Eurofound: “Innovative organisational practices in the workplace, which aim to make best use of human capital, are traditionally associated with the private sector. The nature of the public sector activities makes it more difficult to identify these types of internal innovation in publicly funded organisations. It is widely thought that public sector organisations are neither dynamic nor creative and are typified by a high degree of inertia. Yet the necessity of innovation ought not to be dismissed. The public sector represents a quarter of total EU employment, and it is of critical importance as a provider and regulator of... (More >)
Four Steps to Enhanced Crowdsourcing
Kendra L. Smith and Lindsey Collins at Planetizen: “Over the past decade, crowdsourcing has grown to significance through crowdfunding, crowd collaboration, crowd voting, and crowd labor. The idea behind crowdsourcing is simple: decentralize decision-making by utilizing large groups of people to assist with solving problems, generating ideas, funding, generating data, and making decisions. We have seen crowdsourcing used in both the private and public sectors. In a previous article, “Empowered Design, By ‘the Crowd,'” we discuss the significant role crowdsourcing can play in urban planning through citizen engagement. Crowdsourcing in the public sector represents a more inclusive form of... (More >)
Data innovation: where to start? With the road less taken
Giulio Quaggiotto at Nesta: “Over the past decade we’ve seen an explosion in the amount of data we create, with more being captured about our lives than ever before. As an industry, the public sector creates an enormous amount of information – from census data to tax data to health data. When it comes to use of the data however, despite many initiatives trying to promote open and big data for public policy as well as evidence-based policymaking, we feel there is still a long way to go. Why is that? Data initiatives are often created under the assumption... (More >)
EU e-Government Action Plan 2016-2020. Accelerating the digital transformation of government
Q and A: “The e-Government Action Plan includes 20 initiatives to be launched in 2016 and 2017 (full list). Several of them aim to accelerate the implementation of existing legislation and related take-up of online public services. The Commission will notably support the transition of Member States towards full e-procurement, use of contract registers and interoperable e-signatures. Another part of this set of initiatives focuses on cross-border digital public services. For example, the Commission will submit a proposal to create a Single Digital Gateway as a one-stop entry point for business and people to all Digital Single Market related... (More >)
A ‘design-thinking’ approach to governing the future
Bronwyn van der Merwe at The Hill: “…Government organizations are starting to realize the benefits of digital transformation to reinvent the citizen experience in the form of digital services tailored to individual needs. However, public service leaders are finding that as they move further into the digital age, they need to re-orient their internal organizations around this paradigm shift, or their investments in digital are likely to fail. This is where Design Thinking comes into play. Design Thinking has become a proven approach to reimagining complex service or organizational issues in the private sector. This approach of user research,... (More >)
E-Government Strategy, ICT and Innovation for Citizen Engagement
Brief by Dennis Anderson, Robert Wu, Dr. June-Suh Cho, and Katja Schroeder: “This book discusses three levels of e-government and national strategies to reach a citizen-centric participatory e-government, and examines how disruptive technologies help shape the future of e-government. The authors examine how e-government can facilitate a symbiotic relationship between the government and its citizens. ICTs aid this relationship and promote transparencies so that citizens can place greater trust in the activities of their government. If a government can manage resources more effectively by better understanding the needs of its citizens, it can create a sustainable environment for citizens.... (More >)
Open Data and Beyond
Paper by Frederika Welle Donker, Bastiaan van Loenen and Arnold K. Bregt: “In recent years, there has been an increasing trend of releasing public sector information as open data. Governments worldwide see the potential benefits of opening up their data. The potential benefits are more transparency, increased governmental efficiency and effectiveness, and external benefits, including societal and economic benefits. The private sector also recognizes potential benefits of making their datasets available as open data. One such company is Liander, an energy network administrator in the Netherlands. Liander views open data as a contributing factor to energy conservation. However, to... (More >)
The Alberta CoLab Story: Redesigning the policy development process in government
Alex Ryan at Medium: “Alberta CoLab is an evolving experiment built on three counter-intuitive ideas: 1. Culture shifts faster through collaborative project work than through a culture change initiative. 2. The way to accelerate policy development is to engage more perspectives and more complexity. 3. The best place to put a cross-ministry design team is in a line ministry. I want to explain what CoLab is and why it has evolved the way it has. We don’t view CoLab as a best practice to be replicated, since our model is tailored to the specific culture and context of Alberta.... (More >)
Big Data in the Public Sector
Chapter by Ricard Munné in New Horizons for a Data-Driven Economy: “The public sector is becoming increasingly aware of the potential value to be gained from big data, as governments generate and collect vast quantities of data through their everyday activities. The benefits of big data in the public sector can be grouped into three major areas, based on a classification of the types of benefits: advanced analytics, through automated algorithms; improvements in effectiveness, providing greater internal transparency; improvements in efficiency, where better services can be provided based on the personalization of services; and learning from the performance of... (More >)
Technology for Transparency: Cases from Sub-Saharan Africa
Sydney Steel at Havard Political Review: “Over the last decade, Africa has experienced previously unseen levels of economic growth and market vibrancy. Developing countries can only achieve equitable growth and reduce poverty rates, however, if they are able to make the most of their available resources. To do this, they must maximize the impact of aid from donor governments and NGOs and ensure that domestic markets continue to diversify, add jobs, and generate tax revenues. Yet, in most developing countries, there is a dearth of information available about industry profits, government spending, and policy outcomes that prevents efficient action.... (More >)
