Understanding the Design and Implementation of Civic Technologies in Resource-Limited Public Organizations

With advances in computing and open data, more and more public organizations have collaborated with volunteer technologists – people with information technology (IT) skills who voluntarily help public organizations with their IT needs – to create or adopt civic technologies to solve public issues, and to support civic engagement in local communities. This dissertation aims to inform the design and implementation of future civic technologies in public organizations, by presenting three studies that investigate public organizations’ practices when designing and implementing civic technologies. In particular, we focus on the implementation of social media in nonprofit organizations (NPOs), the design process of civic hacking projects, and civic data hack-a-thons in several resource-limited public organizations and communities. We first investigate how 26 small environmental NPOs leverage social media for various public engagement activities to identify challenges that public organizations encounter when implementing civic technologies. Next, we study two ways that volunteer technologists and public organizations collaboratively create civic technologies. In Study 2, we examine the factors that influence the sustainability of 16 civic hacking projects during which volunteer technologists and public organizations collaborate on designing technologies to solve community issues, both through observations and through 19 interviews. In Study 3, we investigate how to generate actionable data analytics products for NPOs during civic data hackathons, and explore the roles of brokers to support the collaborations between civic technologists and public organizations. Based on findings from these studies, we argue that evaluating the engagement outcomes through civic technologies, solving the internal organizational challenges that prohibit engagement, and reconciling the needs of various stakeholders, are all crucial for public organizations to better engage with communities through civic technologies. In addition, taking into account various public organizations’ constraints and facilitating data literacy is essential for the sustainability of civic technologies in public organizations. Last, building good relationships between various stakeholders and leveraging brokering activities (translation, coordination, alignment, and contact brokering) to bridge different community of practices are all critical for collaborations during the design and implementation of civic technologies. Informed by findings and insights from the studies, we identify design implications and practical guidelines for civic-minded volunteer technologists and public organizations, to foster the design and implementation of civic technologies and the associated collaborative work.PHDInformationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/144063/1/youyangh_1.pd

Collaboration among humanitarian relief organizations and volunteer technical communities : identifying research opportunities and challenges through a systematic literature review

Collaboration is the foundation to strengthen disaster preparedness and for effective emergency response actions at all levels. Some studies have highlighted that remote volunteers, i.e., volunteers supported by Web 2.0 technologies, possess the potential to strengthen humanitarian relief organizations by offering information regarding disaster-affected people and infrastructure. Although studies have explored various aspects of this topic, none of those provided an overview of the state-of-the-art of researches on the collaboration among humanitarian organizations and communities of remote volunteers. With the aim of overcoming this gap, a systematic literature review was conducted on the existing research works. Therefore, the main contribution of this work lies in examining the state of research in this field and in identifying potential research gaps. The results show that most of the research works addresses the general domain of disaster management, whereas only few of them address the domain of humanitarian logistics. Collaboration among Humanitarian Relief Organizations and Volunteer Technical Communities: Identifying Research Opportunities and Challenges through a Systematic Literature Review (PDF Download Available). Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315790817_Collaboration_among_Humanitarian_Relief_Organizations_and_Volunteer_Technical_Communities_Identifying_Research_Opportunities_and_Challenges_through_a_Systematic_Literature_Review [accessed May 26, 2017]

Earth Observation Open Science and Innovation

geospatial analytics; social observatory; big earth data; open data; citizen science; open innovation; earth system science; crowdsourced geospatial data; citizen science; science in society; data scienc

Enabling climate science use to better support resilience and adaptation practice : rapid evidence assessment for the CLARE programme

The report summarises expert analysis and key findings from climate science information provision. The gulf, or “Valley of Death,” that exists between providers and users of information is a key focus of this report. The climate and resilience research framework programme (CLARE) in partnership with the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), will provide evidence and innovation needed to climate-inform the Department for International Development (DFID) and other UK Government investments threatened by climate change, particularly in Africa. Active engagement with the kind of climate science that is needed to enable adaptive management remains limited.UK Department for International Developmen

United States Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability

The 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS) affirms that the United States will work to strengthen fragile states “where state weakness or failure would magnify threats to the American homeland” and “empower reform-minded governments, people, and civil society” in these places. The President affirmed this commitment when he signed the Global Fragility Act of 2019 (Title V of Div. J, P.L. 116-94) (GFA) into law in December 2019. This Strategy meets the law’s requirement for a “Global Fragility Strategy.” The United States Strategy to Prevent Conflict and Promote Stability seeks to break the costly cycle of fragility and promote peaceful, self-reliant nations that become U.S. economic and security partners. The United States will pursue a new approach that addresses the political drivers of fragility and supports locally driven solutions. The United States will engage selectively based on defined metrics, host country political will, respect for democracy and human rights, defined cost-sharing, and mechanisms that promote mutual accountability with national and local actors. This Strategy outlines four goals to guide United States efforts across priority countries and regions: Prevention: The United States will establish and support capabilities to engage in peacebuilding and anticipate and prevent violent conflict before it erupts; Stabilization: The United States will support inclusive political processes to resolve ongoing violent conflicts, emphasizing meaningful participation of youth, women, and members of faith-based communities and marginalized groups, respect for human rights and environmental sustainability; Partnerships: The United States will promote burden-sharing and encourage and work with partners to create conditions for long-term regional stability and foster private sector-led growth; and Management: The United States will maximize U.S. taxpayer dollars and realize more effective outcomes through better prioritization, integration, and focus on efficiency across the U.S. government and with partners. The United States will achieve these goals by aligning U.S. Government operations, setting clear priorities, and integrating all tools of U.S. foreign policy: diplomacy; foreign assistance; defense support and security cooperation; trade and investment; sanctions and other financial pressure tools; intelligence and analysis; and strategic communications. The United States will recruit and train staff to work more effectively in fragile environments. The United States cannot and should not pursue these efforts alone. Accordingly, this Strategy outlines a commitment to forge new partnerships with civil society, the private sector, regional partners, and bilateral and multilateral contributors who can provide expertise and share the financial burden. This Strategy prioritizes learning, data-driven analysis, diplomacy, and information-sharing to understand local dynamics, target interventions, and hold actors accountable. It lays out a clear process to systematically monitor policy outcomes, not just program outputs. If changing dynamics require alterations in approach, if programs are not showing results, or if partners are not living up to their commitments, the United States will change course. The success of this Strategy will require discipline and commitment by the whole U.S. government and our partner governments, the creation of dynamic and forward-leaning country-level strategies, and flexibly and timely resources to power change. Through this new approach, the United States will seek to avoid past mistakes and better advance America’s national security interests in fragile environments

Data for Social Good

This open access book provides practical guidance for non-profits and community sector organisations about how to get started with data analytics projects using their own organisations’ datasets and open public data. The book shares best practices on collaborative social data projects and methodology. For researchers, the work offers a playbook for partnering with community organisations in data projects for public good and gives worked examples of projects of various sizes and complexity

Can the Power of Platforms be Harnessed for Governance?

The platform concept examines how strategic leadership and institutional and technological resources enable multiple distributed activities to innovate, adapt, and change. The central question addressed in this paper is: Can this potentially powerful organizing logic be harnessed for public purposes? Since governance platforms are still largely experimental, we cannot fully settle this question at present. However, we can begin to address the issue to help scholars and practitioners explore the potential of platforms. We start with a general statement about what governance platforms might offer to the public sector, before probing the concept more deeply. We then investigate the institutional mechanisms that purportedly make platforms powerful and propose a typology of governance platforms. Finally, we investigate the challenges and successes they have encountered

Data for Social Good

This open access book provides practical guidance for non-profits and community sector organisations about how to get started with data analytics projects using their own organisations’ datasets and open public data. The book shares best practices on collaborative social data projects and methodology. For researchers, the work offers a playbook for partnering with community organisations in data projects for public good and gives worked examples of projects of various sizes and complexity