Designing Governance Tools for Agricultural and Environmental Data

Open Environmental Data Project (OEDP)'s Environmental Dataset Re-Mix Workshops work on existing environmental datasets and data governance tools, articulating redesigns that make them usable to lay audiences, reusable to public needs, and inclusive of cultural knowledge within participants' communities.On April 4, 2023, OEDP co-hosted a Dataset Re-Mix Workshop with OpenTEAM, where we examined the development of data governance tools for both agricultural and environmental data. We mainly focused on drawing comparisons and contrasts between OpenTEAM's Ag Data Wallet and OEDP's Community Data Hubs model. This synthesis documents the key learnings from the Dataset Re-Mix Workshop

An Assessment of Good Governance and Development in Nigeria: A Study of Bayelsa State 2012-2019

Good governance and development are dimensions of democracy for fostering equity and inclusiveness, accountability, rule of law, transparency, and the attainment of national development among others. The major purpose of the research is to examine good governance and development were institutionalized and achieved by the Bayelsa State government under Henry Seriake Dickson from 2012-2019. The study adopted structural-functional theory, descriptive research design, secondary sources of data collection and content analysis. The study among others discovered that from 2012-2019, the fundamental liberal politico-administrative values of good governance and development such as equity and inclusiveness, rule of law, accountability, vis-à-vis socio-economic and political development were not adequately addressed by the Bayelsa State government. Based on this, the study recommended that, Bayelsa State government should pursue an inclusive, people-oriented and participatory democracy to address the challenges inhibiting good governance and open up opportunities for developmen

Exploring the emerging impacts of open aid data and budget data in Nepal

Nepal underwent a second Constituent Assembly (CA) election in November 2013, an important precursor for transparent and accountable governance. This case study explores whether and how open data can make a relevant contribution to governance and inclusive citizen empowerment. The project sought to understand interactions of key stakeholders and to develop recommendations for intelligent action in the future. In countries like Nepal, where internet access is low, mainstream media are vital open data intermediaries. The study revealed that there is a gap between open data efforts and the information needs and practices of civil society and journalists in Nepal

Ready or Not, Here ICT Comes: A Case Study on e-readiness and governance in Kenya's Laptop Project

This study explores the links between good governance and e-readiness within a case study of Kenya’s Laptop Project – a nationwide ICT-in-Education implementation which aims to give one laptop to every Kenyan child entering primary education. Focus is held through two key questions, (1) How e-ready are Kenyan schools for the Laptop Project? and (2) What role has governance played in this? Research was conducted through a mixed methods approach in seven primary schools, across four regions of Kenya. Emphasis was placed upon qualitative research methods - primarily open-ended interviews, focus groups and participative observation. This body of data was strengthened with the use of a quantitative survey of 80 primary school teachers. Musa’s (2006) Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Cadman’s (2012) model of good governance provided theoretical frameworks. The main findings presented by this paper are (1) e-readiness in our participant schools is low, particularly important are Perceived Ease of Use, Perceived User Resources and Perceptions of the Project, and (2) non-inclusive, unaccountable and centralized governance has contributed directly to this picture. Three specific governance outcomes are highlighted as central to this; initial research and planning which did not reflect local realities, missing knowledge in the schools and over focus on simple laptop provision

Inclusive governance in non-profit organisations

The study of private non-profit enterprises that offer general interest services is only at the start. The understanding of existing organisations resists an inclusive, public interest view of governance. This contribution aims at providing a reflection on specific features that non-profit enterprises should have, and outlines four main justifications for including stakeholders in production governance: 1) access to knowledge and other resources, 2) trust creation, 3) internal efficiency, 4) external efficiency. Conclusions elaborate on Hansmann’s classic theory of the firm to suggest that governance solutions need to be assessed on the basis of total costs, considering also the lower level of social costs that is created when governance includes relevant stakeholders. Our model highlights that when social costs are high, even an enterprise with costly decisional processes, such as the multi-stakeholder, can be the most efficient solution amongst other possible alternatives

The National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C): Rationale, design, infrastructure, and deployment.

OBJECTIVE: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) poses societal challenges that require expeditious data and knowledge sharing. Though organizational clinical data are abundant, these are largely inaccessible to outside researchers. Statistical, machine learning, and causal analyses are most successful with large-scale data beyond what is available in any given organization. Here, we introduce the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C), an open science community focused on analyzing patient-level data from many centers. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The Clinical and Translational Science Award Program and scientific community created N3C to overcome technical, regulatory, policy, and governance barriers to sharing and harmonizing individual-level clinical data. We developed solutions to extract, aggregate, and harmonize data across organizations and data models, and created a secure data enclave to enable efficient, transparent, and reproducible collaborative analytics. RESULTS: Organized in inclusive workstreams, we created legal agreements and governance for organizations and researchers; data extraction scripts to identify and ingest positive, negative, and possible COVID-19 cases; a data quality assurance and harmonization pipeline to create a single harmonized dataset; population of the secure data enclave with data, machine learning, and statistical analytics tools; dissemination mechanisms; and a synthetic data pilot to democratize data access. CONCLUSIONS: The N3C has demonstrated that a multisite collaborative learning health network can overcome barriers to rapidly build a scalable infrastructure incorporating multiorganizational clinical data for COVID-19 analytics. We expect this effort to save lives by enabling rapid collaboration among clinicians, researchers, and data scientists to identify treatments and specialized care and thereby reduce the immediate and long-term impacts of COVID-19

The National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C): Rationale, design, infrastructure, and deployment

OBJECTIVE: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) poses societal challenges that require expeditious data and knowledge sharing. Though organizational clinical data are abundant, these are largely inaccessible to outside researchers. Statistical, machine learning, and causal analyses are most successful with large-scale data beyond what is available in any given organization. Here, we introduce the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C), an open science community focused on analyzing patient-level data from many centers. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The Clinical and Translational Science Award Program and scientific community created N3C to overcome technical, regulatory, policy, and governance barriers to sharing and harmonizing individual-level clinical data. We developed solutions to extract, aggregate, and harmonize data across organizations and data models, and created a secure data enclave to enable efficient, transparent, and reproducible collaborative analytics. RESULTS: Organized in inclusive workstreams, we created legal agreements and governance for organizations and researchers; data extraction scripts to identify and ingest positive, negative, and possible COVID-19 cases; a data quality assurance and harmonization pipeline to create a single harmonized dataset; population of the secure data enclave with data, machine learning, and statistical analytics tools; dissemination mechanisms; and a synthetic data pilot to democratize data access. CONCLUSIONS: The N3C has demonstrated that a multisite collaborative learning health network can overcome barriers to rapidly build a scalable infrastructure incorporating multiorganizational clinical data for COVID-19 analytics. We expect this effort to save lives by enabling rapid collaboration among clinicians, researchers, and data scientists to identify treatments and specialized care and thereby reduce the immediate and long-term impacts of COVID-19

Southern regionalisms, Global agendas: Innovating inclusive access to health, medicines and social protection in a context of social inequity

This Policy Brief highlights key findings from an ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) Department for International Development-funded international social policy research project examining the scope for enhancing the contributions of Southern multilateral regional organisations to inclusive social development in low-income contexts. Questions guiding the project were: 1 Are social policies and programmes of action on a regional scale by Southern regional groupings of countries instituting approaches for accessing health and medicines that meet the needs of all? 2 What scope is there for strengthening regional health and social policy in the interests of poverty reduction, social equity and inclusive development? 3 What needs to be done to strengthen regional approaches and policies in support of equitable access to health, medicines and social protection? The principal focus of research was the regional health policies of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). This is because SADC and UNASUR have clear mandates in relation to health (and other social policies), and include many of the world’s most impoverished populations, for whom unfavourable access to basic health care and medicines is both a persistent obstacle and a key social determinant of morbidity and mortality