselves? 3. What are the moral pluses and minuses of these methods? Answering these questions defines a domain in which paternalistic policy is an attractive option….(More)”.

Participatory Design for Innovation in Access to Justice

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Margaret Hagan at Daedalus: “Most access-to-justice technologies are designed by lawyers and reflect lawyers’ perspectives on what people need. Most of these technologies do not fulfill their promise because the people they are designed to serve do not use them. Participatory design, which was developed in Scandinavia as a process for creating better software, brings end users and other stakeholders into the design process to help decide what problems need to be solved and how. Work at the Stanford Legal Design Lab highlights new insights about what tools can provide the assistance that people actually need, and about where and how they are likely to access and use those tools. These participatory design models lead to more effective innovation and greater community engagement with courts and the legal system.

A decade into the push for innovation in access to justice, most efforts reflect the interests and concerns of courts and lawyers rather than the needs of the people the innovations are supposed to serve. New legal technologies and services, whether aiming to help people expunge their criminal records or to get divorced in more cooperative ways, have not been adopted by the general public. Instead, it is primarily lawyers who use them.1

One way to increase the likelihood that innovations will serve clients would be to involve clients in designing them. Participatory design emerged in Scandinavia in the 1970s as a way to think more effectively about decision-making in the workplace.  It evolved into a strategy for developing software in which potential users were invited to help define a vision of a product, and it has since been widely used for changing systems like elementary education, hospital services, and smart cities, which use data and technology to improve sustainability and foster economic development.3

Participatory design’s promise is that “system innovation” is more likely to be effective in producing tools that the target group will use and in spending existing resources efficiently to do so. Courts spend an enormous amount of money on information technology every year. But the technology often fails to meet courts’ goals: barely half of the people affected are satisfied with courts’ customer service….(More)”.

A systematic review of the public administration literature to identify how to increase public engagement and participation with local governance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Josephine Gatti Schafer: “A systematic review of the public administration literature on public engagement and participation is conducted with the expressed intent to develop an actionable evidence base for public managers. Over 900 articles, in nine peer‐reviewed public administration journals are screened on the topic. The evidence from 40 articles is classified, summarized, and applied to inform the managerial practice of activating and recruiting the participation of the public in the affairs of local governance. The review also provides brief explanation on how systematic reviews can fill a need in governance from the evidence‐based management perspective….(More)”.

Are We Game for Gamification? Potential and Limits of Game-Design Elements to Foster Civic Engagement and Encourage Participation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Gianluca Sgueo: “Together with robotics, artificial intelligence, biometrics and data, (serious-) games fall within the technological paradigm that is evolving the administration of public entities. The use of game-design elements beyond mere entertainment is not entirely a new approach to problem solving. Business actors have long-incorporated game-design elements – such as badges, points, levels, rankings, prize challenges, and virtual currencies – into their marketing and communications strategies. However this phenomenon has progressed dramatically in recent years, with the public sector at the forefront of experiments with ‘gamification’. To public regulators, the gamification of governance seems promising on three fronts. First, it encourages innovative, and cost-saving, approaches to regulatory challenges. Second, it presents an opportunity to nurture the trust of citizens, and thus enhance perceptions of legitimacy. Third, it creates new incentives to promote civic engagement and foster participation. What was once simplistically labelled as ‘play’ could become a primary form of interaction with public regulators. After all, who wouldn’t want to have an opportunity to impact on public choices, and do so in a non-boring, novel and dynamic, way?

The gamification of governance – claims this paper – shows great potential to foster civic engagement and encourage participation in policy-making. The data around the general publics’ response and perception to game-design incentives are encouraging. Yet – argues this paper – gamification is not without risks. Various challenges are posed by gamified policy-making, particularly with regards to security and inclusiveness (i.e. do gamified policies conform to recognized security and privacy standards? Are they sufficiently inclusive?). Additionally, concerns surround the quality of public’s response to gamified incentives (i.e. is gamification merely encouraging low-risk/low-cost engagement, or does it genuinely drive public participation, both online and offline?). Questions have also been raised about the longevity and duration of engagement – are game-design elements fostering long-term, durable, civic engagement, or do they merely encourage one-time, occasional, participation? This paper develops around five concepts that are key to understanding the link between gamification with civic engagement and public sector’s innovation. The first is “Reputation”, followed by “Automation” and “Structure”. The fourth and fifth consist of “Nudging” and “Crowdsourcing”, respectively. Alongside the analysis of these concepts, and their respective interplay, the paper provides an empirical account of efforts to ‘gamify’ public policies, at both national and supranational levels; it illustrates the outcomes that public regulators expect from efforts with gamification; and it considers the weaknesses, both practical and theoretical, related to the use of game-design elements to encourage participation….(More)”.

Cities, Government, Law, and Civil Society

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Heidi Li Feldman: “For too long, legal commentators have developed accounts of law, governments and civil society, and rights to access that society, from a national-federal perspective. As Americans increasingly live in cities, it is time for legal theorists to concentrate on municipalities as the locus of civil society. From an American national-federal perspective, government and law play primarily a remedial role with regard to civil society, stepping in only to resolve great inequities, usually by creating legally recognized civil rights and enforcing them. Civil society and civil rights, however, exceed this cramped national-federal window on it. Throughout the United States today, civil society is a multi-faceted arena for social coordination and social cooperation, for consonant and collective action of many different kinds. The only reason civil rights and the legal protection of them matters is because participation in civil society is makes it possible for individuals to engage in all manner of activities that are useful, enjoyable, and worthwhile. In other words, the significance of civil rights follows from the existence of a civil society worth participating in. To the extent that government can and does make civil society viable and valuable, it is an integral part of civil society. That feature gets lost in a remedial account of the relationship between government, law, and civil society. 

Perhaps the role of cities in civil society has been neglected by the legal academy because cities are not sovereigns. Sovereignty has often been the issue that provokes theoretical attention to government and its role in civil life. At the heart of the federal-national account of civil society and government is the potential threat the sovereign poses to other actors in civil society. But there is no necessary connection between concentrating on the nature and workings of sovereignty and considering the role for government and law in civil society. And when a government is not a sovereign, its ability to threaten is inherently constrained. That is what examining cities, non-sovereign governments embedded in a web of other governments, shows us. 

When we turn our attention to cities, a very different role for government and law emerges. Cities often exemplify how government and law can enable civil society and all those encompassed by it. They show how government can promote and amplify collective action, not only at the local level but even at the international one. In the United States today, governments can and do provide resources for consonant and collective action even in nongovernmental settings. Governments also coordinate and cooperate alongside fellow actors such as citizen activist groups, small and large businesses, labor unions, universities and colleges, and other nongovernmental organizations. This is particularly apparent at the local level. By delving into local government, we gain a distinctive perspective on the intersection of government and law, on one hand, and civil society, on the other — on what that intersection does, can, and should be like. This paper develops a first iteration of a locality centered account of civil society and the role for government and law within it. I examine a particular municipality, the City of Pittsburgh, to provide a concrete example from which to generate ideas and judgements about the terrain and content of this localist account….(More)”.

Beyond the IRB: Towards a typology of research ethics in applied economics

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Michler, Jeffrey D., Masters, William A. and Josephson, Anna: “Conversations about ethics often appeal to those responsible for the ethical behavior, encouraging adoption of “better,” more ethical conduct. In this paper, we consider an alternative frame: a typology of ethical misconduct, focusing on who are the victims of various types of unethical behavior. The typology is constructed around 1) who may be harmed and 2) by what mechanism an individual or party is harmed. Building a typology helps to identify times in the life cycle of a research idea where differences exist between who is potentially harmed and who the existing ethical norms protect.

We discuss ethical practices including IRB approvals, which focuses almost entirely on risks to subjects; pre-analysis plans and conflict of interest disclosures, which encourage transparency so as to not mislead editors, reviewers, and readers; and self-plagiarism, which has become increasing common as authors slice their research ever more thinly, causing congestion in journals at the expense of others….(More)”.

Innovation Contests: How to Engage Citizens in Solving Urban Problems?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Sarah Hartmann, Agnes Mainka and Wolfgang G. Stock: “Cities all over the world are challenged with problems evolving from increasing urbanity, population growth, and density. For example, one prominent issue that is addressed in many cities is mobility. To develop smart city solutions, governments are trying to introduce open innovation. They have started to open their governmental and city related data as well as awake the citizens’ awareness on urban problems through innovation contests. Citizens are the users of the city and therefore, have a practical motivation to engage in innovation contests as for example in hackathons and app competitions. The collaboration and co-creation of civic services by means of innovation contests is a cultural development of how governments and citizens work together in an open governmental environment. A qualitative analysis of innovation contests in 24 world cities reveals this global trend. In particular, such events increase the awareness of citizens and local businesses for identifying and solving urban challenges and are helpful means to transfer the smart city idea into practicable solutions….(More)”

Understanding Smart Cities: Innovation ecosystems, technological advancements, and societal challenges

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Introduction of Special Issue of Technological Forecasting and Social Change by Francesco PaoloAppio, MarcosLima, and Sotirios Paroutis: “Smart Cities initiatives are spreading all around the globe at a phenomenal pace. Their bold ambition is to increase the competitiveness of local communities through innovation while increasing the quality of life for its citizens through better public services and a cleaner environment. Prior research has shown contrasting views and a multitude of dimensions and approaches to look at this phenomenon. In spite of the fact that this can stimulate the debate, it lacks a systematic assessment and an integrative view. The papers in the special issue on “Understanding Smart Cities: Innovation Ecosystems, Technological Advancements, and Societal Challenges” take stock of past work and provide new insights through the lenses of a hybrid framework. Moving from these premises, we offer an overview of the topic by featuring possible linkages and thematic clusters. Then, we sketch a novel research agenda for scholars, practitioners, and policy makers who wish to engage in – and build – a critical, constructive, and conducive discourse on Smart Cities….(More)”.