POLICY-MAKING 2.0 CONFERENCEDavid Osimowww.crossover-project.eu #policy20

Policy Making 2.0: a research roadmap towards actual policy impact

MAIN POINTS The problem: The challenges of policy making The goals of the roadmap: a platform to strengthen the

community towards shared objectives The method: open and recursive A vision for a new policy 2.0 The research challenges to get there The critic: is this enough? Between techno-utopianism

and real policy impact What’s next? The beginning of a beautiful friendship…

POLICY-MAKING IN A COMPLEX WORLD: THE CHALLENGES Detect and understand problems before they become

unsolvable, ensuring long-term thinking, dealing with “unknown unknowns”

Involve open intelligence in policy-making, and extract “good ideas” from it

From words to action: ensure implementation and actual behavioural change

Reduce uncertainty on the possible systemic impacts of policies, and reduce time-to-impact evaluation

All this, dealing with a distributed governance model. The traditional division of “market” and “state” no longer fits a reality where public decision and action is effectively carried out by a plurality of actors.

GOALS: BUILDING BRIDGES, OVERCOMING THE FRAGMENTATION IN AN EMERGING FIELD

Disciplines Policy domains Stakeholders Countries

•Economics, •physics, •mathematics, •computer science, •psychology, •social sciences

•Health, •economy, •labour market, •social affairs, •environment, •transport

•Researchers,•industry, •civil society,•government

•FP7 vs Hackers

•EU, •US, •BRICs, •developing countries

METHOD: OPEN AND RECURSIVE

METHOD: OPEN AND RECURSIVE

202 cases

4 case studies

740 members

236 respond

ents

200+ people in f2f

discussions

Brussels: 70 participants, 42 papers

Washington: 30

participants, 16 papers

40 comments

GSS and third party

workshops

50 apps prize

Links to US PIN

A VISION: A THIRD WAY OF POLICY MAKING?

+ Emergent+ Open+ Peer2peer+ Unexpected

Direct Democracy

- Social media - Populism- Unstructured discussion- Loudest voice

+ Expert based decisions+ Robust+ Relevant

Technocracy

- Black box- Closed models- Reductionism

A VISION: A THIRD WAY OF POLICY MAKING?

+ Emergent+ Open+ Peer2peer+ Unexpected

Direct Democracy

- Social media - Populism- Unstructured discussion- Loudest voice

+ Expert based decisions+ Robust+ Relevant

Technocracy

- Black box- Closed models- Reductionism

Policy-making 2.0:Open and evidence based

COVERING THE FULL POLICY CYCLE

ANTICIPATING THE UNEXPECTED: BIG AND OPEN DATA

POLICY DESIGN: SMART CROWDSOURCING

POLICY OPTIONS SIMULATION

UrbanSIM case

TURNING POLICY IN IMPACT: APPS FOR BEHAVIOURAL CHANGE

SENSE MAKING IN EVALUATION THROUGH OPEN DATA

http://stateofworkingamerica.org/who-gains/#/?start=2000&end=2008

ROADMAP OVERVIEW (1)

Name State of the Art Gaps Short Term Research

Long Term Research

Systems of Atomized models

Some modelling environments provide libraries of ready-to-use models, but in most cases, they are not completely open

Developing components for a specific framework constrains use

Open-source modelling and simulation environments, open visualisation of results

Definition of open modelling standards, interoperability

Collaborative Modelling

Mainly performed offline, urgent need for Intuitive Interfaces

Citizenscollaboration in the public policy modelling process

Group model building and systems thinking, Web 2.0 tools for collaboration

Collaborative Internet-based modelling tools

Big Data Public health, environmental analysis, crisis management and anticipation

Privacy, data access and sharing data, interpreting data

Crowdsourcing, data mining, network analysis, predictive modelling

Collecting, cleaning, storing data, summarizing data and extracting some meaning

Opinion Mining

Argument mapping software, automated content analysis, voting Advise Applications

Detection of spam and fake reviews, limits of collaborative filtering

Improving the accuracy of algorithm for opinion detection, reduction of human effort

Usable, peer-to-peer opinion mining tools for citizens

ROADMAP OVERVIEW (2)Name State of the Art Gaps Short Term

ResearchLong Term Research

Visual Analytics

Demographics visualisations legal Arguments visualisation, discussion arguments visualisation

Usability: availability of low cost, ready to use and reconfigurable infovis systems

Impact evaluation of visual analytics on policy choices, simultaneous multiple visualisation

Intuitive affordable visual analytics interface for citizens

Serious Gaming

Purpose-built gaming and simulation for understanding of policy issues and of individual behaviour

Changes in public policy making perception , institutional changes

Immersive interfaces, Citizens- and experts-generated gaming

Augmented reality citizens-generated gaming and simulation, Ubiquitous feedback systems on public governance

Linked Open Government Data

Used to Increase the awareness of citizens on specific issues, andpromote accountability of public officials

How to reduce human efforts;Identification of good ideas;Finding necessary investments;How to improve usability of tools.

Assessing the technical features of a dataset, Assessing the usefulness of a dataset for particular users

Integration of open government data (OGD) and social media data (SMD)

POLICY-MAKING 2.0 IS MORE THAN THE SUM OF ITS RESEARCH CHALLENGES

Source: IPTS-NTUA Case studies

TAKING A CRITICAL VIEW: CAN TECHNOLOGY CHANGE POLICY-MAKING? Learning lessons from 20 years of technology adoption

in government: bottlenecks are cultural and organisational, not technological

Technology will not suddenly free policy-making from politicking, corruption, personal interests, short term thinking, low interest from citizens…

Main interest of these tools for policy-makers is in providing: High quantity of participants (X people said this) Robust-looking evidence to justify choices (complex data said

that..)

YET: Technology is not neutral. Open data, open models,

open consultation, simulation of different impacts, uncovering hidden feedback, usable tools and visualisation create incentives and lower barriers to entry

Policy-making 2.0 need also a new cultural approach to implementation: more focus on design; massive skills needed by policy-makers and civil society; learning by doing and barcamps; better understanding of the limits of policy-making

Technology is just one issue!

POLICY TOOLS RELEVANT FOR POLICY CHALLENGES

A REALITY CHECK: POLICY-MAKING 2.0 STILL MORE PROMISING THAN IMPACTFUL 2050 PATHWAYS : high usage (16K pathways created, 200 stakeholders

involved in the building phase). Higher awareness by citizens. Output used by govt to back up the Carbon Strategy.

GLEAM: adopted by mainstream gov’t agency to anticipate disease spread through transportation. Adopted also for educational purposes

OPINION SPACE 3.0: significant participation (5K individuals) , endorsement at top level (Secretary of State Clinton)

URBANSIM: High usage by US local gov’tOPEN QUESTIONS:

Do they actually lead to better policies? Do they predict impact better than other models? Do they bring new relevant ideas useful for policy-making?

Lack of systematic robust evaluation of different policy-methods. Initial evidence points to the potential impact, but very far from counterfactual / RCT approach available to date.

WHAT’S NEXT?1. Share experiences on the Policy-Making 2.0 group on

Linkedin2. Collaborative curation: 200+ inspiring examples in Diigo

Group: http://groups.diigo.com/group/crossoverproject 3. Follow-up with EgovPoliNet -

http://www.policy-community.eu/ 4. Meeting in Samos http://samos-summit.blogspot.ie/

At a minimum level, collaboration does not need a dedicated project

LET’S START MAKING IT HAPPEN TODAY AND TOMORROW!

david.osimo@gmail.com