Ten Innovations to Compete for Global Innovation Award

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Making All Voices Count: “The Global Innovation Competition was launched at the Open Government Partnership Summit in November, 2013 and set out to scout the globe for fresh ideas to enhance government accountability and boost citizen engagement. The call was worldwide and in response, nearly 200 innovative ideas were submitted. After a process of public voting and peer review, these have been reduced to ten.
Below, we highlight the innovations that will now compete for a prize of £65,000 plus six months mentorship at the Global Innovation Week March 31 – April 4, 2014 in Kenya.
The first seven emerged from a process of peer review and the following three were selected by the Global Innovation Jury.

An SMS gateway, connected to local hospitals and the web, to channel citizens’ requests for pregnancy services. At risk women, in need of information such as hospital locations and general advice, will receive relevant and targeted updates utilising both an SMS and a GIS-based system.  The aim is to reduce maternal mortality by targeting at risk women in poorer communities in Indonesia.

“One of the causes of high maternal mortality rate in Indonesia is late response in childbirth treatment and lack of pregnancy care information.”

This project, led by a civil servant, aims to engage citizens in Pakistan in service delivery governance. The project aims to enable and motivate citizens to collect, analyze and disseminate service delivery performance data in order to drive performance and help effective decision making.

“BSDU will serve as a model of better management aided by the citizens, for the citizens.”

A Geographic Information System that gives Indonesian citizens access to information regarding government funded projects. The idea is to enable and motivate citizens to compare a project’s information with its real-world implementation and to provide feedback on this. The ultimate aim is to fight corruption in the public sector by making it easier for citizens to monitor, and provide feedback on, government-funded projects.

“On-the-map information about government-funded projects, where citizens are able to submit their opinions, should became a global standard in budget transparency!”

A digital payment system in South Africa that rewards citizens who participate in activities such as waste separation and community gardening. Citizens are able to ‘spend’ rewards on airtime, pre-paid electricity and groceries. By rewarding social volunteers this project aims to boost citizen engagement, build trust and establish the link between government and citizen actors.

“GEM offers a direct channel for communication and rewards between governments and citizens.”

An app created by a team of software developers to provide Ghanaian citizens with information about the oil and gas industry, with the aim of raising awareness of the revenue generated and to spark debate about how this could be used to improve national development.

“The idea is to bring citizens, the oil and gas companies and the government all onto one platform.”

Ghana Petrol Watch seeks to deliver basic facts and figures associated with oil and gas exploration to the average Ghanaian. The solution employs mobile technology to deliver this information. The audience can voice their concerns as comments on the issue via replies to the SMS. These would then be published on the web portal for further exposure and publicity.

“The information on the petroleum industry is publicly available, but not readily accessible and often does not reach the grassroots community in an easily comprehensible manner.”

A common platform to be implemented in Khulna City, Bangladesh, where citizens and elected officials will interact on budget, expenditure and information.

“The concept of citizen engagement for the fulfillment of pre-election commitment is an innovation in establishing governance.”

The aim of this project is an increase in child engagement in governmental budgeting and policy formulation in Mwanza City, Tanzania. This project was selected as a wildcard by the Global Innovation Jury.

“In many projects I have seen, children are always the perceived beneficiaries, rarely do you see innovations where children are active participants in achieving a goal in their society. It was great to see children as active contributors to their own discourse.” – Jury Member, Shikoh Gitau.

A ‘watchdog’ newsletter in Kenya focusing on monitoring the actions of officials with the aim of educating, empowering and motivating citizens to hold their leaders to account. This project was selected as a wildcard by the Global Innovation Jury.

“We endeavor to bridge the information gap in northern Kenya by giving voice to the voiceless and also highlighting their challenges. The aim is an increase in the educational level of the people through information.”

Citizen Desk is an open-source tool that combines the ability of citizens to share eyewitness reports with the public need for verified information in real time. Citizen Desk lets citizen journalists file reports via SMS or social media, with no need for technical training. This project was selected as a wildcard by the Global Innovation Jury.

“It has become evident for some time now that good technical innovation must rest on a strong bedrock of social and political activity, on the ground, deeply in touch with local conditions, and sometimes in the face of power and privilege.” – Jury Member Bright Simons.”

Open Government: Building Trust and Civic Engagement

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Gavin Newsom and Zachary Bookman in the Huffington Post: “Daily life has become inseparable from new technologies. Our phones and tablets let us shop from the couch, track how many miles we run, and keep in touch with friends across town and around the world – benefits barely possible a decade ago.
With respect to our communities, Uber and Lyft now shuttle us around town, reducing street traffic and parking problems. Adopt-a-Hydrant apps coordinate efforts to dig out hydrants after snowstorms, saving firefighters time when battling blazes. Change.org, helps millions petition for and effect social and political change.
Yet as a sector, government typically embraces technology well-behind the consumer curve. This leads to disheartening stories, like veterans waiting months or years for disability claims due to outdated technology or the troubled rollout of the Healthcare.gov website. This is changing.
Cities and states are now the driving force in a national movement to harness technology to share a wealth of government information and data. Many forward thinking local governments now provide effective tools to the public to make sense of all this data.
This is the Open Government movement.
For too long, government information has been locked away in agencies, departments, and archaic IT systems. Senior administrators often have to request the data they need to do their jobs from system operators. Elected officials, in turn, often have to request data from these administrators. The public remains in the dark, and when data is released, it appears in the form of inaccessible or incomprehensible facts and figures.
Governments keep massive volumes of data, from 500 page budget documents to population statistics to neighborhood crime rates. Although raw data is a necessary component of Open Government, for it to empower citizens and officials the data must be transformed into meaningful and actionable insights. Governments must both publish information in “machine readable” format and give people the tools to understand and act on it.
New platforms can transform data from legacy systems into meaningful visualizations. Instant, web-based access to this information not only saves time and money, but also helps government make faster and better decisions. This allows them to serve their communities and builds trust with citizens.
Leading governments like Palo Alto have begun employing technology to leverage these benefits. Even the City of Bell, California, which made headlines in 2010 when senior administrators siphoned millions of dollars from the general fund, is now leveraging cloud technology to turn a new page in its history. The city has presented its financial information in an easily accessible, interactive platform at Bell.OpenGov.com. Citizens and officials alike can see vivid, user generated charts and graphs that show where money goes, what services are offered to residents, and how much those services cost.
In 2009, San Francisco became an early adopter of the open data movement when an executive order made open and machine-readable the default for our consolidated government. That simple order spurred an entirely new industry and the City of San Francisco has been adopting apps like the San Francisco Heat Vulnerability Index and Neighborhood Score ever since. The former identifies areas vulnerable to heat waves with the hope of better preparedness, while the latter provides an overall health and sustainability score, block-by-block for every neighborhood in the city. These new apps use local, state, federal, and private data sets to allow residents to see how their neighborhoods rank.
The California State Lands Commission, responsible for the stewardship of the state’s lands, waterways, and natural resources, is getting in on the Open Government movement too. The Commission now publishes five years of expense and revenue data at CAStateLands.opengov.com (which just launched today!). California residents can now see how the state generates nearly half a billion dollars in revenue from oil and gas contracts, mineral royalties, and leasing programs. The State can now communicate how it manages those resources, so that citizens understand how their government works for them.
The Open Government movement provides a framework for improved public administration and a path for more trust and engagement. Governments have been challenged to do better, and now they can.”

The Use of ICT for Open Government in U. S. Municipalities Perceptions of Chief Administrative Officers

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Sukumar Ganapatiand Christopher G. Reddick in Public Performance & Management Review: “The extent to which U. S. municipal governments have adopted open e-government initiatives is examined through a survey and interviews with chief administrative officers (CAOs) along the three dimensions of open government: transparency, participation, and collaboration. A very high share of CAOs reported satisfaction with implementing open government overall. A majority indicated achievement along each of the open government dimensions. Whereas the CAOs had a significantly positive view of collaboration, their view on challenges was negatively significant for achievement and satisfaction with open government. The interviews indicated that the CAOs do not view open government as a fad and place it high on their respective agendas.”

Exploration, Extraction and ‘Rawification’. The Shaping of Transparency in the Back Rooms of Open Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Denis, Jerome and Goëta, Samuel: “With the advent of open data initiatives, raw data has been staged as a crucial element of government transparency. If the consequences of such data-driven transparency have already been discussed, we still don’t know much about its back rooms. What does it mean for an administration to open its data? Following information infrastructure studies, this communication aims to question the modes of existence of raw data in administrations. Drawing on an ethnography of open government data projects in several French administrations, it shows that data are not ready-at-hand resources. Indeed, three kinds of operations are conducted that progressively instantiate open data. The first one is exploration. Where are, and what are, the data within the institution are tough questions, the response to which entails organizational and technical inquiries. The second one is extraction. Data are encapsulated in databases and its release implies a sometimes complex disarticulation process. The third kind of operations is ‘rawification’. It consists in a series of tasks that transforms what used to be indexical professional data into raw data. To become opened, data are (re)formatted, cleaned, ungrounded. Though largely invisible, these operations foreground specific ‘frictions’ that emerge during the sociotechnical shaping of transparency, even before data publication and reuses.”

Building a More Open Government

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Corinna Zarek at the White House: “It’s Sunshine Week again—a chance to celebrate transparency and participation in government and freedom of information. Every year in mid-March, we take stock of our progress and where we are headed to make our government more open for the benefit of citizens.
In December, 2013, the Administration announced 23 ambitious commitments to further open up government over the next two years in U.S. Government’s  second Open Government National Action Plan. Those commitments are now all underway or in development, including:
·         Launching an improved Data.gov: The updated Data.gov debuted in January, 2014, and continues to grow with thousands of updated or new government data sets being proactively made available to the public.
·         Increasing public collaboration: Through crowdsourcing, citizen science, and other methods, Federal agencies continue to expand the ways they collaborate with the public. For example, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, for instance, recently launched its third Asteroid Grand Challenge, a broad call to action, seeking the best and brightest ideas from non-traditional partners to enhance and accelerate the work NASA is already doing for planetary defense.
·         Improving We the People: The online petition platform We the People gives the public a direct way to participate in their government and is currently incorporating improvements to make it easier for the public to submit petitions and signatures.”

Climate Data Initiative Launches with Strong Public and Private Sector Commitments

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

John Podesta and Dr. John P. Holdren at the White House blog:  “…today, delivering on a commitment in the President’s Climate Action Plan, we are launching the Climate Data Initiative, an ambitious new effort bringing together extensive open government data and design competitions with commitments from the private and philanthropic sectors to develop data-driven planning and resilience tools for local communities. This effort will help give communities across America the information and tools they need to plan for current and future climate impacts.
The Climate Data Initiative builds on the success of the Obama Administration’s ongoing efforts to unleash the power of open government data. Since data.gov, the central site to find U.S. government data resources, launched in 2009, the Federal government has released troves of valuable data that were previously hard to access in areas such as health, energy, education, public safety, and global development. Today these data are being used by entrepreneurs, researchers, tech innovators, and others to create countless new applications, tools, services, and businesses.
Data from NOAA, NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Department of Defense, and other Federal agencies will be featured on climate.data.gov, a new section within data.gov that opens for business today. The first batch of climate data being made available will focus on coastal flooding and sea level rise. NOAA and NASA will also be announcing an innovation challenge calling on researchers and developers to create data-driven simulations to help plan for the future and to educate the public about the vulnerability of their own communities to sea level rise and flood events.
These and other Federal efforts will be amplified by a number of ambitious private commitments. For example, Esri, the company that produces the ArcGIS software used by thousands of city and regional planning experts, will be partnering with 12 cities across the country to create free and open “maps and apps” to help state and local governments plan for climate change impacts. Google will donate one petabyte—that’s 1,000 terabytes—of cloud storage for climate data, as well as 50 million hours of high-performance computing with the Google Earth Engine platform. The company is challenging the global innovation community to build a high-resolution global terrain model to help communities build resilience to anticipated climate impacts in decades to come. And the World Bank will release a new field guide for the Open Data for Resilience Initiative, which is working in more than 20 countries to map millions of buildings and urban infrastructure….”

The Challenges of Challenge.Gov: Adopting Private Sector Business Innovations in the Federal Government

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

I Mergel, SI Bretschneider, C Louis, J Smith at the HICSS ’14 Proceedings of the 2014 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences: “As part of the Open Government Initiative in the U.S. federal government, the White House has introduced a new policy instrument called “Challenges and Prizes”, implemented as Challenge.gov that allows federal departments to run Open Innovation (OI) contests. This initiative was motivated by similar OI initiatives in the private sector and to enhance innovativeness and performance among federal agencies. Here we first define the underlying theoretical concepts of OI, crowd sourcing and contests and apply them to the existing theory of public ness and the creation of public goods. We then analyze over 200 crowd sourcing contests on CHALLENGE.GOV and conclude that federal departments and agencies use this policy instrument for four different purpose: awareness, service, knowledge and technical solutions. We conclude that Challenge.gov is currently used as an innovative format to inform and educate the public about public management problems and less frequently to solicit complex technological solutions from problem solvers.”

A Framework for Benchmarking Open Government Data Efforts

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

DS Sayogo, TA Pardo, M Cook in the HICSS ’14 Proceedings of the 2014 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences: “This paper presents a preliminary exploration on the status of open government data worldwide as well as in-depth evaluation of selected open government data portals. Using web content analysis of the open government data portals from 35 countries, this study outlines the progress of open government data efforts at the national government level. This paper also conducted in-depth evaluation of selected cases to justify the application of a proposed framework for understanding the status of open government data initiatives. This paper suggest that findings of this exploration offer a new-level of understanding of the depth, breath, and impact of current open government data efforts. The review results also point to the different stages of open government data portal development in term of data content, data manipulation capability and participatory and engagement capability. This finding suggests that development of open government portal follows an incremental approach similar to those of e-government development stages in general. Subsequently, this paper offers several observations in terms of policy and practical implication of open government data portal development drawn from the application of the proposed framework”

Smart Governance: A Roadmap for Research and Practice

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

New report by Hans J. Scholl and Margit C. Scholl: “It has been the object of this article to make the case and present a roadmap for the study of the phenomena of smart governance as well as smart and open governance as an enactment of smart governance in practice. As a concept paper, this contribution aimed at sparking interest and at inspiring scholarly and practitioner discourse in this area of study inside the community of electronic government research and practice, and beyond. The roadmap presented here comprises and details seven elements of smart governance along with eight areas of focus in practice.
Smart governance along with its administrative enactment of smart and open government, it was argued, can help effectively address the three grand challenges to 21st century societal and individual well-being, which are (a) the Third Industrial Revolution with the information revolution at its core, (b) the rapidity of change and the lack of timely and effective government intervention, and (c) expansive government spending and exorbitant public debt financing. Although not seen as a panacea, it was also argued that smart governance principles could guide the relatively complex administrative enactment of smart and open government more intelligently than traditional static and inflexible governance approaches could do.
Since much of the road ahead metaphorically speaking leads through uncharted territory, dedicated research is needed that accompanies projects in this area and evaluates them. Research could further be embedded into practical projects providing for fast and systematic learning. We believe that such embedding of research into smart governance projects should become an integral part of smart projects’ agendas.”

Open Government -Opportunities and Challenges for Public Governance

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst
New volume of Public Administration and Information Technology series: “Given this global context, and taking into account both the need of academicians and practitioners, it is the intention of this book to shed light on the open government concept and, in particular:
• To provide comprehensive knowledge of recent major developments of open government around the world.
• To analyze the importance of open government efforts for public governance.
• To provide insightful analysis about those factors that are critical when designing, implementing and evaluating open government initiatives.
• To discuss how contextual factors affect open government initiatives’success or failure.
• To explore the existence of theoretical models of open government.
• To propose strategies to move forward and to address future challenges in an international context.”