A framework for intelligent policy decision making based on a government data hub

Author ProofThe e-Oman Integration Platform is a data hub that enables data exchanges across government in response to transactions. With millions of transactions weekly, and thereby data exchanges, we propose to investigate the potential of gathering intelligence from these linked sources to help government officials make more informed decisions. A key feature of this data is the richness and accuracy, which increases the value of the learning outcome when augmented by other big and open data sources. We consider a high-level framework within a government context, taking into account issues related to the definition of public policies, data privacy, and the potential benefits to society. A preliminary, qualitative validation of the framework in the context of e-Oman is presented. This paper lays out foundational work into an ongoing research to implement government decision-making based on big data.“SmartEGOV: Harnessing EGOV for Smart Governance (Foundations, Methods, Tools)/NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000037”, supported by Norte Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (EFDR

Everything under control? Comparing Knepp Estate rewilding project with ‘traditional’ nature conservation

‘Rewilding’ is an increasingly prominent concept in conservation, but one that has attracted controversy. Debate frequently focuses on human ‘control’ over nature. ‘Traditional’ conservation has been presented as involving ‘high control,’ and rewilding as ‘low control.’ Opposition to rewilding often stems from a perceived lack of control and associated perception of increased risk and uncertainty. This paper explores the concept of control in conservation. I identify multiple dimensions of control (‘stabilisation’, ‘location’, ‘prediction’ and ‘outputs’), illustrating that control is not a simple, linear concept. I compare two ethnographic case studies: the Sussex Wildlife Trust’s Old Lodge nature reserve; and Knepp Estate, one of the most influential rewilding projects in the UK. I use them to test assertions made about control in ‘traditional’ conservation and ‘rewilding’. I outline how Old Lodge does not exert precise control in all respects, but involves elements of uncertainty and negotiation. I describe how Knepp’s model of rewilding reduces control in some dimensions but potentially increases it in others. I conclude that, while Knepp’s rewilding does represent a significant conceptual departure from ‘traditional’ conservation, it should not be characterised as an approach that reduces control in a simplistic way. Based on this analysis, I argue that reduction of control does not necessarily underpin the concept of rewilding. Rather, there is interplay between different control dimensions that combine to form multiple ‘configurations of control.’ Using a framework of ‘configurations of control’, debate about the place of rewilding in conservation can become less polarised, and instead involve an active discussion of what configuration of control is desired. This analysis has the potential to increase understanding of rewilding projects as part of plural conservation strategies, in the UK and globally

Approaches to Assessing Public Concerns: Building Linked Data for Public Goals and Criteria Extracted from Textual Content

Part 3: Online DeliberationInternational audienceThe importance of public involvement in Japanese regional societies is increasing because they currently face complicated and ongoing social issues due to the post-maturity stage of these societies. Since citizens who have beneficial awareness or knowledge are not always experts on relevant social issues, assessing and sharing public concerns are needed to reduce barriers to public participation. We propose two approaches to assess public concerns. The first is building a linked open data set by extracting public goals for a specific social issue aimed at by citizens or agents from articles or public opinions. This paper deals with hierarchical goals and subgoals for recovery and revitalization from the Great East Japan Earthquake manually extracted from related articles. The data set can be used for developing services to match citizens and agents who aim at similar goals to facilitate collaboration. The second approach is building a linked data set by extracting assessment criteria for a specific social issue from public opinions. This paper deals with candidate terms that potentially represent such criteria for a specific public project automatically extracted from clusters of citizens’ opinions. The data set can be used as evidence for policy-making about the target project

Open Data: Growing Up and Getting Specific

Open data has been given a lot of attention in the public. In some situation ‘open by default’ has become established as a core principle, whereas others argue about the limited results and the lack of robust studies demonstrating the value, and point to the risk that open data might turn out to be a short lived policy fad. This special issue contains a variety of research papers addressing this topic from different views and providing recent research results on open data. The papers in this issue deepen the understanding of open data and show that the subject of open data is moving from the general to the study of specifics. The special issue also includes invited papers presented at the first public meeting of the SharePSI project. Share-PSI 2.0 is the European network for the exchange of experience and ideas around implementing open data policies in the public sector.Engineering, Systems and ServicesTechnology, Policy and Managemen

Big Data in the Public Sector. Linking Cities to Sensors

Part 5: Big and Open Linked DataInternational audienceIn the public sector, big data holds many promises for improving policy outcomes in terms of service delivery and decision-making and is starting to gain increased attention by governments. Cities are collecting large amounts of data from traditional sources such as registries and surveys and from non-traditional sources such as the Internet of Things, and are considered an important field of experimentation to generate public value with big data. The establishment of a city data infrastructure can drive such a development. This paper describes two key challenges for such an infrastructure: platform federation and data quality, and how these challenges are addressed in the ongoing research project CPaaS.io