A Government Decision Analytics Framework Based on Citizen Opinion

This ongoing research aims to develop a Government Decision Support Framework that employs citizen opinions and sentiments to predict the level of acceptance of newly proposed policies. The system relies on a knowledge base of citizen opinions and an Ontological Model comprising aspects and related terms of different policy domains as an input and a Bayesian predictive procedure. The work proceeds in four basic steps. The first step involves developing domain models comprising aspects for different policy domains in government and automatically acquiring semantically related terms for these aspects from associated policy documents. The second step involves computing citizen sentiments and opinions for the different policy aspects. The third involves updating the ontology with the computed sentiments and the last step involves employing a Bayesian Predictive Process to predict likely citizen opinion for a new proposal (policy) based on information available in the ontology. We provide some background to this work, describe our approach in some detail and discuss the progress mad

Big data analytics:Computational intelligence techniques and application areas

Big Data has significant impact in developing functional smart cities and supporting modern societies. In this paper, we investigate the importance of Big Data in modern life and economy, and discuss challenges arising from Big Data utilization. Different computational intelligence techniques have been considered as tools for Big Data analytics. We also explore the powerful combination of Big Data and Computational Intelligence (CI) and identify a number of areas, where novel applications in real world smart city problems can be developed by utilizing these powerful tools and techniques. We present a case study for intelligent transportation in the context of a smart city, and a novel data modelling methodology based on a biologically inspired universal generative modelling approach called Hierarchical Spatial-Temporal State Machine (HSTSM). We further discuss various implications of policy, protection, valuation and commercialization related to Big Data, its applications and deployment

The step project:societal and political engagement of young people in environmental issues

Decisions on environmental topics taken today are going to have long-term consequences that will affect future generations. Young people will have to live with the consequences of these decisions and undertake special responsibilities. Moreover, as tomorrow’s decision makers, they themselves should learn how to negotiate and debate issues before final decisions are made. Therefore, any participation they can have in environmental decision making processes will prove essential in developing a sustainable future for the community.However, recent data indicate that the young distance themselves from community affairs, mainly because the procedures involved are ‘wooden’, politicians’ discourse alienates the young and the whole experience is too formalized to them. Authorities are aware of this fact and try to establish communication channels to ensure transparency and use a language that speaks to new generations of citizens. This is where STEP project comes in.STEP (www.step4youth.eu) is a digital Platform (web/mobile) enabling youth Societal and Political e-Participation in decision-making procedures concerning environmental issues. STEP is enhanced with web/social media mining, gamification, machine translation, and visualisation features.Six pilots in real contexts are being organised for the deployment of the STEP solution in 4 European Countries: Italy, Spain, Greece, and Turkey. Pilots are implemented with the direct participation of one regional authority, four municipalities, and one association of municipalities, and include decision-making procedures on significant environmental questions.</p

Application of Text Analytics in Public Service Co-Creation: Literature Review and Research Framework

The public sector faces several challenges, such as a number of external and internal demands for change, citizens' dissatisfaction and frustration with public sector organizations, that need to be addressed. An alternative to the traditional top-down development of public services is co-creation of public services. Co-creation promotes collaboration between stakeholders with the aim to create better public services and achieve public values. At the same time, data analytics has been fuelled by the availability of immense amounts of textual data. Whilst both co-creation and TA have been used in the private sector, we study existing works on the application of Text Analytics (TA) techniques on text data to support public service co-creation. We systematically review 75 of the 979 papers that focus directly or indirectly on the application of TA in the context of public service development. In our review, we analyze the TA techniques, the public service they support, public value outcomes, and the co-creation phase they are used in. Our findings indicate that the TA implementation for co-creation is still in its early stages and thus still limited. Our research framework promotes the concept and stimulates the strengthening of the role of Text Analytics techniques to support public sector organisations and their use of co-creation process. From policy-makers' and public administration managers' standpoints, our findings and the proposed research framework can be used as a guideline in developing a strategy for the designing co-created and user-centred public services

Citizen Trust in the United States Government: Twitter Analytics Measuring Trust in Government Sentiments

Recent tensions and widening division in the United States (U.S.) political arena have sewn doubt in the U.S. government and democracy itself, at a time when rapid technology advances clearly ought to aid the spread of democracy. However, there has been little progress in the use of technology to increase democratic participation in the U.S. The purpose of this research is the exploratory study of how social media analytics can inform, predict, or alter trust in government sentiments which thereby inform democratic participation by studying 49,964,168 Twitter posts (tweets) from January 1, 2014 – June 13, 2019. Extant literature pertaining to E-Government research is reviewed and a theoretical framework is presented as basis for the methodology. The findings shed insight towards the workings of public trust sentiments and current events and/or governmental actions. Additionally, discussions of results pose questions for testing and evaluation in future research

Social media and public policy

Introduction: Government and public service delivery is taking place in a changed world. A significant level of social, economic and political activity is now happening on the internet.As people buy and sell goods, search for information, browse the web and share their day–to–day experiences with colleagues, friends and family through social networks, they produce an enormous amount of data.The use of this data to develop insights is growing rapidly. In the private sector it is being used to enhance decision making, understand customer behaviour, improve operational efficiency and identify new markets.The new information environment also obliges government to develop new capabilities to understand the information available and to compete for attention and influence within it.Part of the challenge in embracing the digital age is that, in the midst of rapid change, it’s very difficult to know where to place your bets. We do not yet know exactly what access to large volumes of social data will mean for our society. It certainly will not present a panacea for long–standing social problems; but it can add another dimension to our understanding of them.This report considers whether social media data can improve the quality and timeliness of the evidence base that informs public policy. Can the myriad of human connections and interactions on the web provide insight to enable government to develop better policy, understand its subsequent impact and inform the many different organisations that deliver public services?The report is based on an evaluation of available literature and interviews with 25 experts from a number of disciplines. Given that developments in this field are at such an early stage, it aims to provide helpful signposts rather than definitive answers

A National Dialogue on Health Information Technology and Privacy

Increasingly, government leaders recognize that solving the complex problems facing America today will require more than simply keeping citizens informed. Meeting challenges like rising health care costs, climate change and energy independence requires increased level of collaboration. Traditionally, government agencies have operated in silos -- separated not only from citizens, but from each other, as well. Nevertheless, some have begun to reach across and outside of government to access the collective brainpower of organizations, stakeholders and individuals.The National Dialogue on Health Information Technology and Privacy was one such initiative. It was conceived by leaders in government who sought to demonstrate that it is not only possible, but beneficial and economical, to engage openly and broadly on an issue that is both national in scope and deeply relevant to the everyday lives of citizens. The results of this first-of-its-kind online event are captured in this report, together with important lessons learned along the way.This report served as a call to action. On his first full day in office, President Obama put government on notice that this new, more collaborative model can no longer be confined to the efforts of early adopters. He called upon every executive department and agency to "harness new technology" and make government "transparent, participatory, and collaborative." Government is quickly transitioning to a new generation of managers and leaders, for whom online collaboration is not a new frontier but a fact of everyday life. We owe it to them -- and the citizens we serve -- to recognize and embrace the myriad tools available to fulfill the promise of good government in the 21st Century.Key FindingsThe Panel recommended that the Administration give stakeholders the opportunity to further participate in the discussion of heath IT and privacy through broader outreach and by helping the public to understand the value of a person-centered view of healthcare information technology

Algorithmic Jim Crow

This Article contends that current immigration- and security-related vetting protocols risk promulgating an algorithmically driven form of Jim Crow. Under the “separate but equal” discrimination of a historic Jim Crow regime, state laws required mandatory separation and discrimination on the front end, while purportedly establishing equality on the back end. In contrast, an Algorithmic Jim Crow regime allows for “equal but separate” discrimination. Under Algorithmic Jim Crow, equal vetting and database screening of all citizens and noncitizens will make it appear that fairness and equality principles are preserved on the front end. Algorithmic Jim Crow, however, will enable discrimination on the back end in the form of designing, interpreting, and acting upon vetting and screening systems in ways that result in a disparate impact

Integrating Diplomacy and Social Media: A Report of the First Annual Aspen Institute Dialogue on Diplomacy and Technology

This report is a result of the first annual Aspen Institute Dialogue on Diplomacy and Technology, or what we call ADDTech. The concept for this Dialogue originated with longtime communications executive and Aspen Institute Trustee Marc Nathanson. Since his tenure as Chairman of the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), Nathanson has been concerned with how American diplomacy could more rapidly embrace the changing world of social media and other technologies. He is also a graduate of the University of Denver where former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's father, Josef Korbel, namesake of the Josef Korbel School of International Relations there, was his professor. Thus, Albright, another Institute Trustee, was a natural partner to create the first Dialogue on Diplomacy and Technology. The cast is ably supplemented with Korbel School Dean and former U.S. Ambassador Christopher Hill and Aspen Institute President Walter Isaacson, who himself was also recently the chair of the BBG.The topic for this inaugural dialogue is how the diplomatic realm could better utilize new communications technologies. The group focused particularly on social media, but needed to differentiate among the various diplomacies in play in the current world, viz., formal state diplomacy, public diplomacy, citizen diplomacy and business diplomacy. Each presents its own array of opportunities as well as problems. In this first Dialogue, much of the time necessarily had to be used to define our terms and learn how technologies are currently being used in each case. To help us in that endeavor, we focused on the Middle East. While the resulting recommendations are therefore rather modest, they set up the series of dialogues to come in the years ahead