Paper by Michael A. Nelson: “This paper contributes to the literature on the nexus between decentralization and citizen trust in government through the use of a comprehensive set of decentralization measures that have been recently developed. Using measures of autonomy at both the regional and local (municipal) levels of government, and responses from five recent waves of the World Values Survey on citizen trust/confidence in their national government, the civil service, and the police, several interesting insights emerged from the analysis. First, giving regional governments a voice in policy making for the country as a whole promotes trust in government at the national level and in the civil service. Second, deconcentration – central government offices at the regional level as opposed to autonomous regional governments –appears to be an effective strategy to generate greater confidence in government activities. Third, affording regional and local governments complete autonomy in the delivery of government services without at least some oversight by higher levels of government is not found to be trust promoting. Finally, giving local governments authority to levy at least one major tax is associated with greater government trust, a finding that is consistent with others who have found tax decentralization to be linked with better outcomes in the public sector. Overall, the analysis suggests that the caution researchers sometimes give when using one-dimensional measures of the authority/autonomy measures of subnational governments such a fiscal decentralization is warranted…(More)”.
An Audit Framework for Adopting AI-Nudging on Children
Paper by Marianna Ganapini, and Enrico Panai: “This is an audit framework for AI-nudging. Unlike the static form of nudging usually discussed in the literature, we focus here on a type of nudging that uses large amounts of data to provide personalized, dynamic feedback and interfaces. We call this AI-nudging (Lanzing, 2019, p. 549; Yeung, 2017). The ultimate goal of the audit outlined here is to ensure that an AI system that uses nudges will maintain a level of moral inertia and neutrality by complying with the recommendations, requirements, or suggestions of the audit (in other words, the criteria of the audit). In the case of unintended negative consequences, the audit suggests risk mitigation mechanisms that can be put in place. In the case of unintended positive consequences, it suggests some reinforcement mechanisms. Sponsored by the IBM-Notre Dame Tech Ethics Lab…(More)”.
Deliberating Like a State: Locating Public Administration Within the Deliberative System
Paper by Rikki Dean: “Public administration is the largest part of the democratic state and a key consideration in understanding its legitimacy. Despite this, democratic theory is notoriously quiet about public administration. One exception is deliberative systems theories, which have recognized the importance of public administration and attempted to incorporate it within their orbit. This article examines how deliberative systems approaches have represented (a) the actors and institutions of public administration, (b) its mode of coordination, (c) its key legitimacy functions, (d) its legitimacy relationships, and (e) the possibilities for deliberative intervention. It argues that constructing public administration through the pre-existing conceptual categories of deliberative democracy, largely developed to explain the legitimacy of law-making, has led to some significant omissions and misunderstandings. The article redresses these issues by providing an expanded conceptualization of public administration, connected to the core concerns of deliberative and other democratic theories with democratic legitimacy and democratic reform…(More)”.
Operationalizing digital self-determination
Paper by Stefaan G. Verhulst: “A proliferation of data-generating devices, sensors, and applications has led to unprecedented amounts of digital data. We live in an era of datafication, one in which life is increasingly quantified and transformed into intelligence for private or public benefit. When used responsibly, this offers new opportunities for public good. The potential of data is evident in the possibilities offered by open data and data collaboratives—both instances of how wider access to data can lead to positive and often dramatic social transformation. However, three key forms of asymmetry currently limit this potential, especially for already vulnerable and marginalized groups: data asymmetries, information asymmetries, and agency asymmetries. These asymmetries limit human potential, both in a practical and psychological sense, leading to feelings of disempowerment and eroding public trust in technology. Existing methods to limit asymmetries (such as open data or consent) as well as some alternatives under consideration (data ownership, collective ownership, personal information management systems) have limitations to adequately address the challenges at hand. A new principle and practice of digital self-determination (DSD) is therefore required. The study and practice of DSD remain in its infancy. The characteristics we have outlined here are only exploratory, and much work remains to be done so as to better understand what works and what does not. We suggest the need for a new research framework or agenda to explore DSD and how it can address the asymmetries, imbalances, and inequalities—both in data and society more generally—that are emerging as key public policy challenges of our era…(More)”.
Building scenarios for urban mobility in 2030: The combination of cross-impact balance analysis with participatory stakeholder workshops
Paper by Sara Tori, Geert te Boveldt, Imre Keseru: “In recent years, scenarios have been increasingly used as a tool for helping decision makers deal with uncertainty, assess risks, enhance policy performance, expand creativity, and stimulate open discussion. In transport, scenario planning is an established method to help solve the mobility challenges of cities. In this paper, we propose a mixed-methods approach that combines cross-impact balance analysis with creative scenario planning workshops. CIB analysis was used to obtain raw scenarios that were enhanced with the output from creative workshops to obtain narratives and visuals to make the scenarios easily communicable. The approach was applied in five cities simultaneously. For each city, we developed three different scenarios for urban mobility by 2030. We found that developing the cross-impact matrix centrally and then adapting it to each city’s local context can significantly reduce the time needed for the analysis. In addition, the methodology employed can easily be adapted to the needs of local stakeholders. As it is a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods, it is easily understandable for stakeholders, allowing them to fully participate in the process. The creative outputs in the form of narratives and images have helped to create results that are easy to communicate with the stakeholders…(More)”.
Data property, data governance and Common European Data Spaces
Paper by Thomas Margoni, Charlotte Ducuing and Luca Schirru: “The Data Act proposal of February 2022 constitutes a central element of a broader and ambitious initiative of the European Commission (EC) to regulate the data economy through the erection of a new general regulatory framework for data and digital markets. The resulting framework may be represented as a model of governance between a pure market-driven model and a fully regulated approach, thereby combining elements that traditionally belong to private law (e.g., property rights, contracts) and public law (e.g., regulatory authorities, limitation of contractual freedom). This article discusses the role of (intellectual) property rights as well as of other forms of rights allocation in data legislation with particular attention to the Data Act proposal. We argue that the proposed Data Act has the potential to play a key role in the way in which data, especially privately held data, may be accessed, used, and shared. Nevertheless, it is only by looking at the whole body of data (and data related) legislation that the broader plan for a data economy can be grasped in its entirety. Additionally, the Data Act proposal may also arguably reveal the elements for a transition from a property-based to a governance-based paradigm in the EU data strategy. Whereas elements of data governance abound, the stickiness of property rights and rhetoric seem however hard to overcome. The resulting regulatory framework, at least for now, is therefore an interesting but not always perfectly coordinated mix of both. Finally, this article suggests that the Data Act Proposal may have missed the chance to properly address the issue of data holders’ power and related information asymmetries, as well as the need for coordination mechanisms…(More)”.
Building Online Public Consultation Knowledge
Graphs
Paper by William Aboucaya, Sonia Guehis and Rafael Angarita: “Online consultation platforms have improved the possibilities for citizens to have an input on public decision making. However, and especially at large scale, identification of the topics discussed and entities evoked has been identified as difficult for both citizens and platform administrators. In this paper, we leverage topic modeling, Named Entity Recognition and Linking and Semantic Textual Similarity to build a knowledge graph representing the different contributions to the République Numérique online citizen consultation in French language. The generated graph links the different proposals to topics identified in the consultation and to relevant DBpedia resources. The model proposed for representation of citizen consultations as knowledge graphs simplifies the retrieval of proposals focused on specific topics or mentioning a given entity. It also allows us to improve contextualization of important words in proposals by linking them to short definitions extracted from Wikipedia…(More)”.
Participatory Digital Futures: How digital transformation can be made good for all
Paper by Mark Findlay and Sharanya Shanmugam: “Digital transformation through the widespread use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-assisted technology and big data usage is assumed to usher in socio-economic benefits. Notions of ‘digital readiness’ speak to the inevitability of a universalised digital transformation. But the common approach of exporting digital capacities across societies and markets—digital transformation is good for you all—is top-down and paternalist. It conjures the image of some common/average citizen or worker being able and willing to transform into a digitally competent economic unit. Such a top-down approach to digital transformation can ignore, and even underplay, important demographic differences across communities when it comes to related issues such as digital literacy, digital familiarity, digital readiness, access to technology, and consent for creating digital dependencies. These differences usually grow from structural vulnerabilities such as old age, low levels of education, and socio-economic vulnerabilities like poverty and restricted access to knowledge or technical opportunities. Above all, certain segments of a community, already disadvantaged or less able to manage change, could be further measurably disadvantaged by such a universal digital push.
In this article, through vignettes from the United Kingdom and Singapore’s experience, we highlight how digital transformation can be made more participatory for users affected by digital initiatives. In the process, we introduce the idea of Living Digital Transformation (LDT) as a more bottom-up and user-centric alternative that includes those from vulnerable communities, and therefore, can improve the benefits from digital transformation for all…(More)”.
How well do the UK government’s ‘areas of research interest’ work as boundary objects to facilitate the use of research in policymaking?
Paper by Annette Boaz and Kathryn Oliver: “Articulating the research priorities of government is one mechanism for promoting the production of relevant research to inform policy. This study focuses on the Areas of Research Interest (ARIs) produced and published by government departments in the UK. Through a qualitative study consisting of interviews with 25 researchers, civil servants, intermediaries and research funders, the authors explored the role of ARIs. Using the concept of boundary objects, the paper considers the ways in which ARIs are used and how they are supported by boundary practices and boundary workers, including through engagement opportunities. The paper addresses the following questions: What boundaries do ARIs cross, intended and otherwise? What characteristics of ARIs enable or hinder this boundary-crossing? and What resources, skills, work or conditions are required for this boundary-crossing to work well? We see the ARIs being used as a boundary object across multiple boundaries, with implications for the ways in which the ARIs are crafted and shared. In the application of ARIs in the UK policy context, we see a constant interplay between boundary objects, practices and people all operating within the confines of existing systems and processes. For example, understanding what was meant by a particular ARI sometimes involved ‘decoding’ work as part of the academic-policy engagement process. While ARIs have an important role to play they are no magic bullet. Nor do they tell the whole story of governmental research interests. Optimizing the use of research in policy making requires the galvanisation of a range of mechanisms, including ARIs…(More)”.
A Genealogy of Open
Paper by Betsy Yoon: “The term open has become a familiar part of library and education practice and discourse, with open source software being a common referent. However, the conditions surrounding the emergence of the open source movement are not well understood within librarianship. After identifying capitalism and neoliberalism as structures that shape library and open practice, this article contextualizes the term open by delineating the discursive struggle within the free software movement that led to the emergence of the open source movement. An understanding of the genealogy of open can lend clarity to many of the contradictions that have been grappled with in the literature, such as what open means, whether it supports social justice aims, and its relation to neoliberal and capitalist structures. The article concludes by inquiring into how librarianship and open can reframe practices that are typically oriented toward mitigation and survival to encompass an orientation toward life and flourishing…(More)”.