Paper by Yuehua Wu in Government Information Quarterly: “This paper presents the findings of a comparative study of laws and policies employed to protect personal data processed in the context of e-government in three countries (the United States, Germany, and China) with rather different approaches. Drawing on governance theory, the paper seeks to document the mechanisms utilized and to understand the factors that shape the governance modes adopted. The cases reveal that national government regulations have not kept pace with technological change and with the current information practices of the public sector. Nonetheless, traditional government regulation remains the major governance mode for the issue under discussion. Self-regulation and code-based regulation serve supplementary roles to traditional government regulation. National context is found to impact the form and level of data protection and the choice of governance modes.”
Introduction to Linked Open Data (LOD)
Paper by Ivan Herman, presented at the International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications 2013: “The goal of the tutorial is to introduce the audience into the basics of the technologies used for Linked Data. This includes RDF, RDFS, main elements of SPARQL, SKOS, and OWL. Some general guidelines on publishing data as Linked Data will also be provided, as well as real-life usage examples of the various technologies.”
Full Text: PDF (Description) | PDF (Presentation)
A World Of Wikipedia And Bitcoin: Is That The Promise Of Open Collaboration?
Science 2.0: “Open Collaboration, defined in a new paper as “any system of innovation or production that relies on goal-oriented yet loosely coordinated participants who interact to create a product (or service) of economic value, which they make available to contributors and non-contributors alike” brought the world Wikipedia, Bitcoin and, yes, even Science 2.0.
But what does that mean, really? That’s the first problem with vague terms in an open environment. It is anything people want it to be and sometimes what people want it to be is money, but hidden behind a guise of public weal.
TED’s lesser cousin TEDx is a result of open collaboration but there is no doubt it has successfully leveraged the marketing of TED to sell seats in auditoriums, just as it was designed to do. Generally, Open Collaboration now is less like its early days, where a group of like-minded people got together to create an Open Source tool, and more like corporations. Only they avoid the label, they are not quite non-profits and not quite corporations.
And because they are neither they can operate free of the cultural stigma. Despite efforts to claim that Wikipedia is a hotbed of misogyny and blocks out minorities, the online encyclopedia has endured just fine. Their defense is a simple one; they have no idea what gender or race or religion anyone is and anyone can contribute – it is a true open collaboration. Open Collaboration is goal-oriented, they lack the infrastructure to obey demands that they become about social justice, so the environments can be less touchy-feely than corporations and avoid the social authoritarianism of academia.
Many open collaborations perform well even in ‘harsh’ environments, where some minorities are underrepresented and diversity is lacking or when products by different groups rival one another. It’s a real puzzle for sociologists. The authors conclude that open collaboration is likely to expand into new domains, displacing traditional organizations, because it is so mission-oriented. Business executives and civic leaders should take heed – the future could look a lot more like the 1940s.”
See also: Sheen S. Levine, Michael J. Prietula, ‘Open Collaboration for Innovation: Principles and Performance’, Organization Science December 30, 2014 DOI:10.1287/orsc.2013.0872
The Effective Use of Crowdsourcing in E-Governance
Paper by Jayakumar Sowmya and Hussain Shafiq Pyarali: “The rise of Web 2.0 paradigm has empowered the Internet users to share information and generate content on social networking and media sharing platforms such as wikis and blogs. The trend of harnessing the wisdom of public using Web 2.0 distributed networks through open calls is termed as ‘Crowdsourcing’. In addition to businesses, this powerful idea of using collective intelligence or the ‘wisdom of crowd’ applies to different situations, such as in governments and non-profit organizations which have started utilizing crowdsourcing as an essential problem -solving tool. In addition, the widespread and easy access to technologies such as the Internet, mobile phones and other communication devices has resulted in an exponential growth in the use of crowdsourcing for government policy advocacy, e-democracy and e-governance during the past decade. However, utilizing collective intelligence and efforts of public to find solutions to real life problems using web 2.0 tools does come with its share of associated challenges and limitations. This paper aims at identifying and examining the value-adding strategies which contribute to the success of crowdsourcing in e-governance. The qualitative case study analysis and emphatic design methodology are employed to evaluate the effectiveness of the identified strategic and functional components, by analyzing the characteristics of some of the notable cases of crowdsourcing in e-governance and the findings are tabulated and discussed. The paper concludes with the limitations and the implications for future research”.
Open data policies, their implementation and impact: A framework for comparison
Paper by A Zuiderwijk, M Janssen in the Government Information Quarterly: “In developing open data policies, governments aim to stimulate and guide the publication of government data and to gain advantages from its use. Currently there is a multiplicity of open data policies at various levels of government, whereas very little systematic and structured research has been done on the issues that are covered by open data policies, their intent and actual impact. Furthermore, no suitable framework for comparing open data policies is available, as open data is a recent phenomenon and is thus in an early stage of development. In order to help bring about a better understanding of the common and differentiating elements in the policies and to identify the factors affecting the variation in policies, this paper develops a framework for comparing open data policies. The framework includes the factors of environment and context, policy content, performance indicators and public values. Using this framework, seven Dutch governmental policies at different government levels are compared. The comparison shows both similarities and differences among open data policies, providing opportunities to learn from each other’s policies. The findings suggest that current policies are rather inward looking, open data policies can be improved by collaborating with other organizations, focusing on the impact of the policy, stimulating the use of open data and looking at the need to create a culture in which publicizing data is incorporated in daily working processes. The findings could contribute to the development of new open data policies and the improvement of existing open data policies.”
People Powered Social Innovation: The Need for Citizen Engagement
Paper for the Lien Centre for Social Innovation (Singapore): “the Citizen engagement is widely regarded as critical to the development and implementation of social innovation. What is citizen engagement? What does it mean in the context of social innovation? Julie Simon and Anna Davies discuss the importance as well as the implications of engaging the ground…”
Using Social Media in Rulemaking: Possibilities and Barriers
New paper by Michael Herz (Cardozo Legal Studies Research Paper No. 417): “Web 2.0” is characterized by interaction, collaboration, non-static web sites, use of social media, and creation of user-generated content. In theory, these Web 2.0 tools can be harnessed not only in the private sphere but as tools for an e-topia of citizen engagement and participatory democracy. Notice-and-comment rulemaking is the pre-digital government process that most approached (while still falling far short of) the e-topian vision of public participation in deliberative governance. The notice-and-comment process for federal agency rulemaking has now changed from a paper process to an electronic one. Expectations for this switch were high; many anticipated a revolution that would make rulemaking not just more efficient, but also more broadly participatory, democratic, and dialogic. In the event, the move online has not produced a fundamental shift in the nature of notice-and-comment rulemaking. At the same time, the online world in general has come to be increasingly characterized by participatory and dialogic activities, with a move from static, text-based websites to dynamic, multi-media platforms with large amounts of user-generated content. This shift has not left agencies untouched. To the contrary, agencies at all levels of government have embraced social media – by late 2013 there were over 1000 registered federal agency twitter feeds and over 1000 registered federal agency Facebook pages, for example – but these have been used much more as tools for broadcasting the agency’s message than for dialogue or obtaining input. All of which invites the questions whether agencies could or should directly rely on social media in the rulemaking process.
This study reviews how federal agencies have been using social media to date and considers the practical and legal barriers to using social media in rulemaking, not just to raise the visibility of rulemakings, which is certainly happening, but to gather relevant input and help formulate the content of rules.
The study was undertaken for the Administrative Conference of the United States and is the basis for a set of recommendations adopted by ACUS in December 2013. Those recommendations overlap with but are not identical to the recommendations set out herein.”
Selected Readings on Data Visualization
The Living Library’s Selected Readings series seeks to build a knowledge base on innovative approaches for improving the effectiveness and legitimacy of governance. This curated and annotated collection of recommended works on the topic of data visualization was originally published in 2013.
Data visualization is a response to the ever-increasing amount of information in the world. With big data, informatics and predictive analytics, we have an unprecedented opportunity to revolutionize policy-making. Yet data by itself can be overwhelming. New tools and techniques for visualizing information can help policymakers clearly articulate insights drawn from data. Moreover, the rise of open data is enabling those outside of government to create informative and visually arresting representations of public information that can be used to support decision-making by those inside or outside governing institutions.
Selected Reading List (in alphabetical order)
- D.J. Duke, K.W. Brodlie, D.A. Duce and I. Herman — Do You See What I Mean? [Data Visualization] — a paper arguing for a systematic ontology for data visualization.
- Michael Friendly — A Brief History of Data Visualization – a brief overview of the history of data visualization that traces the path from early cartography and statistical graphics to modern visualization practices.
- Alvaro Graves and James Hendler — Visualization Tools for Open Government Data — a paper arguing for wider use of visualization tools to open government data achieve its full potential for impact.
- César A. Hidalgo — Graphical Statistical Methods for the Representation of the Human Development Index and Its Components — an argument for visualizing complex data to aid in human development initiatives.
- Genie Stowers — The Use of Data Visualization in Government — a report aimed at helping public sector managers make the most of data visualization tools and practices.
Annotated Selected Reading List (in alphabetical order)
Duke, D.J., K.W. Brodlie, D.A. Duce and I. Herman. “Do You See What I Mean? [Data Visualization].” IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 25, no. 3 (2005): 6–9. http://bit.ly/1aeU6yA.
- In this paper, the authors argue that a more systematic ontology for data visualization to ensure the successful communication of meaning. “Visualization begins when someone has data that they wish to explore and interpret; the data are encoded as input to a visualization system, which may in its turn interact with other systems to produce a representation. This is communicated back to the user(s), who have to assess this against their goals and knowledge, possibly leading to further cycles of activity. Each phase of this process involves communication between two parties. For this to succeed, those parties must share a common language with an agreed meaning.”
- That authors “believe that now is the right time to consider an ontology for visualization,” and “as visualization move from just a private enterprise involving data and tools owned by a research team into a public activity using shared data repositories, computational grids, and distributed collaboration…[m]eaning becomes a shared responsibility and resource. Through the Semantic Web, there is both the means and motivation to develop a shared picture of what we see when we turn and look within our own field.”
Friendly, Michael. “A Brief History of Data Visualization.” In Handbook of Data Visualization, 15–56. Springer Handbooks Comp.Statistics. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2008. http://bit.ly/17fM1e9.
- In this paper, Friendly explores the “deep roots” of modern data visualization. “These roots reach into the histories of the earliest map making and visual depiction, and later into thematic cartography, statistics and statistical graphics, medicine and other fields. Along the way, developments in technologies (printing, reproduction), mathematical theory and practice, and empirical observation and recording enabled the wider use of graphics and new advances in form and content.”
- Just as the general the visualization of data is far from a new practice, Friendly shows that the graphical representation of government information has a similarly long history. “The collection, organization and dissemination of official government statistics on population, trade and commerce, social, moral and political issues became widespread in most of the countries of Europe from about 1825 to 1870. Reports containing data graphics were published with some regularity in France, Germany, Hungary and Finland, and with tabular displays in Sweden, Holland, Italy and elsewhere.”
Graves, Alvaro and James Hendler. “Visualization Tools for Open Government Data.” In Proceedings of the 14th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research, 136–145. Dg.o ’13. New York, NY, USA: ACM, 2013. http://bit.ly/1eNSoXQ.
- In this paper, the authors argue that, “there is a gap between current Open Data initiatives and an important part of the stakeholders of the Open Government Data Ecosystem.” As it stands, “there is an important portion of the population who could benefit from the use of OGD but who cannot do so because they cannot perform the essential operations needed to collect, process, merge, and make sense of the data. The reasons behind these problems are multiple, the most critical one being a fundamental lack of expertise and technical knowledge. We propose the use of visualizations to alleviate this situation. Visualizations provide a simple mechanism to understand and communicate large amounts of data.”
- The authors also describe a prototype of a tool to create visualizations based on OGD with the following capabilities:
- Facilitate visualization creation
- Exploratory mechanisms
- Viralization and sharing
- Repurpose of visualizations
Hidalgo, César A. “Graphical Statistical Methods for the Representation of the Human Development Index and Its Components.” United Nations Development Programme Human Development Reports, September 2010. http://bit.ly/166TKur.
- In this paper for the United Nations Human Development Programme, Hidalgo argues that “graphical statistical methods could be used to help communicate complex data and concepts through universal cognitive channels that are heretofore underused in the development literature.”
- To support his argument, representations are provided that “show how graphical methods can be used to (i) compare changes in the level of development experienced by countries (ii) make it easier to understand how these changes are tied to each one of the components of the Human Development Index (iii) understand the evolution of the distribution of countries according to HDI and its components and (iv) teach and create awareness about human development by using iconographic representations that can be used to graphically narrate the story of countries and regions.”
Stowers, Genie. “The Use of Data Visualization in Government.” IBM Center for The Business of Government, Using Technology Series, 2013. http://bit.ly/1aame9K.
- This report seeks “to help public sector managers understand one of the more important areas of data analysis today — data visualization. Data visualizations are more sophisticated, fuller graphic designs than the traditional spreadsheet charts, usually with more than two variables and, typically, incorporating interactive features.”
- Stowers also offers numerous examples of “visualizations that include geographical and health data, or population and time data, or financial data represented in both absolute and relative terms — and each communicates more than simply the data that underpin it. In addition to these many examples of visualizations, the report discusses the history of this technique, and describes tools that can be used to create visualizations from many different kinds of data sets.”
Reinventing Participation: Civic Agency and the Web Environment
New paper by Peter Dahlgren: “Participation is a key concept in the vocabulary of democracy, and can encompass a variety of dimensions. Moreover, it can be shaped by a range of different factors; my emphasis here is on the significance of the web environment in this regard. I first situate participation against the backdrop of democracy’s contemporary developments, including the onslaught of neolibealism. From there I offer a set of parameters that can help us grasp participation both conceptually and empirically: trajectory, visibility, voice , and sociality, and relate these to the affordances of the digital media. Thereafter I explore the cultural resources necessary for the facilitation of participation; for this I make use of a six-dimensional model of civic cultures. My discussion focuses on two of the dimensions, practices and identities; I again relate these to the web environment. I conclude with a dilemma that online democratic participation faces, namely what I call the isolation of the solo sphere, yet affirm that we are justified in maintaining a guarded optimism about the future of participation.”
Participation Dynamics in Crowd-Based Knowledge Production: The Scope and Sustainability of Interest-Based Motivation
New paper by Henry Sauermann and Chiara Franzoni: “Crowd-based knowledge production is attracting growing attention from scholars and practitioners. One key premise is that participants who have an intrinsic “interest” in a topic or activity are willing to expend effort at lower pay than in traditional employment relationships. However, it is not clear how strong and sustainable interest is as a source of motivation. We draw on research in psychology to discuss important static and dynamic features of interest and derive a number of research questions regarding interest-based effort in crowd-based projects. Among others, we consider the specific versus general nature of interest, highlight the potential role of matching between projects and individuals, and distinguish the intensity of interest at a point in time from the development and sustainability of interest over time. We then examine users’ participation patterns within and across 7 different crowd science projects that are hosted on a shared platform. Our results provide novel insights into contribution dynamics in crowd science projects. Moreover, given that extrinsic incentives such as pay, status, self-use, or career benefits are largely absent in these particular projects, the data also provide unique insights into the dynamics of interest-based motivation and into its potential as a driver of effort.”