public policy

Value public information so we can trust it, rely on it and use it

Curated on March 3, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Speech by David Fricker, the director general of the National Archives of Australia: “No-one can deny that we are in an age of information abundance. More and more we rely on information from a variety of sources and channels. Digital information is seductive, because it’s immediate, available and easy to move around. But digital information can be used for nefarious purposes. Social issues can be at odds with processes of government in this digital age. There is a tension between what is the information, where it comes from and how it’s going to be used.

How do we know if the information has reached us without being changed, whether that’s intentional or not?

How do we know that government digital information will be the authoritative source when the pace of information exchange is so rapid? In short, how do we know what to trust?

“It’s everyone’s responsibly to contribute to a transparent government, and that means changes in our thinking and in our actions.”

These are big questions, because there is a complexity about digital information that we don’t have with paper. Information has never been more complicated, but also never more important. There’s no going back — nor would we want to — but it means that time is ticking, because valuable government information is being lost — as I speak. I want you to share my sense of urgency about digital information, and act on what I’m going to say today.

Consider the challenges and risks that come with the digital age: what does it really mean to have transparency and integrity of government in today’s digital environment?…

What does the digital age mean for government? Government should be delivering services online, which means thinking about location, timeliness and information accessibility. It’s about getting public-sector data out there, into the public, making it available to fuel the digital economy. And it’s about a process of change across government to make sure that we’re breaking down all of those silos, and the duplication and fragmentation which exist across government agencies in the application of information, communications, and technology…..

The digital age is about the digital economy, it’s about rethinking the economy of the nation through the lens of information that enables it. It’s understanding that a nation will be enriched, in terms of culture life, prosperity and rights, if we embrace the digital economy. And that’s a weighty responsibility. But the responsibility is not mine alone. It’s a responsibility of everyone in the government who makes records in their daily work. It’s everyone’s responsibly to contribute to a transparent government. And that means changes in our thinking and in our actions….

What has changed about democracy in the digital age? Once upon a time if you wanted to express your anger about something, you might write a letter to the editor of the paper, to the government department, or to your local member and then expect some sort of an argument or discussion as a response. Now, you can bypass all of that. You might post an inflammatory tweet or blog, your comment gathers momentum, you pick the right hashtag, and off we go. It’s all happening: you’re trending on Twitter…..

If I turn to transparency now, at the top of the list is the basic recognition that government information is public information. The information of the government belongs to the people who elected that government. It’s a fundamental of democratic values. It also means that there’s got to be more public participation in the development of public policy, which means if you’re going to have evidence-based, informed, policy development; government information has to be available, anywhere, anytime….

Good information governance is at the heart of managing digital information to provide access to that information into the future — ready access to government information is vital for transparency. Only when information is digital and managed well can government share it effectively with the Australian community, to the benefit of society and the economy.

There are many examples where poor information management, or poor information governance, has led to failures — both in the private and public sectors. Professor Peter Shergold’s recent report, Learning from Failure, why large government policy initiatives have gone so badly wrong in the past and how the chances of success in the future can be improved, highlights examples such as the Home Insulation Program, the NBN and Building the Education Revolution….(Full Speech)

Innovation in the Public and Nonprofit Sectors

Curated on January 19, 2016August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

A Public Solutions Handbook edited by Patria De Lancer Julnes and Ed Gibson: “In the organizational context, the word “innovation” is often associated with private sector organizations, which are often perceived as more agile, adaptable, and able to withstand change than government agencies and nonprofit organizations. But the reality is that, while they may struggle, public and nonprofit organizations do innovate. These organizations must find ways to use shrinking resources effectively, improve their performance, and achieve desirable societal outcomes. Innovation in the Public Sector provides alternative frameworks for defining, categorizing, and studying innovation in government and in the nonprofit sector.

Through a diverse collection of international case studies, this book broadens the discussion of innovation in public and nonprofit organizations, demonstrating the hurdles organizations face and examining the technological advances and managerial ingenuity innovators use to achieve their goals, both within and beyond the boundaries of the innovating organization. The chapters shed light on key issues including:

how to conceptualize innovation;
how organizations decide between competing good ideas;
how to implement innovation;
how to contend with challenges to innovation;
how to judge success in innovation

This book provides current and future public managers with the understanding and skills required to manage change and innovation, and is essential reading for all those studying public management, public administration, and public policy….(More)”

State of the Commons

Curated on December 9, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Creative Commons: “Creative Commoners have known all along that collaboration, sharing, and cooperation are a driving force for human evolution. And so for many it will come as no surprise that in 2015 we achieved a tremendous milestone: over 1.1 billion CC licensed photos, videos, audio tracks, educational materials, research articles, and more have now been contributed to the shared global commons…..

Whether it’s open education, open data, science, research, music, video, photography, or public policy, we are putting sharing and collaboration at the heart of the Web. In doing so, we are much closer to realizing our vision: unlocking the full potential of the Internet to drive a new era of development, growth, and productivity.

I am proud to share with you our 2015 State of the Commons report, our best effort to measure the immeasurable scope of the commons by looking at the CC licensed content, along with content marked as public domain, that comprise the slice of the commons powered by CC tools. We are proud to be a leader in the commons movement, and we hope you will join us as we celebrate all we have accomplished together this year. ….Report at https://stateof.creativecommons.org/2015/”

Smart Cities as Democratic Ecologies

Curated on November 26, 2015October 10, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Daniel Araya: “The concept of the ‘smart city’ as the confluence of urban planning and technological innovation has become a predominant feature of public policy discourse. Despite its expanding influence, however, there is little consensus on the precise meaning of a ‘smart city’. One reason for this ambiguity is that the term means different things to different disciplines. For some, the concept of the ‘smart city’ refers to advances in sustainability and green technologies. For others, it refers to the deployment of information and communication technologies as next generation infrastructure.

This volume focuses on a third strand in this discourse, specifically technology driven changes in democracy and civic engagement. In conjunction with issues related to power grids, transportation networks and urban sustainability, there is a growing need to examine the potential of ‘smart cities’ as ‘democratic ecologies’ for citizen empowerment and user-driven innovation. What is the potential of ‘smart cities’ to become platforms for bottom-up civic engagement in the context of next generation communication, data sharing, and application development? What are the consequences of layering public spaces with computationally mediated technologies? Foucault’s notion of the panopticon, a metaphor for a surveillance society, suggests that smart technologies deployed in the design of ‘smart cities’ should be evaluated in terms of the ways in which they enable, or curtail, new urban literacies and emergent social practices….(More)”

Data enriched research, data enhanced impact: the importance of UK data infrastructure.

Curated on November 23, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Matthew Woollard at LSE Impact Blog: “…Data made available for reuse, such as those in the UK Data Service collection have huge potential. They can unlock new discoveries in research, provide evidence for policy decisions and help promote core data skills in the next generation of researchers. By being part of a single infrastructure, data owners and data creators can work together with the UK Data Service – rather than duplicating efforts – to engage with the people who can drive the impact of their research further to provide real benefit to society. As a service we are also identifying new ways to understand and promote our impact, and our Impact Fellow and Director of Impact and Communications, Victoria Moody, is focusing on raising the visibility of the UK Data Service holdings and developing and promoting the use and impact of the data and resources in policy-relevant research, especially to new audiences such as policymakers, government sectors, charities, the private sector and the media…..

We are improving how we demonstrate the impact of both the Service and the data which we hold, by focusing on generating more and more authentic user corroboration. Our emphasis is on drawing together evidence about the reach and significance of the impact of our data and resources, and of the Service as a whole through our infrastructure and expertise. Headline impact indicators through which we will better understand our impact cover a range of areas (outlined above) where the Service brings efficiency to data access and re-use, benefit to its users and a financial and social return on investment.

We are working to understand more about how Service data contributes to impact by tracking the use of Service data in a range of initiatives focused on developing impact from research and by developing our insight into usage of our data by our users. Data in the collection have featured in a range of impact case studies in the Research Excellence Framework 2014. We are also developing a focus on understanding the specific beneficial effect, rather than simply that data were used in an output, that is – as it appears in policy, debate or the evidential process (although important). Early thoughts in developing this process are where (ideally) cited data can be tracked through the specific beneficial outcome and on to an evidenced effect, corroborated by the end user.

Our impact case studies demonstrate how the data have supported research which has led to policy change in a range of areas including; the development of mathematical models for Practice based Commissioning budgets for adult mental health in the UK and informing public policy on obesity; both using the Health Survey for England. Service data have also informed the development of impact around understanding public attitudes towards the police and other legal institutions using the Crime Survey for England and Wales and research to support the development of the national minimum wage using the Labour Force Survey. The cutting-edge new Demos Integration Hub maps the changing face of Britain’s diversity, revealing a mixed picture in the integration and upward mobility of ethnic minority communities and uses 2011 Census aggregate data (England and Wales) and Understanding Society….(More)”

Behavioural Science, Randomized Evaluations and the Transformation Of Public Policy: The Case of the UK Government

Curated on November 5, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Chapter by Peter John: “Behaviour change policy conveys powerful image: groups of psychologists and scientists, maybe wearing white coats, messing with the minds of citizens, doing experiments on them without their consent, and seeking to manipulate their behaviours. Huddled in an office in the heart of Whitehall, or maybe working out of a windowless room in the White House, behavioural scientists are redesigning the messages and regulations that governments make, operating very far from the public’s view. The unsuspecting citizen becomes something akin to the subjects of science fiction novels, such as Huxley’s Brave New World or Zamyatin’s We. The emotional response to these developments is to cry out for a more humanistic form of public policy, a more participatory form of governance, and to base public policy on the common sense and good judgements of citizens and their elected representatives.

Of course, such an account is a massive stereotype, but something of this viewpoint has emerged as a backdrop to critical academic work on the use of behavioural science in government in what is described as the rise of the psychological state (Jones et al 2013a b), which might be seen to represent a step-change in use of psychological and other form of behavioural research to design public policies. Such a claim speaks more generally to the use of scientific ideas by government since the eighteenth century, which has been subject to a considerable amount of theoretical work in recent years, drawing on the work of Foucault, and which has developed into explorations of the theory and practice of governmentality (see Jones et al 2013:182-188).

With behaviour change, the ‘central concern has been to critically evaluate the broader ethical concerns of behavioural governance, which includes tracing geo-historical contingencies of knowledge mobilized in the legitimation of the behavior change agenda itself’ (190). This line of work presents a subtle set of arguments and claims that an empirical account, such as that presented in this chapter, cannot⎯nor should⎯challenge. Nonetheless, it is instructive to find out more about the phenomenon under study and to understand how the uses of behavioural ideas and randomized evaluations are limited and structured by the institutions and actors in the political process, which are following political and organizational ends. Of particular interest is the incremental and patchy nature of the diffusion of ideas, and how the use of behavioural sciences meshes with existing standard operating procedures and routines of bureaucracies. That said, behavioural sciences can make progress within the fragmented and decentralized policy process, and has the power to create innovations in public policies, often helped by articulate advocates of such measures.

The path of ideas in public policy is usually slow, one of gradual diffusion and small changes in operating assumptions, and this route is likely for the use of behavioural sciences. The implication of this line of argument is that agency as well as structure plays an important role in the adoption and diffusion of the ideas from the behavioural sciences. It implies a more limited and less uniform use of ideas and evidence than implied by the critical writers in this field, but one where public argument and debate play a central role….(More)”

Open government: a new paradigm in social change?

Curated on November 4, 2015May 29, 2019 by Stefaan Verhulst

Rosie Williams: In a recent speech to the Australian and New Zealand School of Government (ANSOG) annual conference, technology journalist and academic Suelette Drefyus explained the growing ‘information asymmetry’ that characterises the current-day relationship between government and citizenry.

According to Dreyfus:

‘Big Data makes government very powerful in its relationship with the citizen. This is even more so with the rise of intelligent systems, software that increasingly trawls, matches and analyses that Big Data. And it is moving toward making more decisions once made by human beings.’

The role of technology in the delivery of government services gives much food for thought in terms of both its implications for potential good and the potential dangers it may pose. The concept of open government is an important one for the future of policy and democracy in Australia. Open government has at its core a recognition that the world has changed, that the ways people engage and who they engage with has transformed in ways that governments around the world must respond to in both technological and policy terms.

As described in the ANSOG speech, the change within government in how it uses technology is well underway, however in many regards we are at the very beginning of understanding and implementing the potential of data and technology in providing solutions to many of our shared problems. Australia’s pending membership of the Open Government Partnership is integral to how Australia responds to these challenges. Membership of the multi-lateral partnership requires the Australian government to create a National Action Plan based on consultation and demonstrate our credentials in the areas of Fiscal Transparency, Access to Information, Income and Asset Disclosure, and Citizen Engagement.

What are the implications of the National Action Plan for policy consultation formulation, implementation and evaluation? In relative terms, Australia’s history with open government is fairly recent. Policies on open data have seen the roll out of data.gov.au – a repository of data published by government agencies and made available for re-use in efforts such as the author’s own financial transparency site OpenAus.

In this way citizen activity and government come together for the purposes of achieving open government. These efforts express a new paradigm in government and activism where the responsibility for solving the problems of democracy are shared between government and the people as opposed to the government ‘solving’ the problems of a passive, receptive citizenry.

As the famous whistle-blowers have shown, citizens are no longer passive but this new capability also requires a consciousness of the responsibilities and accountability that go along with the powers newly developed by citizen activists through technological change.

The opening of data and communication channels in the formulation of public policy provides a way forward to create both a better informed citizenry and also better informed policy evaluation. When new standards of transparency are applied to wicked problems what shortcomings does this highlight?

This question was tested with my recent request for a basic fact missing from relevant government research and reviews but key to social issues of homelessness and domestic violence….(More)”

Good Governance by All Means

Curated on October 29, 2015August 3, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Claudia Ruiz Massieu Salinas at Huffington Post: “Citizens today have higher expectations and demand effective solutions to every day issues and challenges. From climate change to expedient postal services, governments are required to act with transparency and diligence. Public accountability demands us, public servants, to act with almost no margin of error and using the most open and transparent means available to achieve our goals. The name of the game is simple: government efforts should focus on building stronger, better and healthier relationships with civil society. Nobody should be left behind when tailoring public policy. For the Mexican Government, it is crystal clear, that such endeavor is no longer the State’s monopoly and thus, the pressing need for governments to use smarter and more efficient tool boxes, such as the one that the Open Government Partnership (OGP), provides. The buzzword is good governance by all means.

The High Level Segment of the 70th Session of the United Nations General Assembly was a milestone for the open government community. It allowed the 13 countries taking part of the OGP Steering Committee and several civil society organizations to endorse the Joint Declaration: Open Government for the Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This declaration highlights the paramount importance of promoting the principles of open government (transparency, accountability, citizen participation and innovation) as key enablers of the Sustainable Development Goals. The Declaration particularly embraces Agenda 2030’s Goal 16 as a common target for all 66 OGP member countries. Our common goal is to continue building stronger institutions while weaving peaceful and inclusive societies. Our meeting in New York also allowed us to work with key players to develop the Open Data Charter that recognizes the value of having timely, comprehensive, accessible, and comparable data for the promotion of greater citizen engagement triggering development and innovation….(More)

What is Citizensourcing?

Curated on October 26, 2015August 15, 2018 by Stefaan Verhulst

Wietse Van Ransbeeck at CitizensLab: “Citizensourcing is the crowdsourcing practice applied by governments with the goal of tapping into the collective intelligence of the citizens. Through citizensourcing, governments can collect ideas, suggestions and opinions from their citizens — thereby creating a permanent feedback loop of communication.

Cities are a powerhouse of collective intelligence. Thanks to modern technologies, time has come to unlock the wisdom of the crowd.

Yesterday

The current means of engaging citizens in public policy are in place since the 18th century: town hall meetings, in-person visits, phone calls or bureaucratic forms that allowed you to submit an idea. All of those ways of engagement are time-consuming, ineffective and expensive.

Great ideas and valuable feedback get lost, because those forms of engagement take too much effort for both citizens and cities. And next to that, communication happens in private between city government and citizens. Citizens cannot communicate with each other about how they want to improve their city.

Today

Advances in technology have restructured the way societies are organised; we’re living a digital age in which citizens are connected over networks. This creates unseen opportunities for cities to get closer to their citizens and serve them better. In the last years, we’ve seen several cities trying to build a strong online presence on social media channels.

Yet, they have discovered that communicating with their citizens over Twitter and Facebook is far from optimal. Messages get lost in the information overload that characterises those platforms, resulting in a lack of structured communication.

Tomorrow

Imagine that your town hall meetings could be held online… but then 24/7, accessible from every possible device. Citizensourcing on a dedicated platform is an inexpensive way for cities to get valuable input in the form of ideas, feedback and opinions from their citizens.

Whereas only a very small proportion of citizens engage in the time-consuming offline participation, an online platform allows you to multiply your reach by tenfolds. You reach an audience of citizens that you couldn’t reach before, which makes an online platform a well-needed complement for the already existing offline channels in every city.

When citizens can share their ideas in an easy and fun way and get rewarded for their valuable input, that’s when the wisdom of the crowd gets truly unlocked.

The most direct benefit for cities is clear: crowdsourcing new urban ideas drives superior innovations. At least as important as the fact that you offer a new channel for proposals, is that engagement leads to a better understanding of the different needs citizens have…..

There are several early success stories that show the gigantic potential though:

The Colombian city Medellín has its own crowdsourcing platform MiMedellín on which citizens share their urban solutions for problems the city faces. It turned out to be a big success: having collected more than 2,300 (!) posted ideas, the government is already developing policies with help from the creativity of citizens.
In the Icelandic capital, Reykjavik, the city council succeeded in having their citizensourcing website Better Reykjavik used by over 60% of the citizens. Since Reykjavik implemented their city platform, they have spent €1.9 million on developing more than 200 projectsbased on ideas from citizens..
Paris held a participatory budgeting process, called ‘Madame Mayor, I have an idea’, that brought forward wonderful proejcts. To name one, after having received well over 20,000 votes, the city government announced to invest €2 million in vertical garden projects. Other popular ideas included gardens in schools, neighbourhood recycling centers and co-working spaces for students and entrepreneurs….(More)”